Evaluating your Zendesk Support trial account

This guide shows you how to get familiar with your Zendesk trial account, helps you evaluate Zendesk features to see how they'll work for you, and provides guidelines on where to find more information. Follow the steps in this guide to get your trial account up and running. Each task typically takes less than 10 minutes to complete.


What's my plan?






Support

Team, Professional, or Enterprise






This guide shows you how to get familiar with your Zendesk trial account, helps you
evaluate Zendesk features to see how they'll work for you, and provides guidelines on where to
find more information. Follow the steps in this guide to get your trial account up and
running. Each task typically takes less than 10 minutes to complete.
Before you begin, we recommend watching Video: New to Zendesk?

Get to know the agent workspace
Step 1: Add agents to manage tickets
Step 2: Create agent groups for different ticket types
Step 3: Add email addresses to match ticket issues
Step 4: Organize your tickets into views
Step 5: Create macros for consistent, canned responses
Step 6: Add custom ticket fields to improve ticket workflow
Step 7: Automate repetitive tasks with triggers and automations
Step 8: Use Explore to analyze and improve performance



Get to know the agent workspace

Before you dive in, take some time to get familiar with the Zendesk Agent Workspace. This
is where agents work on tickets, across Zendesk channels, all within a single ticket
interface.
Having an understanding of how agents work with tickets will help you as an administrator.
You'll learn about key features in the following sections that you need to set up to make
agents successful and efficient.
There's a sample ticket in your trial that you can open to see the agent workspace.
To see the agent workspace

In Home, click "Sample ticket: Meet the ticket" to open the sample ticket, then
click User in the upper-right corner.


To learn more, see About the Zendesk Agent Workspace and watch this
short video.

Make the most of Agent Workspace (2:33)



Step 1: Add agents to manage tickets

As the site administrator, you can invite agents to your trial account to work on tickets.
Each new agent you add receives a welcome email and verification link.



Plan it

You can organize agents by a variety of factors including skills, geographic locations,
product type, or experience level. When you add agents consider:
What actions do they perform?
What workflows do they need?
What special skills do they have?





Try it out

For this trial, only add a few agents to test-drive your site. Later, after you plan how
to arrange agents into groups and organizations, you can add them using a bulk import or
through the Zendesk API.
To add an agent


In Admin Center, click
People in the sidebar, then select Team > Team members.
You add agents in Support, but you use
Admin Center to manage user roles and access across products.






Learn more about agents


Lesson: Organizing tickets and users
Bulk importing users
Importing users with the Zendesk API





Step 2: Create agent groups for different ticket types

Groups collect agents together, allowing admins to manage agent ticket assignments. Groups
can reflect your own internal teams, departments, or subject-matter experts. Once groups are
defined, you can assign tickets to the entire group so that each member is notified and the
first available agent can reply. Agents can be in more than one group at a time. It’s easy
to change group members and assignments without messing with group settings.



Plan it

Identify a specific purpose for groups in your company that will use Zendesk.
What groups can you create to add value? You can report upon the performance or workload
of different groups too. For example:

Team
Departments
Subject matter experts

In addition to reporting on the workload or performance of individual agents, you'll now
be able to do the same for your different groups.



Try it out

For this trial, only add one or two groups and assign agents to the groups. Later, after
you plan your ticket workflows, you can add more groups as needed.
To add a group


In Admin Center, click
People in the sidebar, then select Team > Groups.





Learn more about groups


About organizations and groups
Creating groups
Managing groups





Step 3: Add email addresses to match ticket issues

Connect your organization’s customer service email addresses to your account so that new
emails begin creating tickets for your agents to manage. While you can set up any number of
channels to communicate with your customers, the industry staple is still email.
When you set up Zendesk Support, you have one related email address to submit tickets:
support@your-account.zendesk.com, but you can provide your
end users with alternative email addresses, called support addresses. You can add as
many support addresses as you need. Support addresses can be either variations of your
Zendesk email address or external email addresses.



Plan it

You might have a single email address for all customer inquiries, or you might have many
different email addresses for the unique types of queries you receive. Either way, they
can all be forwarded into your Zendesk account so that tickets are automatically created
for agents to manage.
Use support addresses to match your ticket issues. Consider the customer experience when
configuring support email addresses. Often, the address alone can communicate the type of
service provided. For example:
support@yourcompany.com
sales@yourcompany.com
billing@yourcompany.com
shipping@yourcompany.com





Try it out

For this trial, just add one more address with @yoursubdomain.zendesk.com. Later, you can
update your account to include additional support addresses or to forward tickets to your existing support account.
To add a support address


In Admin Center, click
Channels in the sidebar, then select Talk and email > Email.





Learn more


Adding support addresses for users to submit
tickets
Incoming email requests and notifications





Step 4: Organize your tickets into views

Views dynamically organize tickets based on specific criteria that you define. Views can be
thought of as meaningful collections (or play lists) of tickets, each with their own set of
filters. Views are where your agents will spend most of their time so it's critically
important that they are set up in a way that actually reflects their workflow.
Using views can help you determine what tickets need attention and plan accordingly. By
sharing views with your agents, you can ensure that everyone is working from the same
perspective instead of leaving it up to each agent’s own interpretation.
Before you begin, we recommend watching Video: Drive agent efficiency



Plan it

Customize your ticket views to reflect the ideal workflow for your agents to
follow based on a number of different factors. Views are commonly based on things like:

The assigned agent or group
Type of request
Product
Priority (low vs. urgent)
Customer

It's common for administrators to create views for different teams or about
different types of requests. For example, a view for technical questions and a view for
billing issues. Another option might be to create views based on the customer who
submitted the ticket, especially if you're supporting VIP accounts.
Once you have the right collection of tickets, you can sort the views so that
the most important tickets are at the top, perhaps prioritizing the oldest tickets first.
A couple of valuable columns to include with your views are the time remaining until an
SLA breach or even the predicted customer satisfaction.



Try it out

For this trial, just add one or two views. Later, after you plan your ticket types and
workflows, you can add more views as needed.
To add a view


In Admin Center, click
Workspaces in the sidebar, then select Agent tools > Views.





Learn more about views


Using views to manage agent workflow





Step 5: Create macros for consistent, canned responses

Embed macros within tickets to help agents save time, automatically fill-in
ticket fields, and provide consistent, thorough, and error-free responses. Macros are a
predefined set of actions that agents apply to a ticket with one click.
Create macros for support requests that can be answered with a single, standard
response. This saves your agents the time and effort of crafting a separate response to each
customer with the same issue. Macros are more than just canned-replies to FAQs, they can
provide placeholders like the customer's name and can update other ticket properties, like
the type, group, and status.



Plan it

Plan and create macros so your agents can reply to common requests with a click
of a button instead of typing out the same replies over and over again. Common macros
include:

Password reset
Answering FAQs
Assigning ticket to another agent

You can introduce macros to create better internal escalations from one agent
group to another. For example, suppose an agent wants to escalate a ticket from your
support team to a developer so they can investigate a bug. Developers typically need some
pieces of information before they can begin their work. You can create a macro that lists
what information is needed as part of an internal comment, making it easy for an agent to
complete before escalating the ticket. This ensures that the developer has the information
they need from the start and can get right to work.



Try it out

For this trial, just add one or two macros for your most-common requests. Later, after
you plan your ticket types and workflows, you can add more macros as needed.
To add a macro


In Admin Center, click
Workspaces in the sidebar, then select Agent tools > Macros.





Learn more about macros


Using macros to update tickets
Creating macros for tickets
Organizing and managing your macros





Step 6: Add custom ticket fields to improve ticket workflow

A ticket is a record of the conversation between the agent and the customer. Ticket fields
live in the ticket sidebar and allow you to store information, route, and prioritize each
ticket. Zendesk includes a default set of fields for your tickets. You can add custom fields
as needed so you can categorize your tickets in whatever way makes the most sense for your
business.



Plan it

Identify the most common types of requests by tracking each ticket’s topic with a custom
field that your agents or customers can fill out. Custom fields provide valuable data for
you for ticket processing and reporting purposes. For example:

Issue the ticket is about
Product in question
Due date for resolution

Custom fields can help you analyze the types of requests you are fielding most often,
those that are taking the most time to resolve, and those that are leading to happy (or
unhappy) customers.



Try it out

For this trial, add one or two custom ticket fields. Later, after you plan your ticket
workflows, you can add more custom fields as needed.
To add a custom ticket field


In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Fields..





Learn more about custom ticket fields


Adding custom fields to your tickets
About ticket fields
Viewing ticket fields
Best practices for altering your custom ticket
fields





Step 7: Automate repetitive tasks with triggers and automations

You can create triggers and automations to intelligently process tickets, reduce
redundant work, and save agents' time. At their core, triggers and automations are cause and
effect statements. If a ticket meets a set of conditions, then one or more
actions are performed. Triggers control all the email notifications sent to your customers.
You can improve customer satisfaction with quicker updates and communication around their
requests.
Triggers are event-based business rules you define that run immediately
after tickets are created or updated. Automations are time-based business rules that
perform an action in your account based on time elapsed. For example, a trigger could be
used to immediately route a new ticket about a shipment to the Shipping department, while an
automation could escalate that ticket four hours later if it hasn't been assigned to an
agent.
Before you begin, we recommend watching Video: Automate repetitive tasks



Plan it

To ensure that nothing slips through the cracks, you should automate any actions that
need to be completed every single time a situation calls for it. Common uses of these
workflows include:

Routing new requests to the right team
Sending notifications to customers or agents
Escalating tickets in need of a response

By automating stages throughout the ticket lifecycle, you can decrease handle
times and reduce the number of reassignments from one agent to the next. This ultimately
helps you deliver a better customer and agent experience. Your agents now spend their time
helping customers instead of performing repetitive tasks.



Try it out

For this trial, only add one trigger and one automation. Later, after you plan your
ticket workflows, you can add more triggers and automations as needed.

To add triggers and automations
For triggers: In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules >
Triggers.

For automations: In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules >
Automations.



For this trial, do not remove any default triggers. Some default triggers are essential
and control important email notifications to your customers. See About the standard Support triggers.




Learn more about automating repetitive tasks


Routing and automation options for incoming tickets
Automations vs. Triggers - When to use what
About triggers and how they work
Creating and managing automations for time-based
events
About automations and how they work





Step 8: Use Explore to analyze and improve performance

Zendesk Explore provides you with analytics to measure and improve the entire customer
experience.
Explore comes with best practice dashboards and analysis built in, so teams of
any size get the metrics that help them track towards success. You can analyze team
performance, take stock of operational metrics, or get a better understanding of your
customer experience.



Learn more about Explore


Getting started with Explore
Turning on pre-built dashboards





What's next?

Congratulations! You've completed your trial set up. Here are some other things
to consider:
You can set up other channels for your account. For instructions, see Evaluating your Zendesk Suite trial and the Launch guide for Zendesk Suite products.
To learn more about Support, see Getting started with Support.

Visit the Zendesk Marketplace to find partners, apps, and integrations - everything you
need to increase agent productivity and streamline workflows.




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