Zendesk Agent Scripting App – Version 12

May 24, 2018 | Categories: Call Centers, Product Updates, Zendesk, Zingtree News | by Bill Zing

If you’re a Zendesk user in a Contact Center environment,  you’ll want to be using our Zendesk Agent Scripting app. This makes it easy to guide, train and onboard agents and is a huge productivity booster for everyone.

Contents of this Article

Overview: Sidebar and Popover views
Pause and Resume
Benefits of the Zendesk Agent Scripting App
New Features in Version 12
Demo Video
Getting Started
Installing the Agent Scripting App into Zendesk
Configuring the App
Enabling Automatic Script Selection
How to Configure to Update Ticket Fields
Using Zingtree Data Entry Fields to Update Tickets
Using Zingtree’s Zendesk CSS Theme
Try It with Example Data

Version 12 gives you the option to show your script directly in the right-hand panel when viewing a ticket, like this:

 

Or you can use less sidebar space, and make it appear as a button in the right-hand panel:

Click Open Script, and you’ll see your decision tree in a larger pop-over like this:

 

Pause and Resume

This happens automatically: If another agent picks up a ticket, they return to the last viewed node, and can see each step taken previously by opening the History.

 

Benefits of the Zendesk Agent Scripting App

  • Standardization: Show a guided path for each ticket, so that Agents follow the proper operating policies or troubleshooting procedures.
  • Pause and Resume: If a ticket is transferred, the supervisor or new agent is taken to the last place in the script, and can see the history of the previous steps taken.
  • Automatic Script Selection: The Agent Scripting App can choose a script based on the Zendesk brand, Zendesk ticket tags, or the value of a custom field.
  • Agent Feedback: Agents can send feedback directly to the authors of the decision trees with a single button click. Feedback is delivered to each author’s email, and includes the tree ID and node number where the feedback was sent from.
  • Zendesk Ticket Data in your Scripts: Values in any custom field, the agent name, customer info, as well as Zendesk ticket tags and user tags, are transferred into your script so you can display them, or use these variables to branch via Logic Nodes.
  • Automatic Ticket Updating: Tags and custom fields in the ticket can be updated from actions in the script – either via buttons clicked in the script, or from data entry collected.

New Features in Version 12

If  you’re using version 11 of the Zendesk Agent Scripting app, you may want to upgrade to take advantages of these new benefits:

  • Option to choose between Sidebar and Popover views
  • New customer information data variables sent from Zendesk: requester_name and requester_email
  • New Zendesk Theme to match Zendesk fonts and styling. This gives you a little more real estate for your content, especially in side-panel mode.

If you’re upgrading from version 10, these features are also new:

  • Toggle to share Zendesk data with Zingtree: Some customers don’t want ticket data shared with Zingtree. There’s now an option to disable data sharing.
  • Removed “Flash”: Some customers experienced a “flash” when moving from ticket to ticket in pop-over mode. This is now fixed with this update.

Demo Video

This two-minute video shows you how Agents interact with the Agent Scripting App:

Getting Started

Here are the basic steps to get up and running:

  1. Build an interactive decision tree script with Zingtree (or use one of our demos to start).
  2. Install the Agent Scripting App (version 12) into Zendesk.
  3. Configure the Agent Scripting app within Zendesk.
  4. If you want to have your decision tree scripts update your  Zendesk tickets, you’ll need to add variables and/or tags to your Zingtree tree to match your Zendesk setup.
  5. If you want to enable automatic script selection, you’ll need to add tags to your trees in Zingtree and configure the Zendesk Agent Scripting app properly.

Installing the Agent Scripting App into Zendesk

Download and configure the Zendesk Agent Scripting App version 12 like so:

  1. Download the Agent Scripting app Version 12 here.
  2. In Zendesk, click the Admin icon and go to Apps > Manage.

  3. Click Upload Private App.

  4. The Upload App page appears.

  5. Enter “Zingtree Agent Scripting” for the App Name.
  6. For App File, locate the file zingtree-agent-scripting.zip you downloaded in step 1.
  7. Click Upload, then confirm if necessary.

Configuring the App

Once you’ve uploaded the app, click App Configuration to see the configuration screen:

Here’s what each item does:

Tree ID: This is the default tree that appears when agents click “Open Script”.  (You should always have a default tree.)

Show Tree in Side Panel: Select this option if you want to display the entire tree in the right-hand sidebar when a ticket is open. Uncheck this to use pop-over mode instead.

Hide Integration Setup Info: When you are setting up Agent Scripting for the first time, you may need some information about your Zendesk setup to take advantage of automatically updating ticket fields. An “Integration Setup Info” link appears by default when you first install the app, and ticking this option hides it.

Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Brand: If this option is checked, the subdomain of the selected brand will be matched to a Zingtree tree tag.  Any matching tree or trees will appear.  For example, if the brand subdomain is xyz.zendesk.com, any trees tagged as xyz (using the Zingtree Settings tool) will appear.

Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Ticket Tags: If checked, the values in the Zendesk ticket tags will be matched with your Zingtree tree tags (set via the Zingtree Settings tool) to show one or more matching scripts.

Match Tree Tags to values in a Custom field: If you want to use a custom field value to show matching scripts, enter the Zendesk custom field identifier here. The field name can be found using the Integration Setup Info link that first appears in the sidebar when you install the app.

Display Half-Height: In Popover mode, the popup view will cover half the height of the screen. This has no effect when using Sidebar mode.

Don’t share Zendesk Custom Fields with Zingtree: By default, the app sends custom field data from each Zendesk ticket to Zingtree so you can do more powerful automatic branching via logic nodes, as well as echoing customer information (like their name, for example). If your organization has data privacy concerns, you can check this option to disable data sharing.

Zingtree API key: Each organization in Zingtree has an API key, which is used to match scripts. If you’re using one of the tag matching options, this is required. Your API key can be found at zingtree.com under Resources, API.

Data Sent from Zendesk to Zingtree

Unless you select the Don’t share Zendesk Custom Fields with Zingtree configuration option, Zendesk will send the following variables to your Zingtree decision tree:

  • requester_name – The customer’s full name.
  • requester_email – The email of the customer.
  • zendesk_tags – Any tags in the ticket.
  • agent_tags – Any tags from the agent.
  • agent – The Agent’s full name.
  • agent_first_name – The Agent’s first name.
  • Any custom fields

To display one of these values, just surround the variable name with # characters. So to show the Agent’s first name in your script, enter #agent_first_name# in the content area of any node in your decision tree.

Tip: Add #ALL DATA# to the content area of any node in your own tree to see all the variables sent to your script.

Enabling Automatic Script Selection

Automatic Script Selection works by matching tree tags you set in Zingtree to values in the Brand, Tags, or a custom field in a Zendesk ticket. For example, if a tree is tagged with “astrology”, and the ticket tags include “astrology”, then that tree appears. If several trees match, then they will all appear, and the agent can choose one.

To open a script based on Brand:

  • Add tags to your trees for each brand you want to match. So if one of your brands is xyz.zendesk.com, use xyz as a tree tag in Zingtree for all the trees you want to show.
  • Make sure Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Brand is checked in the App Configuration.

To open a script based upon Zendesk ticket tags:

  • Add tags to your trees for each tag you want to match. So if one of your ticket tag possibilities is “billing”, use billing as a tree tag in Zingtree for all the trees you want to show.
  • Make sure Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Ticket Tags is checked in the App Configuration.

To open a script based upon a custom field:

  • Add tags to your trees for each possible custom field value you want to match. So if one of your custom field values is “billing”, use billing as a tree tag in Zingtree for all the trees you want to show.
  • Make sure the proper Zendesk field variable name is entered for  Match Tree Tags to values in a Custom Field in the App Configuration.


Adding tags to a tree in Zingtree is done like this:

  1. Select a tree from My Trees.
  2. Go to the Settings tool.
  3. Click the Tags tab.
  4. Enter or select a tag from the Tree Tags field.

  5. Click Update All Settings.

How to Configure to Update Ticket Fields

As agents navigate through your trees, their use of the decision tree scripts you create can automatically update any custom fields in that ticket. This can be done in two ways:

  • By clicking a button in a script
  • By entering data into Zingtree data entry fields.

The key is to use variable names in your Zingtree that match the ones used in Zendesk.

First of all, determine the names of the variables in Zendesk by clicking the Integration Setup Info link in the Agent Scripting app. You’ll see something like this:

You’ll see the label for the field as it appears in Zendesk’s ticket form and the Zendesk variable next to it. In the above example, the Product custom field variable is custom_field_22899289. This is a drop-down selector, and the Zendesk values for the field options are astrology and insurance.

For the rest of this example, we’ll use custom_field_22899289 as the custom field variable.

To make a button selection update a custom field, you’ll set it up in your Zingtree as follows:

  1. Go to the Overview tool, and edit the node whose button selections will update the ticket.
  2. Click Edit Buttons (or Add Buttons if you don’t have any buttons defined). The button editor appears:

  3. Make sure Assign Button Click Variable is checked. This makes the other options appear.
  4. For the Button Click Variable, enter your custom field variable from Zendesk (custom_field_22899289 in the example).
  5. For each button option, enter the value of the variable under Score/Value. If this is a drop-down list in your Zendesk ticket, you’ll need to make sure the Score/Value entered matches one of the drop-down option values as shown in the Integration Setup Info.
  6. Click Save Changes when you’re done configuring buttons.

Bonus: Adding Tags via button clicks:

Button clicks can also add tags to a ticket. In the above example, clicking Something Else adds the tag other_tag to the ticket. Just include the tag name with two colons after the button text. So entering a button like Something Else::other_tag will add the tag other_tag to the ticket if this is clicked, but agents will only see Something Else as an option.

Using Zingtree Data Entry Fields to Update Tickets

Just like the above example, you can also use Zingtree for data entry and have that data automatically transferred to your ticket. The key is to use the same variable name in Zingtree as you used in Zendesk. The Integration Setup Info link in the sidebar will give you those Zendesk variable names.

Example: If you have a text entry field in Zingtree you want to update into the Zendesk field custom_field_1234, you would set up the variable name as follows:

Using Zingtree’s Zendesk CSS Theme

For the best user experience, we recommend using the Zendesk Apps theme in your trees that display inside of Zendesk. This will give you more room for your content (since the fonts are smaller), and also match the look and feel of the rest of the Zendesk experience.

Here’s how the theme looks in the two style options:

Buttons style:


 

 Panels style:


 

 

To include the Zendesk Agent Scripting App theme in your trees, do the following:

  1. In Zingtree, open the Settings tool for your tree.
  2. Click the Display tab.
  3. Choose either Buttons or Panels as the Default Display Style.
  4. Click Pick a Color Theme.
  5. Choose Zendesk Agent Scripting as the theme.
  6. Click Save Theme and Colors.
  7. Click Update Settings.

 

Try It with Example Data

You can use trees from the Zingtree Gallery to see how the Agent Scripting app works.

This Zendesk Agent Scripting Demo shows how to implement some of the basic integration features. You can install it into your own Zendesk configuration by entering tree ID 350546744 in the App Configuration.

For multiple trees, see how a tree can be selected by tag by doing the following:

  1. In the App Configuration, enter 6a103737e44e4aa6e1e4b6b0bcb46f83 as the API key. Also make sure Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Ticket Tags is checked.
  2. Try entering one or more of these tags into a ticket: “zingtree”, “astrology”, “pet_rock”.

 

Any questions? We’re always here to help. 

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Zapier Decision Tree Integrations with Zingtree

May 23, 2018 | Categories: API, CRM, Customization, How To, Integrations, Product Updates, Salesforce, Zingtree News | by Bill Zing

zingtree zapier integration

Our Zapier app makes it easy to send data collected during each Zingtree session to 1000+ applications supported by Zapier. In case you haven’t heard of it, Zapier is a tool that simplifies data exchange between various web applications. We’re big fans.

Here are some cool things you can do with Zingtree and Zapier:

  • Send data collected in a Zingtree session to Salesforce, Zoho, Highrise, or any other CRM.
  • Add an email address entered into a tree into Mailchimp.
  • Send yourself an email or SMS message when a customer reaches a critical node in a tree.
  • Save new customer information in a Google Sheets row.
  • Create Trello cards from trees, and include customer notes and session data.
  • And tons more!

When using Zapier, you create “Zaps.” A Zap has a “trigger,” which is the source of the data, and an “action,” which is where the data gets sent. Most of our customers want to send data from Zingtree to another app, so we’ll demonstrate how this is done here.

Before starting, you may want to examine a demo tree from our Gallery that gathers data and sends it to Zapier, or copy it to your account.

How to Set up Zapier for Zingtree

The Zingtree Zapier app is currently invite-only. But if you’re reading this article, you’re invited!

  1. Create a free Zapier account at Zapier.com.
  2. Go here to accept an invitation to use the Zingtree app. The invitation appears:

    Accept the invite.
  3. You’ll be prompted to make a new Zap:
    Click Make a new Zap.
  4. You’ll be asked to choose a Trigger App, which is the source of the data exchange.
    Search for Zingtree, and select Zingtree (Beta).
  5. You’ll be asked to choose a single trigger.
    Click Save + Continue.
  6. Next, you’ll need to connect your Zingtree account and a tree to Zapier.
    Click Connect a New Account.
  7. You’ll be asked for your Zingtree API Key, which you can find here. Also, enter the Tree ID that will be sending data to Zapier.
    Click Continue when finished.
  8. Change the name of the account, then click Test.

    You should see “success.” Click Save + Continue.
  9. Next, Zapier will attempt to retrieve any variables or sample data from your tree. If this is a new tree, you may want to run through it once and gather some data.
    Click Fetch & Continue.
  10. You’ll see some of the stock data that Zingtree always provides, as well as any custom data for your tree. Again, if you don’t see all the data you expect, do a test run through your tree, and enter some data at least once. This will make the rest of the process easier.
    Click Continue.

Set up the Action App – Email Example

So now you’re done with the Zingtree part. Congratulations! Next, you need to set up an Action App, which will receive data from Zingtree. Let’s set up email delivery as an action, as follows:

  1. Search for email, and choose Email by Zapier as an action app.
    Select Email by Zapier.
  2. This app has just one action.
    Click Save + Continue.
  3. Fill in details for the outbound email. You can insert fields from Zingtree in the body of the email as well.Click Continue when the email is set up correctly.
  4. You’ll see  a preview of what to expect.
    Click Create & Continue to save the action and send a test email.
  5. You should see another “success” screen.
    Click Finish when the email appears as you like.
  6. Name your Zap Zingtree to Email, and turn it on!

Your Zapier Zap is all set.

Making Zingtree Send Data

The final step is to tell Zingtree when to send all the data collected in a session to Zapier. This can be triggered from one or more nodes, when they are seen by the end-user of your tree.

  1. From Overview, Edit Node, edit the node that you want to trigger sending data to Zapier.
  2. Go to Send Message to, and pick Zapier: Zingtree to Email. This is the new Zap you created.
  3. Click Save.
  4. Now try a test from Zingtree. Using Preview or the Publish tool, navigate your tree, and when you reach the node that triggers the send, you should see something in your inbox. IMPORTANT: Make sure to use https in your published Zingtree URL when using Zapier.

Once you get your first Zap done, it becomes easy and addictive to hook Zingtree to the other applications that your business depends upon. So keep going!

Have any questions? Contact us anytime!

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Amazon’s Annual Report – What Growing Business Can Learn From It

May 22, 2018 | Categories: Business | by Tiffany

Amazon recently released its Annual Report for the past fiscal year, effectively making piles and piles of useful data and findings available to the public in one convenient package. Along with obvious growth, there were also some marked difficulties during the year that made an impact on the company’s current and future operations.

As Zingtree continues to grow, we’re always looking out for the best ways to optimize what we’re doing – often using our own decision tree toolkit. And, while our company may not be raking in billions of dollars like Amazon (yet), their key takeaways are something that any business can (and should) learn from.

Amazon Risk Factors and Obstacles in 2018

1. Channel expansion and high-growth pains.

Scaling and diversifying can present issues of complexity in a business’ operations. According to the report, “This expansion increases the complexity of our business and places a significant strain on our management, personnel, operations, systems, technical performance, financial resources, and internal financial control and reporting functions.”

2. The risks of international operations.

Expanding into new international markets is an exciting step, especially when revenue trends start pointing in the right direction. However, factors such as business licensing, regulations on eCommerce, cultural barriers, currency, and access to the internet can cause hurdles and risks during growth.

3. Optimization of data & fulfillment centers.

Properly housing and protecting data is a hot topic for good reason. As more data is being collected, its storage and privacy are more important (and more threatened) than ever. According to the report, “If we do not adequately predict customer demand or otherwise optimize and operate our fulfillment network and data centers successfully, it could result in excess or insufficient fulfillment or data center capacity, or result in increased costs, impairment charges, or both, or harm our business in other ways.”

4. Seasonality and holiday strain.

Certain seasons always see more booming business than others, and it’s not just Amazon that feels it – in the United States especially, that season just so happens to be around the year-end holidays. During this time, demand is up, up, up, along with the amount of shipping, site traffic, and extra customer service and support staff that’s often needed. Planning well ahead to better forecast issues around the holidays is the best way to tackle this.

5. Rapidly evolving business model.

Growth is always a great thing, but growing too rapidly comes with its own set of challenges that even Amazon has faced recently. The need for increased and more efficient technology, maintaining and growing stock value, and improving the way customers discover and research products, are all huge factors to keep in mind during growth.

6. Government regulation.

Legislation has its hand to play in how businesses operate, and eCommerce companies like Amazon in particular need to take consideration in every facet of their organization. This includes making sure you’re following the rules when it comes to data protection (i.e. GDPR), energy consumption, taxation, and online payments – all necessary regulations to enforce.

Read the full Amazon Annual Report here.

Check out a great summary of the report on BigCommerce here.

As Zingtree continues to grow as a company and product, we’re looking forward to discovering new uses of our toolkit to streamline internal workflows, improve customer service strains, adhere to governmental regulations, enhance data collection, and optimize business processes. Interactive decision trees are an amazing, versatile tool that has allowed us to minimize growing pains while always providing customer support when it’s needed.

Take a look at our decision tree examples to see what amazing use-cases can help to improve your company during growth! Have any questions? Our team is here to help any time you need it.

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Mapping Out Lean Process Flows with Interactive Decision Trees

May 14, 2018 | Categories: Business, Use Cases | by Tiffany

Lean Process Flows

Adopting lean process flows for a business is all about simplification. No matter the area of focus, moving from step to step throughout a process in a frictionless and efficient way is essential for business operations and customer satisfaction – whether in customer support, manufacturing, inbound sales, etc.

A lean process is a smooth process, after all; one that requires getting rid of waste and only leaving the most mission-critical information in order to streamline each step. As big proponents for making things easy and streamlined, lean processes are a big part of how we run Zingtree efficiently and provide more value to our customers. We use our own interactive decision trees for improving lean process flows because they provide a robust, yet straightforward way to build and run through any type of process flow. For us, this means setting up streamlined systems for:

Implementing these lean process flows in various areas of our business have been helpful both internally and to our customers.

When you can identify and eliminate flow bottlenecks, you make the whole process easier. Imagine, for example, a construction crew working on a busy section of freeway, closing some key lanes. In this case, the process’ capacity (the number of people who can continue to drive on through) for successful interactions are blocked by equipment, workers, and a horde of other cars, keeping anxious drivers moving slowly through. By making a process flow lean and mean, you’re effectively opening those closed lanes back up, removing the equipment, cars and other complications, making way for a smooth ride.

Lean Goals to Live By

Pointing out flow issues when you’re dealing with traffic is simple, but it can be more difficult to identify those process flows in your business or place of work that can be improved on. While you’re thinking about all of the various processes that occur in your organization, here are some general goals and questions to ask yourself when choosing a process flow to make leaner:

1. Will it reduce cost?

2. Will it simplify the process?

3. Will it improve the quality of the process?

4. Will it make it easy to follow standard operating procedures?

These always help us to quickly go through a list and identify which processes can be improved on – if it’s not cheaper, simpler, higher-quality, and more intuitive, it’s not being made lean.

Mapping Process Flows with Decision Trees

Typical diagrams and hand-drawn or digital flowcharts simply can’t do as much as decision trees can when it comes to simplifying processes. While a traditional way to help wrap your head around where the bottlenecks COULD be, these systems are designed to only identify the issue, not solve it.

Decision trees for lean process flows are a live, functioning tool that’s designed to help you identify the issue AND be a platform to present that information; in other words, you can simultaneously build your process flow chart and customize it for immediate internal/external use. You can even gather data on if it’s all working up to standards and make optimizations along the way.

How a decision tree looks when you’re building with the Visual Designer.

Check out this article on how to create a lean process flow with a decision tree.

Decision Tree-Created Lean Process Flows in the Wild

Here are just a couple of examples of Zingtree customers that have created more lean process flows using decision trees:

Spokane ENT

A specialty medical practice in Washington, Spokane ENT says that decision trees for scheduling have enabled them to optimize scheduling, help schedulers intelligently pre-diagnose patients, and collect key medical information in a secure environment. This ultimately eliminates any unnecessary appointments from being scheduled, and speeds up the steps between picking up the phone and confirming the appointment.

Take a look at the Spokane ENT case study here.

Philip Morris

One of the largest organizations around the world, Philip Morris International utilizes decision trees to improve their system of procurement, a cost-saving lean process flow. With these interactive process flows in place, PMI allows its employees to be guided through complicated purchasing journeys without issue; a standardized approach that ensures every step is followed perfectly to reduce time, cost, and stress.

Take a look at the PMI process flow case study here.

 

Want to learn more about building lean process flows using interactive decision trees? Reach out to our team on our Feedback page, or get in touch by clicking on the chat box on our main site. 

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Zendesk Agent Scripting App – Version 11

May 3, 2018 | Categories: Call Centers, Zendesk | by Bill Zing

Update: Version 12 is now available. Learn more and install it from here.

If you’re a Zendesk user in a Contact Center environment,  you’ll want to be using our Zendesk Agent Scripting app. This makes it easy to guide, train and onboard agents and is a huge productivity booster for everyone. The Agent Scripting app appears as a button in the right-hand panel:

Click Open Script, and you’ll see your decision tree in a pop-over like this:

If another agent picks up the ticket, they return to the last viewed node, and can see each step taken previously by opening the History:

Benefits of the Zendesk Agent Scripting App

  • Standardization: Show a guided path for each ticket, so that Agents follow the proper operating policies or troubleshooting procedures.
  • Pause and Resume: If a ticket is transferred, the supervisor or new agent is taken to the last place in the script, and can see the history of the previous steps taken.
  • Automatic Script Selection: The Agent Scripting App can choose a script based on the Zendesk brand, Zendesk ticket tags, or the value of a custom field.
  • Agent Feedback: Agents can send feedback directly to the authors of the decision trees with a single button click. Feedback is delivered to each author’s email, and includes the tree ID and node number where the feedback was sent from.
  • Zendesk Ticket Data in your Scripts: Values in any custom field, as well as Zendesk ticket tags and user tags, are transferred into your script so you can echo them, or use these variables to branch via Logic Nodes.
  • Automatic Ticket Updating: Tags and custom fields in the ticket can be updated from actions in the script – either via buttons clicked in the script, or from data entry collected.

New Features in Version 11

If  you’re using a version 10 of the Zendesk Agent Scripting app, you may want to upgrade to take advantages of these new benefits:

  • Toggle to share Zendesk data with Zingtree: Some customers don’t want ticket data shared with Zingtree. There’s now an option to disable data sharing.
  • Removed “Flash”: Some customers experienced a “flash” when moving from ticket to ticket. This is now fixed with this update.

Demo Video

This two-minute video shows you how Agents interact with the Agent Scripting App:

Getting Started

Here are the basic steps to get up and running:

  1. Build an interactive decision tree script with Zingtree (or use one of our demos to start).
  2. Install the Agent Scripting App (version 10) into Zendesk.
  3. Configure the Agent Scripting app within Zendesk.
  4. If you want to have your decision tree scripts update your  Zendesk tickets, you’ll need to add variables and/or tags to your Zingtree tree to match your Zendesk setup.
  5. If you want to enable automatic script selection, you’ll need to add tags to your trees in Zingtree and configure the Zendesk Agent Scripting app properly.

Installing the Agent Scripting App into Zendesk

Download and configure the Zendesk Agent Scripting App version 10 like so:

  1. Download the Agent Scripting app here.
  2. In Zendesk, click the Admin icon and go to Apps > Manage.

  3. Click Upload Private App.

  4. The Upload App page appears.

  5. Enter “Zingtree Agent Scripting” for the App Name.
  6. For App File, locate the file zingtree-agent-scripting-v10.zip you downloaded in step 1.
  7. Click Upload, then confirm if necessary.

Configuring the App

Once you’ve uploaded the app, click App Configuration to see the configuration screen:

Here’s what each item does:

Tree ID: This is the default tree that appears when agents click “Open Script”.  (You should always have a default tree.)

Hide Integration Setup Info: When you are setting up Agent Scripting for the first time, you may need some information about your Zendesk setup to take advantage of automatically updating ticket fields. An “Integration Setup Info” link appears by default when you first install the app, and ticking this option hides it.

Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Brand: If this option is checked, the subdomain of the selected brand will be matched to a Zingtree tree tag.  Any matching tree or trees will appear.  For example, if the brand subdomain is xyz.zendesk.com, any trees tagged as xyz (using the Zingtree Settings tool) will appear.

Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Ticket Tags: If checked, the values in the Zendesk ticket tags will be matched with your Zingtree tree tags (set via the Zingtree Settings tool) to show one or more matching scripts.

Match Tree Tags to values in a Custom field: If you want to use a custom field value to show matching scripts, enter the Zendesk custom field identifier here. The field name can be found using the Integration Setup Info link that first appears in the sidebar when you install the app.

Don’t share Zendesk Custom Fields with Zingtree: By default, the app sends custom field data from each Zendesk ticket to Zingtree so you can do more powerful automatic branching via logic nodes, as well as echoing customer information (like their name, for example). If your organization has data privacy concerns, you can check this option to disable data sharing.

Zingtree API key: Each organization in Zingtree has an API key, which is used to match scripts. If you’re using one of the tag matching options, this is required. Your API key can be found at zingtree.com under Help, API.

Enabling Automatic Script Selection

Automatic Script Selection works by matching tree tags you set in Zingtree to values in the Brand, Tags, or a custom field in a Zendesk ticket. For example, if a tree is tagged with “astrology”, and the ticket tags include “astrology”, then that tree appears. If several trees match, then they will all appear, and the agent can choose one.

To open a script based on Brand:

  • Add tags to your trees for each brand you want to match. So if one of your brands is xyz.zendesk.com, use xyz as a tree tag in Zingtree for all the trees you want to show.
  • Make sure Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Brand is checked in the App Configuration.

To open a script based upon Zendesk ticket tags:

  • Add tags to your trees for each tag you want to match. So if one of your ticket tag possibilities is “billing”, use billing as a tree tag in Zingtree for all the trees you want to show.
  • Make sure Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Ticket Tags is checked in the App Configuration.

To open a script based upon a custom field:

  • Add tags to your trees for each possible custom field value you want to match. So if one of your custom field values is “billing”, use billing as a tree tag in Zingtree for all the trees you want to show.
  • Make sure the proper Zendesk field variable name is entered for  Match Tree Tags to values in a Custom Field is checked in the App Configuration.


Adding tags to a tree in Zingtree is done like this:

  1. Select a tree from My Trees.
  2. Go to the Settings tool.
  3. Click the Organize tab.
  4. Enter or select a tag from the Tree Tags field.

  5. Click Update Settings.

How to Configure to Update Ticket Fields

As agents navigate through your trees, their use of the decision tree scripts you create can automatically update any custom fields in that ticket. This can be done in two ways:

  • By clicking a button in a script
  • By entering data into Zingtree data entry fields.

The key is to use variable names in your Zingtree that match the ones used in Zendesk.

First of all, determine the names of the variables in Zendesk by clicking the Integration Setup Info link in the Agent Scripting app. You’ll see something like this:

You’ll see the label for the field as it appears in Zendesk’s ticket form and the Zendesk variable next to it. In the above example, the Product custom field variable is custom_field_22899289. This is a drop-down selector, and the Zendesk values for the field options are astrology and insurance.

For the rest of this example, we’ll use custom_field_22899289 as the custom field variable.

To make a button selection update a custom field, you’ll set it up in your Zingtree as follows:

  1. Go to the Overview tool, and edit the node whose button selections will update the ticket.
  2. Click Edit Buttons (or Add Buttons if you don’t have any buttons defined). The button editor appears:

  3. Make sure Assign Button Click Variable is checked. This makes the other options appear.
  4. For the Button Click Variable, enter your custom field variable from Zendesk (custom_field_22899289 in the example).
  5. For each button option, enter the value of the variable under Score/Value. If this is a drop-down list in your Zendesk ticket, you’ll need to make sure the Score/Value entered matches one of the drop-down option values as shown in the Integration Setup Info.
  6. Click Save Changes when you’re done configuring buttons.

Bonus: Adding Tags via button clicks:

Button clicks can also add tags to a ticket. In the above example, clicking Something Else adds the tag other_tag to the ticket. Just include the tag name with two colons after the button text. So entering a button like Something Else::other_tag will add the tag other_tag to the ticket if this is clicked, but agents will only see Something Else as an option.

Using Zingtree Data Entry Fields to Update Tickets

Just like the above example, you can also use Zingtree for data entry and have that data automatically transferred to your ticket. The key is to use the same variable name in Zingtree as you used in Zendesk. The Integration Setup Info link in the sidebar will give you those Zendesk variable names.

Example: If you have a text entry field in Zingtree you want to update into the Zendesk field custom_field_1234, you would set up the variable name as follows:

Try It with Example Data

You can use trees from the Zingtree Gallery to see how the Agent Scripting app works.

For a single tree, enter ’14’ as the Tree ID. This will show an Astrology website troubleshooter example.

For multiple trees, see how a tree can be selected by tag by doing the following:

  1. Enter 6a103737e44e4aa6e1e4b6b0bcb46f83 as the API key.
  2. Make sure Match Tree Tags to Zendesk Ticket Tags is checked.
  3. Try entering one or more of these tags into a ticket: “zingtree”, “astrology”, “pet_rock”.

Any questions? We’re always here to help. 

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How Decision Trees for Insurance Can Simplify Policies & Procedures

April 25, 2018 | Categories: Business, Case Studies, Use Cases | by Bill Zing

decision trees for insurance

Having exceptional customer service isn’t reserved for typical B2C companies. In such a tumultuous and often scary industry (for consumers, at least), insurance companies and agents must also take a close look at how their customers are perceiving the assistance they are getting. Understanding is also a huge part of this customer experience. Why? Because insurance is complicated.

Improving Insurance Call with Decision Tree Scripts

For many insurance companies, automation is an angle that’s gaining traction for providing more streamlined and consistent customer service. Our partnership with EasyInsuranceScripts.com is a great example of how decision trees are being used to simplify.

Simply put, Ted Baker, the Founder of EasyInsuranceScripts.com, envisioned a more streamlined way to improve how independent insurance agents were being trained, guided through complicated conversations and policy selections, and processing claims. In an industry with so many small, yet important, details to be understood, these conversations and processes can become intimidating very quickly.

With our own knowledge and experience in simplifying the complex, we knew decision trees would be an ideal fit. Joining forces between Zingtree and EasyInsuranceScripts.com has allowed Ted’s services to offer the most comprehensive set of resources for independent insurance agents as a result.

“It’s amazing that I’m able to automate all of this for independent insurers,” says Ted. “For me, the ROI of decision trees is immediate. Introducing standardized decision tree scripts for insurance has allowed the insurers in my network to really thrive. With scripts for guiding conversations, interactive trees to train new agents, and the reporting that comes along with it, agents are able to provide a better customer experience that’s consistent and informative.“

Hard Numbers: Where the Data Fits In

While each insurance agent or organization may have varying experiences, industry knowledge is key in understanding how much this kind of customer service and care matters for insurance. McKinsey recently published an article on how focusing on improving customer experience has a direct effect on growth and profit in the insurance industry:

McKinsey’s global research across industries shows that improving the customer experience can do far more to drive profitable growth than raising advertising spending or lowering prices. Some executives may still see insurance as a low-engagement, disintermediated category, but analytics prove that in an industry where profits are highly concentrated, leading carriers are delivering customer experiences that inspire loyalty and attract new customers frustrated by their experiences with their current carriers.

Here’s a handy chart that helps to summarize how insurers must improve the customer journey:

 

A typical insurance carrier today delivers customer experiences via separate functions (marketing, distribution, underwriting, claims), using a website, sales call center, service department, and so on, most managed by different executives with different goals and metrics. This structure may have its purposes, but it overlooks the fact that from the customer perspective, the experience is often a single journey.

Real-World Example: Decision Tree for Insurance

Here’s a sample tree, derived from one of the Easy Insurance Scripts trees:

 

 

Have any questions? You can learn more about how to simplify insurance products and processes on our site or feel free to reach out directly.

This article was originally published on October 13, 2017.

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How to Pick the Best Live Chat Solution

April 19, 2018 | Categories: Customer Support, Customization, Intercom | by Debbie McCormick

We’re huge fans of live chat – at Zingtree, it has been a terrific way for us to get to know our customers and their needs. Not only is live chat proven to be the most sought-after way to contact a company, it also is a sound way to respond to site visitors and potential customers in a quicker and more personalized way. With many viable solutions out on the market, it can be difficult to narrow down your options to find the best possible one for your use case. For Zingtree, Intercom chat has been a gamechanger (you can read all about how we use Intercom and what it’s best features are here).

To nudge companies in the right direction, Practical eCommerce came up with a list of live chat features that should always be at the top of the list. Here’s just a sampling of their article that we thoroughly enjoyed:

Phone, email, and web support still rank as important when it comes to instilling trust. But the presence of live chat exceeds them all — even if shoppers don’t use it. Compared to other methods of communication, 92 percent of consumers prefer communicating via live chat. Roughly 80 percent prefer communicating via social networks.

Via MarTech

Here’s why live chat appeals to shoppers.

  • Quicker than any other method.
  • Allows visitors to multitask.
  • Instills trust.
  • Helps reduce the language barrier.
  • Can be implemented proactively.

The list that Practical eCommerce included is a great checklist to keep in mind when shopping around for a live chat support tool. From the complete list, we hand-picked some of the top live chat features you need to look out for:

  1. Canned responses
  2. Knowledge base or frequently-ask-questions integration
  3. File upload support
  4. Support and agent ratings
  5. Visitor tracking
  6. Chat tags and keywords
  7. Analytics integration

Self-service support is hugely popular among the majority of consumers – the ability to integrate with knowledge base customer support tools, like interactive decision trees, tutorials, and FAQs, is the perfect way to streamline support efforts and link online support systems together better. We use it ourselves to make sure that our support presence is simple, straightforward, and always helpful. Whenever customer data is collected through a decision tree form, this information can be stored and sent directly to the live chat window in order to fill in information gaps, as well as give you a better understanding of who you are talking to and what issues they are dealing with.

Keep reading on the Practical eCommerce blog for the rest of their recommended live chat implementation features, and get in touch with us to talk about how to get the most from your live chat and knowledge base integration.

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5 Essential Customer Support Tools That We Love

April 18, 2018 | Categories: Customer Support | by Bill Zing

customer support tools

As a B2B company, we’re no strangers to providing service and finding customer support tools that can improve how we identify issues, stay in contact, and share important information with those who need it within the company. As it’s well known in any industry out there, poor customer service experiences really do stay with the customer, and they can essentially erase all of the hard work and effort it took to get them in the door in the first place.

A recent survey reports that customer service is the number one priority for small business owners, and we at Zingtree are no exception. We’ve experimented over the years with the best ways to help combat support issues that can lead to even more damaging, long-term problems and promote better understanding, access, and customer experience.

Below are 5 incredible customer support tools that every support team can easily master, leading to more efficiency, streamlined communication, and happier customers.

1. Intercom

Perfect for: being more available to your customers 

Intercom has a complete suite of messaging-first products that all modern internet businesses can use to accelerate growth across the customer lifecycle — covering acquisition, engagement, and support. In essence, Intercom offers an all-in-one communication platform for live chat, email support, targeted messages, and more. We use Intercom for all of these great uses, which helps us stay connected with our customers as they are on our website, and set up automated emails for specific segmented customers to deliver tailored content.

Some of Intercom’s best features include:

  • An operator bot that can send qualified responses to customers in live chat when you’re away.
  • A flexible API so you can customize with integrations, keep everything in sync, and aggregate data more easily.

Here’s more information on how Intercom and Zingtree work together for even more customer support power. 

2. Basecamp

Perfect for: organizing internal teams and projects

Basecamp is a real-time project management system and team communication platform rolled up into one nice package. Used primarily for resource planning and long-term scheduling, it has awesome features for teams to keep track of project priorities. Whenever we get a new feature request, we log this straight into Basecamp, along with the contact info of the customer; and, as we do updates, we also use the platform to notify every customer who requested the feature. Not only does this process breed loyalty, but Basecamp makes it easy for us to log and organize all of our feature requests. We keep a continually evolving roadmap of what to do next, and it’s 99% customer driven.

Some of Basecamp’s best features include:

  • A full schedule display to see every to-do, timeline, and deadline in a calendar format.
  • The ability to forward important emails from your inbox straight to your account, where it can be discussed and specifications can be laid out.

3. Reply (by Buffer)

Perfect for: social media listening and support

Reply by Buffer is a fabulous tool that displays your tweets in what they refer to as “a real-time tweet inbox” that lets you streamline social media conversations in one centralized location, and then assign tasks and respond. While they boast the ability to connect social messages from Facebook and Instagram as well, we’ve primarily used it to keep things moving on our Twitter account – a real lifesaver when you’re working with someone on an issue or question.

Some of Reply’s best features include:

  • Automatically identifies any past conversations you’ve had with a user, so you never forget a detail.
  • GIF, image, and emoji support to keep things light and provide more context when needed.

4. Zingtree

Perfect for: building out the ideal knowledge base

Our very own Zingtree toolkit is also a powerful customer support tool to add to the list. Providing a fully-interactive environment for guiding customers through troubleshooters, FAQs, product support, process guides, and more in a simplified way, it’s perfect for support teams in companies of all sizes. There’s no technical know-how or coding required to get set up with using decision trees for support, and can be embedded directly into any website using just a small piece of HTML – even in emails! We use Zingtree internally to manage our knowledge base of information, as well as set up demo requests, and even provide end-to-end technical support.

Some of Zingtree’s best features include:

  • Robust integrations with email, live chat, CRM, and Helpdesk systems like Zendesk, Salesforce, and others.
  • Collecting data, feedback, and other key information from customers to streamline the support process.
  • Analytics and reports that can help track the performance of a decision tree, examine traffic patterns, point out demographic data, and more.

Here’s more information on how Zingtree integrates with other customer support tools like Zendesk, Salesforce, and more. 

5. Calendly

Perfect for: simple and straightforward scheduling 

Calendly is your source for ending the dreaded email tag loop, allowing you to share availability for meetings or appointments of any kind just with a quick link. Our business revolves around building relationships; we want to make sure each potential user knows how to extract the most out of Zingtree, and to get their implementation questions answered before they really start building decision trees. By automating the scheduling of meetings and demos, we save a lot of time in back-and-forth, get to know customers well, gather up great ideas by talking to people, as well as receive fewer support requests in the long run.

Calendly is integrated into our “Request a Demo” decision tree, which gathers information from our clients. In our calendar, we get a nice summary from the Zingtree session of what each prospective customer is looking for, which helps us set up the most relevant demo beforehand.

Some of Calendly’s best features include:

  • Integrates with most major calendar services, like Google Outlook, Office 365, and iCloud.
  • Detects which time zone a user/invitee is in and presents them with the correct one.

Here’s more information on how Calendly and Zingtree work together to create a more seamless user experience. 

 

Check out some of our other great posts around improving customer support:

 

Any questions on getting started with Zingtree customer support tools for your business? Get in touch with us!

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Decision Tree Creator: How to Make Great Interactive Knowledge Bases

April 12, 2018 | Categories: For Beginners, How To | by Debbie McCormick

Decision Tree Creator

For businesses in fields like eCommerce, technology, and insurance, building your own decision tree creator from scratch is costly and time-consuming. That’s why we created Zingtree, so non-technical people can build and maintain their own custom interactive decision trees to function as troubleshooters, call center scripts, product finders, interactive flowcharts, lead qualifiers, process flows, or other procedure-based knowledge. Managing this type of interactive content doesn’t require a developer or extensive technical know-how.

It’s helpful to understand what makes a well-designed decision tree. At Zingtree, we define a well-built decision tree as being:

  • Informative
  • Engaging
  • Visual
  • Intuitive
  • Useful
  • Concise

Zingtree is the leading decision tree creator tool, making the process of building, customizing, and deploying guided decision trees super simple. That being said, there are some general rules and best practices to keep in mind when using our decision tree creator.

1. Have a purpose, and define it well.

Every great project begins with a solid goal, and your decision tree is no exception. Using a decision tree creator without realizing the purpose of putting one together is an aimless task that can leave you confused and your decision tree over-complicated; it’s very important to lay out WHY you are creating the tree in the first place.

Are you trying to simplify an internal business process to promote best practices?

Are you revamping your whole customer support knowledge base system?

Do you need a platform for gathering key customer or client feedback?

These are all credible use cases that can require different specifics to be added into your decision tree, so it’s always good to figure this out first. For instance, an organization that is setting up an interactive knowledge base would need to consider how to link different decision trees together (using master trees), while one that is focusing on troubleshooting complex products would need to think about where screenshots, videos or diagrams come into play.

2. Outline your questions and answers.

Once you have your purpose defined, having a basic idea of the structure of your questions and answers is a natural next step that allows you to finesse the main flow of your decision tree. Just as you would do for an upcoming press release, how-to article, or internal memo, jotting down what you need to cover first will ensure that you don’t miss any important information in the final version.

A good tip for outlining here is to not forget about visuals. Any helpful media (including video, GIFs, photos, and illustrations) can be inserted into the Zingtree decision tree creation tools in order to convey more information in less space, so keep them in mind as you write up the copy for your tree. With our decision tree creator, you can also conveniently use Excel or Google Sheets to draft up what your questions and answers will be, then import them directly into Zingtree to clean up and launch.

3. Consider color psychology.

The world doesn’t exist in black and white, and neither should your interactive decision trees. What colors you choose to use for your final decision tree really does matter to the end-user – certain shades and tones can convey certain feelings and emotions, and evoke different responses from people. For example, studies have shown that some people looking at the color red saw an increased heart rate, which leads to more adrenaline being pumped into the bloodstream. On the other hand, cooler colors like blue and purple have shown to bring on feelings of calmness.

While we hope that you’ve done some testing to figure out what your current audience thinks and feels about your own branding and color schemes already, it’s still important to mention the science behind it all. Our decision tree creator comes fully-loaded with configurable Themes, the ability to upload custom CSS, and other customizations so that you can integrate brand elements, as well as influence the thought patterns of some of your end-users using the power of color.

4. Try not to over-complicate.

The purpose of an interactive decision tree in many use cases is to make things concise, easy, and straightforward. As such, it’s important that when using a decision tree creator you do your best to keep things simple. Drafting up perfect questions and answers in your outline is a great start for this, as you can use the time to cut down on copy and simplify the text as much as possible, without losing meaning or context. The decision tree creator tool provides several foolproof ways to help out so that you don’t over-complicate things:

  • If you have a lot of sub-processes, use a Master Tree to link to separate, discrete decision trees.
  • Shorter question and answers are easier for end-users to navigate, and they also make your reports more manageable.
  • Make use of the content area to explain things. This helps to make shorter questions and answers.
  • Add in icons, images, and other types of media to help point end-users in the right direction with ease.

5. Revisit and improve over time.

One huge factor in what makes a decision tree go from “usable” to “amazingly helpful” is the use of data and feedback to go back and make it every better. Our decision tree creator makes it easy to optimize your guided experiences over time, so you continually get the most from the platform. For instance, using Logic Nodes you can quickly set up A/B tests for experimenting with different messages, flowchart structures, and other offers to see which performs the best, and then optimize accordingly. Additionally, you can get set up to receive direct feedback from end-users on how useful your decision tree is, as well as always keep track of the activity patterns of your decision trees with in-depth reports.

When you follow some of our tried-and-true rules for how to best use a decision tree creator tool, you’ll be able to produce some incredibly powerful interactive decision trees which will delight your end-users. You can always take a look at our industry pages for Retail, Insurance, Customer Support, and more to find out just exactly how the Zingtree decision tree creator will work for you, or take a look at some real-live decision trees in the decision tree example Gallery.

Any questions along the way? We’re always here to help you make the most out of Zingtree for any use case. 

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