Automated Emails with Zendesk

In this article
Before You Start
Complete Zendesk Details
Add Zendesk Placeholders
Complete Email Details
Add Email Content
Finish Your Setup in Zendesk
Troubleshooting Emails Not Sending

Essentials feature: Available on Essentials, Pro, and Ultimate plans.

Zendesk Automation lets you send customers a survey automatically after a ticket’s status changes in Zendesk. It’s designed for CX leaders who use Zendesk to manage customer experience across support and success touchpoints.

Before You Start

Before using Zendesk Automation, go to Integrations (under your settings in Insights) and add a Zendesk connection. Learn more about connecting to Zendesk

When you’re done, return to Zendesk Automation in GetFeedback Direct to complete the following steps:

Complete Zendesk Details

Build your automation in the Live version of your survey. When you publish your survey, any Draft settings will be erased and can’t be recovered. Your Draft settings won't be published to the Live email.

You’ll need to set both a draft connection (for your draft survey) and a live connection (for your live survey) before you can proceed. If you’d like, you can use the same Zendesk connection for both. To set your connections, go to your survey and select Settings.

Once this is done, return to Zendesk Automation and confirm that the connections selected for your draft and live automations are the ones you want to use. In the dropdown Object that triggers your survey, select Ticket.

Add Zendesk Placeholders

Placeholders pull in data from Zendesk, such as agent name (assignee) or ticket type.

Add placeholders from Zendesk to help you:

analyze response data with custom filtered views (such as creating dashboards per agent)
personalize email content
trigger follow-up actions and notifications inside GetFeedback

Complete Email Details

To complete your email template, add the following details:

Recipient name. Select Requester Name or Requester First Name.
Recipient email. Select Requester Email.
Subject. Enter a subject line for your email.
- After you add Zendesk placeholders, selecting this field will reveal a Personalize option to help you add specific placeholders, such as Requester First Name or Title.
Call to action. Select the survey question you want to embed in the email. We recommend using Question 1.
Sender name. Add a name to appear in the “From” section of your email, such as “John Smith” or “Acme Support Team.”
Choose your Call to action. Embed a button or embed a survey question directly in your email.
- If you choose a survey question, we recommend using the first question. If you use a later question, the survey still opens in the browser on the first question.
Enter an email Subject line that’s clear and concise.
Enter your Sender name. This is the name that displays in the From field on the email.
Select your Sender email. This includes two parts:
- Your company, brand, or account name. This should be anything that’s easily recognizable to your customers, such as the name of your company or “support.” Learn more about complying with spam policies
- Your email domain. You can select one of our default domains or your own custom domain.
  - If you use the default address, the reply-to address will be your GetFeedback login email, and people may be able to see and reply to your personal address.
  - If you use a custom email domain, you can use the Sender email as the reply-to address. Select your custom domain, then check the box to set your custom email address as the reply-to address. Learn how to request a custom domain

Don't use accented characters (such as é or á) in the account name. Special characters will cause the email to fail.
Don’t add the email domain to the account name (such as @getfeedback.com). You’ll select the domain after entering a name. If you add the domain to the name, your email will fail.

Allow recipients to access the survey for. Set how long you’d like the recipient to be able to view and take the survey.
- To make sure mappings are successful, choose a time frame that’s shorter than the time it takes your Zendesk tickets to change from solved to closed. By default, your Zendesk tickets close after 4 days. You can change this to up to 28 days in Zendesk Admin Center.

Add Email Content

You can further personalize your email template by adding optional content:

Add a logo. Upload an image to appear at the top of your email.
Add an optional greeting. Personalize your greeting with placeholders, such as the recipient’s first name.
Add an optional message. Personalize your opening message with placeholders, such as the ID of the Zendesk ticket.
Add an optional footer message and links. Enter custom footer text and links, such as to your privacy policy or terms of use.

Select Save and continue. Now, you’ll need to finish the setup in Zendesk.

Finish Your Setup in Zendesk

In your Zendesk account, set up your webhook and create an automation or trigger to send your surveys. You’ll need the endpoint URL and JSON provided when you set up your email in GetFeedback.

Triggers fire immediately after conditions are met, and automations use a delay. You can use either a trigger or automation to send your survey.

Create a Zendesk webhook. Ask your admin to create a webhook in Zendesk using the endpoint URL provided. This webhook talks to GetFeedback, telling GetFeedback when it’s time to send your survey.
- Make sure to change the request method to POST.
- Leave the request format as JSON.
- For authentication, select None. When Zendesk sends data back to our webhook, it includes a unique identifier for your survey. No additional authentication is needed.
- Skip the option to test the connection.
- Select Create at the bottom.
- Select Complete Setup.
- Select Leave without connecting. The connection will be established in Step 2.
Create a Zendesk trigger or automation.Copy the JSON and share it with your admin so they can connect your active webhook to a support trigger or automation. The trigger or automation monitors for changes to your Zendesk tickets. When certain conditions are met, it notifies the webhook, which alerts GetFeedback that it’s time to send your survey. Both triggers and automations serve the same purpose, but automations introduce a delay.

For triggers:

Under Meet ALL of the following conditions, select Add condition. Then select Status, Changed to, and Solved from the dropdowns.
Add a second condition of the same type by selecting Status, Less than, and Closed from the dropdowns.
If you’d like, you can add more conditions to only send surveys to certain types of customers or tickets.
Under Actions, select Add action. Then select Notify active webhook, as well as the webhook that you created in Step 1.
In the JSON body, paste the JSON you copied from GetFeedback.

For automations:

Under Meet all of the following conditions, add a condition by selecting Ticket: Status, Less than, and Closed from the dropdowns.
Select + and add a second condition by selecting Ticket: Hours since solved, Is, and 24 (or your preferred delay, in hours).
If you’d like, you can add more conditions to only send surveys to certain types of customers or tickets.
Under Perform these actions, select Notifications: Notify active webhook. Then select the webhook that you created in Step 1.
In the JSON body, paste the JSON you copied from GetFeedback.

Troubleshooting Emails Not Sending

If you set up your automation but your survey isn’t being sent, you may need to change your settings in GetFeedback or Zendesk. There are a few things you can do to understand the problem:

Check your email in GetFeedback.
1. In Zendesk Automation, make sure you have a placeholder for Recipient name and Recipient email. If these placeholders are missing, GetFeedback may not be able to find the person to send the survey to.
2. If your email is set up correctly, you may need to check your automation and webhook in Zendesk.
If you created an automation in Zendesk to send your survey, check the automation criteria in Zendesk.
1. Automations run once every hour. If it has been less than an hour since the conditions were met, you may need to wait for the automation to fire.
2. On the Automations page, check the Usage column to see how many times your automation has run. If the number is 0, you may need to fix your automation to make it run.
3. Open your automation and select Preview match for the conditions above. If the conditions don’t match any tickets, they may be too strict. Try adjusting the conditions to make sure your conditions match the tickets you want.
If your automation is working, check the webhook in Zendesk.
1. Go to your webhook’s Activity log and check the Response Status. If the status is Failed, you may need to adjust your webhook.

If everything is set up correctly but surveys still aren’t being sent, contact us.

Sharing and Transferring Surveys

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