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 a variety of conditions by which you would possibly have to implement some buyer assist capabilities. Possibly you might be creating your personal product, or perhaps you might be working for an organization that should enhance their operations.
With the arrival of COVID-19, e-commerce has change into a serious concern for many companies. Having a very good buyer assist technique in place is a should nowadays. On-line customers demand options like on-line reside chat or multi-channel communication and count on 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 doable. For that reason, we’re going to actually on third celebration providers and use a minimal code method. This enables us to dramatically scale back the time to market and growth 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 may be very intuitive and it has excellent documentation.
After creating the account, you possibly can go to the settings web page and go to the channels part to search out out your assist electronic mail:
The format of this electronic mail deal with ought to be [email protected]. You will have to recollect this deal with as a result of we’re going to want it later.
We are able to then go to the widget part underneath the channels part to allow the contact type and the online chat options:
Should you go to the settings it is possible for you to to search out the set up information:
All it is advisable 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’ve enabled the contact type widget which is displayed when there are not any buyer assist brokers on-line:
We’ve additionally enabled the reside chat widget which is displayed when buyer assist brokers are on-line:
A bit of icon will probably be then displayed on the underside proper of your webpage. When a person clicks on the icon, the contact type or the reside chat type will probably be displayed.
Ideally, we need to have a single level to handle all our buyer request. The request might 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 might be achieved by enabling electronic mail forwarding from one in every of your organization electronic mail addresses to your Zendesk electronic mail deal with.
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Social media: You’ll be able to go to the channel settings in Zendesk to attach your social media accounts with Zendesk.
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Telephone calls. Zendesk additionally permits you to handle cellphone calls as buyer requests tickets. You’ll be able to study extra utilizing the Zendesk documentation.
Normally, the default Zendesk implementation can be sufficient to get began. Nonetheless, in my case, I wanted a further customized contact type:
I wanted this type to be extremely seen and the underside proper “assist” button didn’t have sufficient visibility for me. The webform was applied utilizing React and Formik.
I wished 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 deal with. 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 deal with. I wished to implement this with as little code as doable 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 want to handle the permissions so our electronic mail server permits us to ship an electronic mail. This wasn’t a large job however it required me to avoid wasting the code in a repository, deploy it, and so forth. It was an excessive amount of work for one thing so easy. I wished to discover a higher means 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’ll be able to 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 could 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 may return an HTTP response:
We then want so as to add a parallel step to ship an electronic mail. In my case I exploit Gmail however there are different integrations out there.
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 remodel 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 all the pieces and two sources 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’ll be able to then use the browser developer instruments to see if the request was profitable:
And eventually, 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 all the pieces labored you need to now have a brand new ticket in your Zendesk buyer assist dashboard:
The operational value of operating this logic app is sort of zero and we will get began with Zendesk for simply $60 a yr. We are able to now ship an expert buyer assist expertise on a funds and in only a few hours!
As we will see Azure Logic apps can assist us to resolve real-business wants with nearly no code. This enables us to maneuver quicker and adapt quicker in a time of unprecedented uncertainty.
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