How to route tickets from at-risk customers in Zendesk

To route tickets from at-risk customers in Zendesk, install Heartwell, open a ticket from the account and click Flag organization at risk. Heartwell adds the heartwell_at_risk tag to the Zendesk organization. With user and organization tagging turned on, every new ticket from that organization carries the tag, so a trigger can send it to a group or raise its priority, and a view can list those tickets.

Steps

1. Turn on user and organization tagging. In Admin Center > People > Configuration > End users, set Tags on users and organizations to Enabled and save. Zendesk then adds an organization's tags to its tickets. See Zendesk's article on adding tags to users and organizations.
2. Check Heartwell's settings. Allow the at-risk flag must be on, and the agent must be in Who may take actions (agent for everyone, the default, or admin, custom role ids, group:<id>).
3. Flag the account. On a ticket, read the health score, renewal and recent CS notes. If the account is at risk, click Flag organization at risk and confirm.
4. Add a trigger. In Zendesk, create a trigger with a condition on the ticket tag heartwell_at_risk and the actions you want, such as assigning a group or setting priority.
5. Add a view. A view with the same tag condition lists open tickets from flagged accounts for a team lead or CSM.
6. Clear the flag with Clear at-risk flag in the same place once the account is out of danger.

What the flag changes

When to flag

The panel gives agents what they need to decide:

• Band and trend. At risk below 45% of the score's scale, Needs attention from 45% to just under 70%. A falling arrow matters even in Needs attention.
• Renewal. The countdown turns amber within 30 days and red once the date has passed.
• CS context. Recent notes and conversations, open tasks and projects, NPS and the traits you chose.

Flag when a ticket shows a problem the score doesn't know about yet, such as an outage the customer is angry about close to renewal.

Tell the CSM at the same time

Flagging changes routing in Zendesk. To make sure the CSM hears about it, use Add note to Vitally or Add note to Planhat on the same ticket: write a subject and the note, confirm, and Heartwell adds it to the account with the ticket link and the agent's name. The ticket gets an internal note and the heartwell_note tag. In Vitally, the note is credited to the agent when they're a Vitally user with the same email. Notes need a saved ticket.

If the result says Heartwell "may or may not have saved the note", refresh and check the account's notes before sending it again.

What it costs

Heartwell is $100 a month per Zendesk account on Team, for up to 12 agents and admins, or $9 per agent per month on Scale from 13 agents, after a 14-day free trial billed by Zendesk. The Heartwell documentation has the full action reference.