Workflow recipe: Sending automated ticket reminders to customers

This recipe shows how to use the Zendesk Bump-Bump-Solve method to clean up outdated, dormant tickets in your account. Use business rules to set time intervals to first notify the requester that you await a response, then notify the requester that a dormant ticket is solved.

This process includes:

An automation that bumps the ticket requester after the ticket is in Pending status for four days

An automation that solves the ticket and notifies the customer three days later

A trigger that resets the process if the customer responds after either notification

This article includes the following sections:

Workflow goal

Video guide

Automate the first reminder (Bump)

Automate the second reminder (Bump)

Solve the ticket automatically (Solve)

Clean up the ticket automatically

Workflow goal

This recipe shows how to notify (Bump) the ticket requester after four calendar days, notify the ticket requester again after six calendar days if you still need a response, then solve (Solve) the ticket after seven calendar days. To meet your requirements, modify this workflow to use different time intervals or use business days instead of calendar days.

Video guide

Watch the video below for a visual guide to this workflow.

Automate the first reminder (Bump)

Remind the customer based on how long the ticket is in Pending, not on a particular ticket event. Use an automation, not a trigger, to send the reminder.

Create a bump automation to remind the ticket requester that the ticket has been in Pending status for four days. Set conditions and actions to ensure the automation runs only once per Pending status and only after four calendar days. This automation adds a unique tag to the ticket (and checks that it's not there) and notifies the requester. Set it up like this:

To automate the first reminder:

In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon () in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Automations.

Click Add automation.

Enter the following information for the automation.

For the automation Name and Conditions:

The Ticket: Tags condition checks that two tags are not present on the ticket. The first tag, bump1, signifies that the automation already fired and the customer was notified. Because the workflow sends a second notification (after six days) before solving the ticket, the bump1 tag is added after the first notification so you can distinguish between the first and second notifications.

The second tag, dont_bump, acts as a fail-safe for agents if they don't want this automated process to occur for a particular ticket. Agents can manually add the dont_bump tag to the ticket to prevent any of the bump automations from running.

For the automation Actions:

When you finish adding the automation name, conditions, and actions, click Create automation.

With this automation, when these conditions are met:

The ticket status has been Pending for more than 4 days (96 hours)

The ticket does not have a bump1 or dont_bump tag

These actions occur:

The automation sends an email notification to the ticket requester. See the example below.

The automation adds a bump1 tag to the ticket to track that the first bump reminder has been sent

Here's an example of the email notification sent to a customer after one of their tickets stays in Pending for more than 4 days.

Automate the second reminder (Bump)

For tickets that remain in Pending status after the first reminder, create a second bump automation that sends a second reminder if the ticket is still in Pending status after six days.

To automate the second reminder:

In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon () in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Automations.

Click Add automation.

Enter the following information for the automation.

For the automation Name and Conditions:

For the automation Actions:

When you finish adding the automation name, conditions, and actions, click Create automation.

With this automation, when these conditions are met:

The ticket status has been Pending for more than 6 days (144 hours)

The ticket does not have a bump2 or dont_bump tag

The bump1 tag has already been added to the ticket, which means that the first notification was already sent and the ticket is ready for a second notification

Confirm that the ticket was updated more than two days (48 hours) earlier (when the first automation ran). This prevents two notifications in a short time when you first implement this process and already have tickets in Pending for more than six days.

A customer's response to the notification reopens the ticket, and the cleanup trigger removes all bump tags from the ticket to reset the process.

These actions occur:

The automation sends an email notification to the ticket requester. See example below.

The automation adds a bump2 tag to the ticket to track that the second bump reminder has been sent

The following is an example of the email notification sent to a customer after one of their tickets stays in Pending for more than six days and they don't reply to the first notification.

Solve the ticket automatically (Solve)

Now that you've notified your requester twice and given them adequate time to respond, create another automation to close the ticket. This automation solves the ticket and notifies the requester.

To solve the ticket:

In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon () in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Automations.

Click Add automation.

Enter the following information for the automation.

For the automation Name and Conditions:

For the automation Actions:

When you finish adding the automation name, conditions, and actions, click Create automation.

With this automation, when these conditions are met:

The ticket status has been Pending for more than 7 days (168 hours)

The ticket has a bump2 tag to show that two notifications have been sent

It's been more than 24 hours since the ticket was last updated

These actions occur:

The automation sends an email notification to the ticket requester. See example below.

The automation changes the ticket status to Solved

The following is an example of the email notification sent to a customer when a Pending ticket is automatically marked as Solved.

If the requester responds to the notification before the ticket changes from Solved to Closed status, the ticket reopens and a cleanup trigger also activates.

Clean up the ticket automatically

As a final step, add a cleanup trigger. This trigger removes any of the Bump-Bump-Solve process tags when a ticket is reopened. This trigger is necessary if the ticket is reopened and the agent responds and sets it back to Pending status. In this case, the cleanup enables the process to run again, even though it already ran.

To clean up the process tags:

In Admin Center, click the Objects and rules icon () in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.

Click Add Trigger.

Enter the following information for the trigger.

Under Meet ALL of the following conditions, add:

Status | Changed to | Open

Current user | Is | (end-user)

Tags | Contains at least one of the following | bump1 bump2

For the trigger Actions, add:

Remove tags | bump1 bump2

Click Create trigger.

With these business rules, you have an automated process that reminds customers that you await their response and eventually solves the ticket if they don't respond. You no longer have to manually manage these Pending tickets that don't receive a response.