On this submit, we’re going to learn to implement buyer assist capabilities utilizing a minimal code method and counting on third celebration providers. There are loads of conditions during which you may have to implement some buyer assist capabilities. Perhaps you’re creating your personal product, or possibly you’re working for an organization that should enhance their operations.
With the arrival of COVID-19, e-commerce has turn out to be a serious concern for many companies. Having a superb buyer assist technique in place is a should as of late. On-line customers demand options like on-line reside chat or multi-channel communication and anticipate excessive responsiveness from on-line companies.
The pandemic has generated unprecedented ranges of uncertainty for enterprise they usually want to have the ability to adapt within the shortest time potential. Because of this, we’re going to actually on third celebration providers and use a minimal code method. This permits us to dramatically scale back the time to market and improvement value. Operational value can be extremely versatile as a result of each Zendesk and Azure can adapt their choices and costs to our enterprise scale and desires.
The very first thing we’re going to do is to go to https://www.zendesk.com/ and create an account. I cannot doc how to do that as a result of Zendesk could be very intuitive and it has excellent documentation.
After creating the account, you may go to the settings web page and go to the channels part to seek out out your assist electronic mail:
The format of this electronic mail handle ought to be assist@yourcompany.zendesk.com. You’ll need to recollect this handle as a result of we’re going to want it later.
We are able to then go to the widget part beneath the channels part to allow the contact kind and the online chat options:
In case you go to the settings it is possible for you to to seek out the set up information:
All that you must do is so as to add a script tag to your web site’s supply code:
<script id="ze-snippet" src="https://static.zdassets.com/ekr/snippet.js?key=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"></script>
We have now enabled the contact kind widget which is displayed when there aren’t any buyer assist brokers on-line:
We have now additionally enabled the reside chat widget which is displayed when buyer assist brokers are on-line:
A bit icon will probably be then displayed on the underside proper of your webpage. When a consumer clicks on the icon, the contact kind or the reside chat kind will probably be displayed.
Ideally, we need to have a single level to handle all our buyer request. The request could have originated in our web site, our electronic mail or social media:
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Net: We at the moment are able to handle requests that originated on our web site.
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E mail: Managing electronic mail requests could be achieved by enabling electronic mail forwarding from certainly one of your organization electronic mail addresses to your Zendesk electronic mail handle.
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Social media: You possibly can go to the channel settings in Zendesk to attach your social media accounts with Zendesk.
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Cellphone calls. Zendesk additionally permits you to handle cellphone calls as buyer requests tickets. You possibly can be taught extra utilizing the Zendesk documentation.
Usually, the default Zendesk implementation can be sufficient to get began. Nevertheless, in my case, I wanted an extra customized contact kind:
I wanted this type to be extremely seen and the underside proper “assist” button didn’t have sufficient visibility for me. The webform was carried out utilizing React and Formik.
I needed to ship the request that originated utilizing this type to Zendesk. The simplest resolution can be to ship an electronic mail to the Zendesk assist electronic mail handle. We have to implement an HTTP POST endpoint that takes the shape particulars as JSON and ship an electronic mail to the Zendesk assist electronic mail handle. I needed to implement this with as little code as potential and the very first thing that got here so my thoughts was to make use of an Azure operate.
Utilizing an Azure operate would require us to outline an HTTP set off and the code that sends the e-mail. We would wish to handle the permissions so our electronic mail server permits us to ship an electronic mail. This wasn’t a large job but it surely required me to avoid wasting the code in a repository, deploy it, and so on. It was an excessive amount of work for one thing so easy. I needed to discover a higher approach and that’s how I ended up utilizing Azure Logic Apps.
We are able to go to the Azure portal and create a brand new Azure Logic App, then use the designer to create the logic guidelines of our app. The very first thing that we have to do is to outline an HTTP set off for our HTTP POST request:
You possibly can paste an instance of the physique of your request and the Logic App designer will routinely translate it into the request schema.
Once you save your logic, Azure will generate an URL you can invoke out of your app.
The second factor that we have to do is so as to add a step:
We have to add a step that can return an HTTP response:
We then want so as to add a parallel step to ship an electronic mail. In my case I take advantage of Gmail however there are different integrations obtainable.
We have to extract the information from the unique HTTP request so as to add it to the e-mail contents. We are able to do that utilizing an expression:
We are able to use triggerBody() to entry the request physique and json(triggerBody()) to rework it into JSON. We are able to then entry the properties within the request physique as follows json(triggerBody()).firm.
We are able to then save every little thing and two assets ought to have been created:
We are able to then invoke the HTTP set off in our logic app by sending an HTTP request from the online app:
const response = await fetch(`INSERT_THE_TRIGGER_URL_HERE`, {
methodology: "POST",
physique: JSON.stringify(values),
});
const json = response.json();
You possibly can then use the browser developer instruments to see if the request was profitable:
And at last, head to the Azure Logic App monitoring part to see if all of the steps labored as anticipated. The monitoring instruments with offering you with some particulars if one thing fails:
If every little thing labored it’s best to now have a brand new ticket in your Zendesk buyer assist dashboard:
The operational value of working this logic app is sort of zero and we will get began with Zendesk for simply $60 a 12 months. We are able to now ship an expert buyer assist expertise on a finances and in only a few hours!
As we will see Azure Logic apps may help us to resolve real-business wants with nearly no code. This permits us to maneuver sooner and adapt sooner in a time of unprecedented uncertainty.
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