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

On this submit, we’re going to learn to implement buyer help capabilities utilizing a minimal code method and counting on third get together companies. There are a whole lot of conditions during which you would possibly have to implement some buyer help capabilities. Perhaps you might be creating your individual product, or perhaps you might be working for a corporation that should enhance their operations.

With the arrival of COVID-19, e-commerce has turn out to be a serious concern for many companies. Having buyer help technique in place is a should lately. On-line customers demand options like on-line stay chat or multi-channel communication and count on excessive responsiveness from on-line companies.

The pandemic has generated unprecedented ranges of uncertainty for enterprise they usually want to have the ability to adapt within the shortest time doable. Because of this, we’re going to actually on third get together companies and use a minimal code method. This enables us to dramatically scale back the time to market and growth 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 wishes.

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 may be very intuitive and it has excellent documentation.

After creating the account, you’ll be able to go to the settings web page and go to the channels part to search out out your help e-mail:

The format of this e-mail tackle must be [email protected]. You will have to recollect this tackle as a result of we’re going to want it later.

We are able to then go to the widget part beneath the channels part to allow the contact type and the online chat options:

Should you go to the settings it is possible for you to to search out the set up information:

All you should 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 now have enabled the contact type widget which is displayed when there aren’t any buyer help brokers on-line:

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

A little 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 stay chat type shall be displayed.

Ideally, we need to have a single level to handle all our buyer request. The request might 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.

• E-mail: Managing e-mail requests could be achieved by enabling e-mail forwarding from considered one of your organization e-mail addresses to your Zendesk e-mail tackle.

• Social media: You’ll be able to go to the channel settings in Zendesk to attach your social media accounts with Zendesk.

• Telephone calls. Zendesk additionally lets you handle cellphone calls as buyer requests tickets. You’ll be able to be taught extra utilizing the Zendesk documentation.

Usually, the default Zendesk implementation could be sufficient to get began. Nevertheless, in my case, I wanted a further 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 wished to ship the request that originated utilizing this manner to Zendesk. The simplest answer could be to ship an e-mail to the Zendesk help e-mail tackle. We have to implement an HTTP POST endpoint that takes the shape particulars as JSON and ship an e-mail to the Zendesk help e-mail tackle. I wished to implement this with as little code as doable 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 want to handle the permissions so our e-mail server permits us to ship an e-mail. This wasn’t a large job but it surely 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 wished to discover a higher approach and that’s how I ended up utilizing Azure Logic Apps.

We are able to 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’ll be able to paste an instance of the physique of your request and the Logic App designer will routinely translate it into the request schema.

Once you save your logic, Azure will generate an URL which you could 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 accessible.

We have to extract the information from the unique HTTP request so as to add it to the e-mail contents. We are able to do that utilizing an expression:

We are able to use triggerBody() to entry the request physique and json(triggerBody()) to rework it into JSON. We are able to then entry the properties within the request physique as follows json(triggerBody()).firm.

We are able to then save every little thing and two assets ought to have been created:

We are able to then invoke the HTTP set off in our logic app by sending an HTTP request from the online app:

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

You’ll be able to then use the browser developer instruments to see if the request was profitable:

And eventually, 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 it is best to now have a brand new ticket in your Zendesk buyer help dashboard:

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

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