Implementing a low code buyer assist resolution powered by Zendesk and Azure Logic Apps

On this submit, we’re going to discover ways to implement buyer assist capabilities utilizing a minimal code strategy and counting on third get together companies. There are quite a lot of conditions wherein you may must implement some buyer assist capabilities. Possibly you’re creating your personal product, or possibly you’re working for an organization that should enhance their operations.

With the arrival of COVID-19, e-commerce has develop into a serious concern for many companies. Having buyer assist technique in place is a should nowadays. On-line shoppers demand options like on-line reside chat or multi-channel communication and anticipate 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 attainable. Because of this, we’re going to actually on third get together companies and use a minimal code strategy. This permits us to dramatically cut back the time to market and improvement 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 desires.

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 excellent documentation.

After creating the account, you possibly can go to the settings web page and go to the channels part to seek out out your assist e mail:

The format of this e mail deal with needs to be assist@yourcompany.zendesk.com. You will want to recollect this deal with as a result of we’re going to want it later.

We will then go to the widget part below the channels part to allow the contact type and the net chat options:

For those who go to the settings it is possible for you to to seek out the set up information:

All you could 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>

Now we have enabled the contact type widget which is displayed when there are not any buyer assist brokers on-line:

Now we have additionally enabled the reside chat widget which is displayed when buyer assist brokers are on-line:

A bit icon shall 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 shall be displayed.

Ideally, we need to have a single level to handle all our buyer request. The request could have originated in our web site, our e mail or social media:

• Internet: We are actually able to handle requests that originated on our web site.

• E mail: Managing e mail requests might be achieved by enabling e mail forwarding from one in every of your organization e mail addresses to your Zendesk e mail deal with.

• Social media: You may go to the channel settings in Zendesk to attach your social media accounts with Zendesk.

• Telephone calls. Zendesk additionally lets you handle telephone calls as buyer requests tickets. You may study extra utilizing the Zendesk documentation.

Generally, the default Zendesk implementation can be sufficient to get began. Nonetheless, in my case, I wanted an extra customized contact type:

I wanted this manner 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 manner to Zendesk. The simplest resolution can be to ship an e mail to the Zendesk assist e mail deal with. We have to implement an HTTP POST endpoint that takes the shape particulars as JSON and ship an e mail to the Zendesk assist e mail deal with. I needed to implement this with as little code as attainable and the very first thing that got here so my thoughts was to make use of an Azure perform.

Utilizing an Azure perform 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 e mail server permits us to ship an e mail. This wasn’t a large job nevertheless it required me to save lots of the code in a repository, deploy it, and many others. 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 may paste an instance of the physique of your request and the Logic App designer will robotically 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 can return an HTTP response:

We then want so as to add a parallel step to ship an e mail. In my case I exploit 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 remodel 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 sources ought to have been created:

We will then invoke the HTTP set off in our logic app by sending an HTTP request from the net app:

const response = await fetch(`INSERT_THE_TRIGGER_URL_HERE`, {
    methodology: "POST",
    physique: JSON.stringify(values),
});
const json = response.json();

You may 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 you must 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 will now ship knowledgeable buyer assist expertise on a funds and in just some hours!

As we will see Azure Logic apps may help us to unravel real-business wants with nearly no code. This permits us to maneuver sooner and adapt sooner in a time of unprecedented uncertainty.