Getting started with Zendesk Contact Center

This article helps admins get started with Zendesk Contact Center.


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Contact Center







Summary: ◀▼
Get started with Contact Center by understanding its core components like Amazon Connect and single sign-on integration. Review your configuration settings, test the installation, and inform agents with key resources. Monitor activity using customizable dashboards to track call center performance. Explore next steps for integration, attribute mapping, and call recording settings to optimize your contact center operations.




This article helps admins get started with Zendesk Contact Center.
This article contains the following topics:

Understanding Contact Center components
Reviewing the Contact Center configuration
Testing your Contact Center installation
Informing your agents
Monitoring Contact Center activity
Next steps



Understanding Contact Center components

The following components are the key building blocks of Contact Center and how they
interact.


Amazon Connect Customer

Amazon Connect Customer (Connect) is a cloud-based contact center service
provided by AWS that helps you set up and manage customer support calls and
chats. Think of it as the telephony and contact routing engine for Contact
Center. It handles phone calls, queues, contact flows, and more. Connect is the
foundation of Contact Center. Every customer who uses Contact Center either has
a Zendesk-provisioned AWS account or manages their own instance in their AWS
account. Each Contact Center environment links one-to-one with a specific
Connect instance. You can't link multiple Connect instances to one Contact
Center account or vice versa.
For more information, see About AWS services in Contact
Center.



Zendesk Identity Provider

Zendesk provides single sign-on (SSO) by acting as a SAML 2.0 identity provider
(IdP) to the AWS services that power Contact Center. You keep using your
corporate IdP to sign in to Zendesk, such as Okta, Entra ID, or Google
Workspace. After you sign in to Zendesk, it acts as a SAML 2.0 IdP and signs you
in to Amazon Connect Customer, Amazon Cognito, and the AWS Management Console
with IdP-initiated SAML SSO. You don’t need to configure separate SSO
integrations for those services, and your multi-factor authentication (MFA) and
access policies stay in your IdP. This is built for Contact Center’s AWS
services, not as a general SAML broker for arbitrary third-party service
providers.
For more information, see Understanding single sign-on for Contact
Center.




Reviewing the Contact Center configuration

After Zendesk or your implementation partner provides your instance details and
credentials, familiarize yourself with and review your configuration settings:

Activating agent focus mode in Contact
Center
Mapping Amazon Connect queues to Zendesk
brands
Managing end-user profiles for Contact
Center
Creating quick connects for Contact
Center




Testing your Contact Center installation

After Zendesk completes the installation of your instance, you're ready to test
Contact Center to ensure everything is working correctly.
To test Contact Center


Navigate to the Contact Center agent login page, https://${Zendesk
Instance Host}/agent.


Sign in with SSO.


Access the call console.


Check agent status and make a call
You can verify connectivity by checking if the call console is available.


If you're having problems, see Troubleshooting Contact Center.



Informing your agents

Here are some useful resources to help your agents get started using Contact
Center:


Accessing the Contact Center agent interface and configuring voice preferences


Configuring Contact Center browser
notifications


Setting your agent status


Setting agent status to offline and
signing out of Contact Center





Monitoring Contact Center activity

Contact Center dashboards give you insights into your call center activity:


Realtime snapshot dashboard shows metrics in near-real-time.


Recent performance dashboard shows activity from the last 24
hours.


You can customize the dashboards to your specific monitoring needs. For more
information, see Understanding Contact Center dashboards.



Next steps



Mapping Amazon Connect attributes to
Contact Center ticket fields




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