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How Zendesk Automations Boost Efficiency and Enhance Customer Experience

January 2, 2025

Managing customer support is a delicate balancing act: responding promptly to inquiries, maintaining accuracy, and delivering personalized experiences. Yet, repetitive tasks—such as ticket routing, follow-ups, and routine responses—often overwhelm even the most efficient teams, leading to reduced productivity and increased agent burnout.

The solution? Zendesk automations. By embracing automation, businesses can turn repetitive tasks into opportunities for strategic growth, enabling their teams to deliver impactful, high-value support.

ᐅ We also have a post about Zendesk trigger and automations, check it out!

Why Zendesk automations are essential

Zendesk automations allow businesses to go beyond simply managing support workflows—they enable transformation. Here’s why they are critical:

Free up agents for high-value work

Studies show that employees spend an average of 22% of their time on repetitive tasks, such as tagging tickets, responding to FAQs, and managing workflows. Automating these activities lets agents focus on strategic, customer-facing interactions that truly make a difference.

zendesk automations chart showing that 22% of tasks are repetitive tasks

Transform customer support from cost center to value driver with

Customer support is often viewed as an operational cost, but Zendesk automations flip this perception. By reducing manual effort, businesses can:

Save on labor costs.
Scale operations efficiently.
Achieve better resource allocation.

For instance:

Automating ticket assignments ensures customers are connected with the right agent instantly, reducing resolution times.
Pre-written templates for common questions save agents hours each week, boosting overall productivity.

Enhance customer experience

Automation improves internal workflows while creating smoother, faster, and more personalized customer experiences. Features like automated follow-ups, proactive notifications, and real-time ticket updates keep customers informed and satisfied throughout the support process.

Boost agent morale and retention

Repetitive tasks can lead to “boreout,” a state of disengagement caused by monotony. By automating tedious workflows, agents are empowered to tackle creative, high-value challenges—leading to greater job satisfaction, improved retention, and enhanced team performance.

Reduce errors for seamless support operations

Humans are prone to errors, especially when performing monotonous tasks. Mistakes in ticket tagging, routing, or responding to inquiries can create confusion, delays, and customer dissatisfaction.

Zendesk automations eliminate these issues by ensuring consistency and precision. For instance:

Accurate ticket categorization: Automatically tagging tickets based on keywords ensures they’re routed to the correct team without manual oversight.
Error-free communication: Automated template responses standardize messaging, reducing the chance of miscommunication.
Reliable updates: Automating ticket status changes ensures no ticket is left unresolved due to human error.

Key repetitive tasks to automate in Zendesk

Automation works best when applied to tasks that are repetitive, time-consuming, and prone to errors. Here are some of the most impactful processes to automate:

Ticket Tagging: Automate ticket categorization based on keywords or customer data, ensuring consistent and error-free tagging.
Ticket Assignment: Use predefined rules to route tickets to the appropriate agent or team, reducing response time and workload distribution issues.
Template and Automated Responses: Send instant acknowledgments, troubleshooting tips, or next-step updates without manual input.
Ticket Status Updates: Automatically update ticket statuses when specific conditions are met (e.g., marking a ticket as “solved” after sending a resolution).
Ticket Closure: Set rules to close inactive tickets automatically, keeping your queue clean and organized.

How to implement Zendesk automations

Implementing Zendesk automations involves understanding your workflows, identifying repetitive tasks, and leveraging Zendesk’s features and tools to streamline processes. Follow these steps to get started:

Step 1: Map out your workflows

Before setting up automations, analyze your current processes:

Identify repetitive tasks that consume agent time (e.g., tagging tickets, sending follow-ups).
Highlight pain points, such as delays caused by manual ticket routing or inconsistent responses.
Prioritize tasks that could benefit most from automation.

For example, if your team spends hours assigning tickets, automation can significantly reduce workload and improve efficiency.

Step 2: Use triggers and automations for workflow rules

Zendesk’s triggers and automations let you define “if-then” rules to execute actions automatically based on specific conditions. If you want to find out in detail about this, check “How to use Zendesk’s triggers and automations”.

Step 3: Streamline repetitive actions with macros

Macros in Zendesk let agents handle multi-step processes with a single click, ensuring consistency and saving time.

For example: An agent dealing with refund requests can click a macro that sends a standardized response, updates the ticket status to “processing,” and notifies the billing team.

Find out more about how to implement macros in your workflow.

Step 4: Enhance automation with third-party apps

Zendesk’s app marketplace provides tools to expand the functionality of its automations. Integrating third-party apps allows you to tackle more complex workflows.

Here are some Knots apps you can leverage:

Round Robin Ticket Assignment app: Automatically distributes tickets evenly among agents to prevent workload imbalances.
Merge Tickets app: Consolidates duplicate tickets into a single thread, reducing clutter and confusion.
OCR for PDF and Scanned Documents app: Extracts text from scanned documents to automate data entry, ideal for industries like healthcare or finance.

Step 5: Build custom integrations with the Zendesk API

For unique business requirements, Zendesk’s API enables you to design tailored solutions.

Here’s how to get started:

Explore the Zendesk Developer documentation to understand API capabilities.
Partner with your development team or use middleware like Studio by Knots to create integrations.
Examples of custom workflows:
- Sync ticket data with your CRM (e.g., Salesforce or HubSpot).
- Automate ticket creation from external platforms like Slack or email inboxes.

Step 6: Monitor, test, and optimize automations

Automation isn’t “set it and forget it.” Continuously monitor performance to ensure optimal outcomes:

Test regularly: Simulate scenarios to confirm triggers, macros, and apps are functioning correctly.
Gather feedback: Ask agents for input on automation improvements.
Iterate over time: Add new automations as your workflows evolve and new pain points arise.

automation and steps to monitor its success

Real-world results: from mundane to magical

Many businesses have seen transformative results by adopting Zendesk automations. Here are examples of what’s possible:

A SaaS company: By implementing Knots’ Round Robin Ticket Assignment app, the company automated ticket distribution among agents, ensuring balanced workloads and faster response times.
E-commerce retailer: Utilizing the Merge Tickets app from Knots, the retailer consolidated duplicate tickets, streamlining their support process and reducing agent workload.
Healthcare provider: Integrated Knots’ OCR for PDF and Scanned Documents app to extract text from scanned documents, automating data entry and improving accuracy in patient records.

You want to get to know more? Check out our post about the Best Zendesk Apps for 20205!

Start your automation journey with Knots

When it comes to automating repetitive tasks, Knots Zendesk apps and middleware are unparalleled. With seamless Zendesk integration, Knots enables businesses to simplify workflows and optimize support processes like never before.