Your business is unique and so is your data. With custom objects, you can store your own data within Zendesk so agents can have the right context to resolve tickets, and your business can optimize based on your unique data.
A custom object can be anything. If you are a car rental company, it could be cars and rental contracts. If you are an e-commerce business, it could be your orders and returns. If you are a software company, it could be your assets and configurations. The possibilities are endless.
In this post, we will share common use cases for custom objects that you can unlock with features in the Early Access Program (EAP).
Order Management
In an e-commerce business, one of the most common reasons why customers reach out is to ask, “Where is my order?” In these scenarios, agents must scramble between multiple systems to get the status of the order, review its shipping details, and share this information with the customer.
With the new custom objects, you can bring in your order information, invoices, payments, shipping information, and more into Zendesk. You can also create workflows to initiate the returns process from Zendesk.
Once you bring in your order information into Zendesk and associate it with a ticket, you can use triggers to optimize your processes and proactively notify your customers. Some examples include:
- Process optimization: Let's say you have a custom object for “Orders,” which includes a “Status” field. When a customer reaches out about their order, and their order status is “Delayed” a trigger automatically raises the ticket's priority to “High” and assigns it to the Delayed Shipments group
- Approval workflows: Let’s say you capture your return authorization in a custom object called “RMA order” with a field called “Refund Amount”. When a customer requests a return, the “RMA order” record is created and associated with their ticket. If the “Refund Amount” in the “RMA Order” record is $100 or more, a trigger automatically routes the ticket to the Approval group.
Product Catalog and Configuration Management
Every company has an ever changing catalog of products or services, each with their own details. Storing your product catalog in custom objects makes it easy to associate individual products to a ticket, unblocking multiple use cases that drive better data-driven decision making. It also helps agents gather more information about the product without going to a separate window or training documentation. For example, you can use custom objects to associate customers to the products they purchased. That way, agents get a 360 degree view of the customer to tailor their experience. This can also be repeated for use cases like warranty management or returns processing – all within Zendesk.
Let’s look at another example. If you are a SaaS company like Zendesk, configurations, subscriptions and entitlements are critical for your agents to know while servicing your customers. With the new custom objects, you can associate customers with their subscriptions and configurations to know what entitlements each customer has.
Here is an example of how custom objects based triggers can proactively notify a user associated with the custom object/ticket who is not the requester:
- Proactive notification: A B2B customer submits a ticket with a list of serial #s to register their products. Once the serial numbers have been verified, a relationship between the products and the B2B customer is created. The ticket is updated with the successfully registered serial #s and an email notification is sent to the B2B customer’s account manager to inform them of the new products on their account and the customer receives an email notification with the list of successfully registered products.
Asset and Device management
In typical IT service management use cases, it is important for businesses to track their assets (software or hardware), assign them, and manage their lifecycle from acquisition to disposal. Storing assets and devices as custom objects enables your admins to track assets effectively. Plus, agents can quickly identify the assets that are assigned to a requester and make necessary adjustments. In the case of asset requests, this will also help you associate the ticket to the asset requested - thereby enabling better tracking and reporting.
Once you have this information in custom objects, you can create powerful workflows with the new triggers, including:
- Software approvals: An employee submits a ticket to gain access to a particular software. This software is recorded in Zendesk as a custom object, so when it is selected by an agent, a trigger automatically assigns the ticket to the software’s designated approver. Once the approver adds a license number to the ticket, a second trigger sets the ticket status to “Solved” and notifies the employee of the approved request along with the license number.
- Proactive, cross-functional notifications: An employee submits a ticket to request a new laptop. Similar to the previous example, custom objects are used to track laptops in Zendesk. Since laptops require a manager’s approval, a trigger is set up to email the employee’s manager to approve the request. Once approved, a second trigger reassigns the ticket to the IT team and notifies them. The IT team updates the ticket with the new device’s serial number, which activates a third trigger that sends the employee an email with the details of their new device and instructions for returning their old laptop.
Here is a demo video of a rudimentary Asset Management use case that I had built with the new custom objects.
Custom scenarios
We’ve also seen custom objects used in unique use cases, such as:
- Pet Management:If you are in the pet care industry, custom objects can store pet information, allowing you to capture customer data and simultaneously associate them with their pets.
- Property Management: If you are in the property management business, you can store your properties in custom objects.
- Employee experience: Our customers even use custom objects to capture employee data to streamline hiring and onboarding processes.
As we said, the possibilities are endless. If you have a question or want to discuss more about your unique use case, please post your question below.
