08 May SMS based customer support system with Restcomm and Zendesk (PART 2) – automated SMS notification system

In the In the previous post of this series, we have shown how your customers and support agents can open and update tickets in Zendesk via SMS to meet your customers wherever they are. However, that still may be challenging for your customer support agents. But staying on the top of your support increases customer satisfaction rating as well as internet promotion score, so it’s important to improve that score.

In this blog post we will show you how to keep your agents and customers up to date by setting up an automated SMS notification system.

Assuming that you have already followed the steps from part one of this series, we will move forward and extend your Restcomm – Zendesk integration setup.

Here are the additions that we will make to your setup… we will create Zendesk Triggers and Targets that:

• notify agents for newly created ticket assigned to them
• notify your customers when their ticket has been updated by an agent
• notify agents when a ticket has been updated by a customer

We will also create corresponding Zendesk Targets for each one of these triggers that will send that information to Restcomm and send an outbound SMS to your customers’ or agents’ phones.

Building Zendesk Targets for your automated SMS based customer support system

(requires Admin access)

Let’s start with the target that will notify the agent when a new ticket is assigned to him.

1. Log into your Zendesk Admin account
2. Navigate to Admin -> Settings -> Extensions
3. Click on “Add Target” and choose to create HTTP target
4. Name your Target
5. Place your Restcomm Cloud SMS API endpoint url in the Url field (eg. https://yourdomain.com/restcomm/2012-04-24/Accounts/your Account SID/SMS/Messages)
6. Choose POST from the Method drop down
7. Select form-encoded from the Content-type drop down
8. Enable basic authentication and enter your Restcomm Cloud SID and Auth Token as Username and password
9. Select Test target from the drop down on the right hand side and then hit the Submit button
10. You will see a pop up in which you can enter your request parameters. For the purpose of this tutorial we will need the following changes:
    • To – stores the agent’s phone number which will receive the SMS notification; set it to “{{agent.phone}}”; make sure your agent has a phone number added to their Zendesk profile;
    • From – set this one to your Restcomm SMS enabled phone number, bound to your application
    • Body – stores the body of the SMS; set it to “Ticket # {{ticket.id}} has been assigned to you. Subject: {{ticket.title}} Latest ticket comments: {{ticket.latest_public_comment_formatted}}”
11. Click on Submit; you should see a screen with a message that your request was successfully sent;
12. Navigate back to the drop down on the right hand and select “Update target” from the drop down
13.  Save your changes

Move on with the target that notifies your customers when their ticket has been updated by an agent.

• Follow steps 1-9 from the previous target. 

• Enter the request parameters for this target as follows:
  • To – stores the customer’s phone number which will receive the SMS notification; set it to “{{ticket.title}}”; as per part one of this demo – the customer phone number is set as ticket title in Zendesk when SMS is sent to yours automated SMS notification system
  • From – your Restcomm SMS enabled phone number
  • Body – “Ticket # {{ticket.id}} has been recently updated. Subject: {{ticket.title}} Latest ticket comments: {{ticket.latest_public_comment_formatted}}”
• Click Submit and save your changes

Lastly, you need to create a target that notifies the agent when a customer updates the ticket.

• Once again follow the steps 1-9 for the previous targets

• Enter the request parameters for the target as follows:
  • To – an agent’s mobile phone number “{{agent.phone}}”
  • From – your Restcomm SMS enabled phone number
  • Body – “Ticket # {{ticket.id}} has been recently updated. Subject: {{ticket.title}} Latest ticket comments: {{ticket.latest_public_comment_formatted}}”
• Click Submit and save your changes

Building Zendesk Triggers for your automated SMS based customer support system

(requires Admin access)

Start by creating a trigger that notifies agents for newly created ticket assigned to them.

1. Log into your Zendesk Admin account
2. Navigate to Admin -> Business rules -> Triggers -> Add Trigger
3. Name your trigger
4. Add new condition in “Meet ALL of the following conditions” section
5. Set the Status of the ticket to be set to New in order for the trigger to be fired up
6. Navigate to the actions section
7. Add a new action and choose the assignee of the ticket to be a particular agent or a group of agents (depends your preference and setup)
8. Add another action and choose to notify your corresponding target which your previously had created
9. Add your x-www-form-urlencoded paramaters as follows
   • To – an agent’s mobile phone number “{{agent.phone}}”
   • From – your Restcomm SMS enabled phone number
   • Body – “Ticket # {{ticket.id}} has been assigned to you. Subject: {{ticket.title}} Latest ticket comments: {{ticket.latest_public_comment_formatted}}”
10. Click Save

Next, create a trigger to notify your customers when their ticket has been updated by an agent.

• Follow steps 1-4 from the previously created trigger
• Set a new condition to when a ticket is updated
• Add a new action to notify the corresponding previously created target
• Add your x-www-form-urlencoded paramaters as follows
  • To – an agent phone number “{{agent.phone}}”
  • From – your Restcomm SMS enabled phone number
  • Body – “Ticket # {{ticket.id}} has been recently updated. Subject: {{ticket.title}} Latest ticket comments: {{ticket.latest_public_comment_formatted}}”
• Click Save

At last you need to create a trigger to notify agents when a ticket has been updated by a customer.

• Follow steps 1-4 from the previously created trigger
• Set a new condition to when a ticket is updated
• Add a new action to notify the corresponding previously created target
• Add your x-www-form-urlencoded paramaters as follows
  • To – an agent phone number “{{agent.phone}}”
  • From – your Restcomm SMS enabled phone number
  • Body – “Ticket # {{ticket.id}} has been recently updated. Subject: {{ticket.title}} Latest ticket comments: {{ticket.latest_public_comment_formatted}}”
• Click Save

You are all set!

Testing your automated SMS notification system

Go back to your Restcomm Cloud dashboard and find the number you have registered in part one of this tutorial. Send SMS messages from both the customers and agents side in order to test the end to end flow.

Now your customers and agents have a simple and efficient way to communicate with each other anytime and anywhere, without downloading an app or having a WiFi connection available. 🙂

In the next blog post part of this series, we will show you how to how to provide live call support using Restcomm and Zendesk. Keep following us here!

In the meantime, try this out for yourself. Sign up for a trial account today.