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

On this put up, we’re going to learn to implement buyer assist capabilities utilizing a minimal code method and counting on third occasion companies. There are a number of conditions wherein you would possibly have to implement some buyer assist capabilities. Possibly you might be growing your personal product, or possibly you might be working for an organization that should enhance their operations.

With the arrival of COVID-19, e-commerce has turn into a serious concern for many companies. Having a great buyer assist technique in place is a should as of late. 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 potential. Because of this, we’re going to actually on third occasion companies and use a minimal code method. This enables us to dramatically scale back the time to market and improvement price. Operational price can 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 cannot doc how to do that as a result of Zendesk may be very intuitive and it has excellent documentation.

After creating the account, you may 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 handle ought to be assist@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 kind and the net chat options:

When you go to the settings it is possible for you to to seek out the set up information:

All that you must 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 have now enabled the contact kind widget which is displayed when there are not any buyer assist brokers on-line:

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

A bit of icon might be then displayed on the underside proper of your webpage. When a consumer clicks on the icon, the contact kind or the reside chat kind might 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 at the moment are able to handle requests that originated on our web site.

• Electronic mail: Managing e-mail requests could be achieved by enabling e-mail forwarding from one in all your organization e-mail addresses to your Zendesk e-mail handle.

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

• Cellphone calls. Zendesk additionally means that you can handle cellphone calls as buyer requests tickets. You may be taught extra utilizing the Zendesk documentation.

Typically, the default Zendesk implementation could be sufficient to get began. Nonetheless, in my case, I wanted an extra customized contact kind:

I wanted this way to be extremely seen and the underside proper “assist” button didn’t have sufficient visibility for me. The webform was applied utilizing React and Formik.

I needed to ship the request that originated utilizing this way to Zendesk. The simplest answer could be to ship an e-mail to the Zendesk assist e-mail handle. 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 handle. I needed to implement this with as little code as potential 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 want to handle the permissions so our e-mail server permits us to ship an e-mail. This wasn’t an enormous job but it surely required me to avoid wasting 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 that you may 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 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 remodel it into JSON. We will then entry the properties within the request physique as follows json(triggerBody()).firm.

We will then save every 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 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 thing labored it’s best to now have a brand new ticket in your Zendesk buyer assist dashboard:

The operational price of operating this logic app is nearly zero and we will get began with Zendesk for simply $60 a 12 months. We will now ship an expert buyer assist expertise on a funds and in only a few hours!

As we will see Azure Logic apps can assist us to resolve real-business wants with nearly no code. This enables us to maneuver quicker and adapt quicker in a time of unprecedented uncertainty.