On this put up, we’re going to learn to implement buyer help capabilities utilizing a minimal code method and counting on third occasion providers. There are numerous conditions during which you may have to implement some buyer help capabilities. Possibly you’re creating your personal product, or perhaps you’re working for a corporation that should enhance their operations.
With the arrival of COVID-19, e-commerce has turn into a serious concern for many companies. Having buyer help 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 and so they want to have the ability to adapt within the shortest time doable. For that reason, we’re going to actually on third occasion providers and use a minimal code method. This permits us to dramatically cut back the time to market and growth value. Operational value can also be extremely versatile as a result of each Zendesk and Azure can adapt their choices and costs to our enterprise scale and wishes.
The very first thing we’re going to do is to go to https://www.zendesk.com/ and create an account. I can’t doc how to do that as a result of Zendesk could be very intuitive and it has superb documentation.
After creating the account, you’ll be able to go to the settings web page and go to the channels part to search out out your help electronic mail:
The format of this electronic mail handle ought to be help@yourcompany.zendesk.com
. You will have to recollect this handle as a result of we’re going to want it later.
We will then go to the widget part beneath the channels part to allow the contact type and the online chat options:
In the event you go to the settings it is possible for you to to search out the set up information:
All it’s essential 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 got enabled the contact type widget which is displayed when there are not any buyer help brokers on-line:
We’ve got additionally enabled the reside chat widget which is displayed when buyer help brokers are on-line:
Slightly icon will probably be then displayed on the underside proper of your webpage. When a consumer clicks on the icon, the contact type or the reside chat type will probably be displayed.
Ideally, we wish 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 are actually able to handle requests that originated on our web site.
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E-mail: Managing electronic mail requests will be achieved by enabling electronic mail forwarding from one in every of your organization electronic mail addresses to your Zendesk electronic mail handle.
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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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Cellphone calls. Zendesk additionally permits you to handle cellphone calls as buyer requests tickets. You’ll be able to study extra utilizing the Zendesk documentation.
Generally, the default Zendesk implementation can be sufficient to get began. Nevertheless, in my case, I wanted an extra customized contact type:
I wanted this way 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 way to Zendesk. The best resolution can be to ship an electronic mail to the Zendesk help 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 help electronic mail handle. I needed 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 wish 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 save lots of 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 manner and that’s how I ended up utilizing Azure Logic Apps.
We will 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 mechanically translate it into the request schema.
Whenever 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 may 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 info from the unique HTTP request so as to add it to the e-mail contents. We will do that utilizing an expression:
We will use triggerBody()
to entry the request physique and json(triggerBody())
to rework it into JSON. We will then entry the properties within the request physique as follows json(triggerBody()).firm
.
We will then save every little thing and two assets ought to have been created:
We will 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 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 is best to now have a brand new ticket in your Zendesk buyer help dashboard:
The operational value of operating this logic app is nearly zero and we will get began with Zendesk for simply $60 a yr. We will now ship an expert buyer help expertise on a price range and in just some hours!
As we will see Azure Logic apps may help us to resolve real-business wants with virtually no code. This permits us to maneuver sooner and adapt sooner in a time of unprecedented uncertainty.
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