Adding cooldown periods to surveys sent via Zendesk

You can add a cooldown period to your survey invitations by using a combination of automations and triggers.

Note: Before following the steps below, make sure you have created a survey and have added the automations in Zendesk as described in this article.

Adding a custom field in Zendesk

First, add a custom user field to Zendesk, as follows:

  • Question type Drop-down list.
  • Field title = "Send survey?"
  • Add two drop-down options: "Yes" and "No".
  • The corresponding tags are also "yes" and "no". If you are already using these tags, you can change these to anything you like. Remember that some conditions or actions are based on these tags so make sure to use the correct tags.

Adding new automation

This automation will make sure that the Send survey? field is set back to "Yes" after the cooldown period. That way, a new survey invitation can be sent when the requester contacts your support team again. And the ticket can finally be closed as this will be the final action to take on it.

  1. Go to the Admin section in Zendesk and click Automations.
  2. Click Add automation.
  3. Provide a meaningful title (e.g., "Change "send survey?" to "yes" after 28 days and close ticket").
  4. Add the following Conditions.
    • Ticket: Tags contains at least one of the following: csr — This tag was added by the "Send survey 24 hrs after ticket is solved" automation. You want to be sure that only those tickets are affected.
    • Ticket: Hours since solved (calendar) greater than 672 — This adds a cooldown period of 4 weeks (672 hours equal 28 days). If you want to send a new survey after 2 weeks (14 days) instead of 4 you put 336 hours (14 days x 24hrs).
    • Ticket: Status is Solved — One of the actions in this automation will be to add a tag 'csr' (see below). This is to make sure you only send the survey invitation once.
    • Requester: Send survey? is No — Only when this value is "No" should it change back to "Yes".
  5. Add the following Actions.
    • Requester: Send survey? is Yes — You need to set it back to "Yes" so that a new survey invitation can be sent next time this person contacts your support team.
    • Ticket: Status is Closed — As the status was still "Solved", you can now change it to "Closed".
  6. Click Create automation.

Adding a new trigger

This trigger will recognize when a survey is not sen so that you can recognize these tickets and close them faster.

  1. Go to the Admin section in Zendesk and click Triggers.
  2. Click Add trigger.
  3. Provide a meaningful title (e.g., "Add tag "no_csr" when no survey sent").
  4. Meet all of the following conditions:
    • Ticket: Status changed to solved — This trigger should fire as soon as a ticket is set to "Solved".
    • Requester:send survey? is No — The tag 'no_csr' should only be added if no survey is sent to the requester this time.
    • Ticket: Tags contains none of the following — no_csr, csr: "no_csr" is the tag this trigger will add, you only want to add this tag if it's not already there. The tag "csr" is added when a survey is sent. You don't want to add a "no_csr" tag if a survey was actually sent!
  5. Perform these actions:
    • Ticket: Add tags — no_csr: you'll be able to recognize these tickets and create separate rules for them (as we'll be doing in this article as well).
  6. Click Create trigger.

Editing existing automations

"Send survey 24 hrs after ticket is solved"

You need to add a few additional conditions and actions so that the survey is no longer sent for each ticket that is set to "Solved".

  1. Go to the Admin section in Zendesk and click Automations.
  2. Click Edit next to the "Send survey 24 hrs after ticket is solved" automation.
  3. Add no_csr to the condition "Ticket: Tags contains none of the following:"
  4. Add a new condition: Requester: Send survey? is not No. — The survey will only be sent if that field is either empty or "yes". (it will be empty if a user contacts you for the very first time)
  5. Add another Action: Requester: Send survey? equals No. This way, the customer requester field will be set to "No" as soon as the survey invitation is sent.

Close ticket 24 hours after it's set to "Solved"

Automations will only fire for tickets that are less than "Closed". That's why you'll need to tweak this automation a bit.

  1. Go to the Admin section in Zendesk and click Automations.
  2. Click Edit next to the automation that closes your tickets.
  3. Meet all of the following conditions:
    • Ticket: Status is Solved — The tickets should be solved before closing them.
    • Ticket: Hours since solved (calender) greater than xx — Replace the 'xx' by he number of hours you wish to wait before closing tickets for which no survey invitation was sent. You can keep the same time as the original "close tickets" automation, use the same time-frame as in the cool-down automation or use an even different period of time.
    • Ticket: tags contains at least one of the following: no_csr, no — As these tags indicate that no survey was sent you can simply close the ticket.
  4. Perform these actions
    • Ticket: Status is Closed — All you want to do is close the ticket so this will be the only action.
  5. Click Submit.