Provide best-in-class customer support with Zendesk and Klaviyo SMS

Soon to be a distant memory will be the days of calling a support line, chatting with a bot, or scouring a website for a place to send your question via email. As an alternative, businesses are providing a better customer service experience by offering 1:1 support with SMS.

The businesses adopting SMS as a customer support channel are doing so for a few key reasons:

1. SMS is convenient and preferred by customers. We already know customers are on their phones, so make it easy for them and chat via text!
2. SMS is fast. Faster response times from customers means resolving tickets faster. Downstream impact? Higher NPS and CSAT for you.
3. SMS can drive more sales. Convert more window shoppers by answering FAQs or addressing prospect concerns through text. Build customer confidence before they make a purchase.

The same Zendesk integration you love, now syncing SMS conversations

Prior to this latest update, the Klaviyo x Zendesk integration has been only for email support. With our newly enhanced integration, businesses using Klaviyo and Zendesk can now manage customer support workflows for both email and SMS all from within Zendesk, improving workflow efficiency without the need for support teams to switch between platforms.

Enabling the integration takes just a few clicks and you’ll immediately start to see ticket events and statuses sync to profiles within Klaviyo. You can then begin to use Zendesk data to build smarter, better relationships with customers.

How it works

After the SMS integration is set up, Klaviyo automatically creates a ticket in Zendesk whenever both of the following are true:

1. A consented SMS subscriber texts a phone number associated with your account.
2. The text message does not contain a keyword (i.e., one of the subscribe words listed in your SMS Settings page in Klaviyo). The two exceptions to this are HELP and INFO, which will both create a ticket.

Any replies in the ticket from a Zendesk agent will send an SMS message to the customer. Replies from Zendesk are sent via a phone number associated with your Klaviyo account; this sending number will be the one to which the inbound message was sent. All of this will allow your team to respond to email, chat, and text seamlessly from within Zendesk, improving response times and customer satisfaction.

Klaviyo tracks two Zendesk metrics: Opened Ticket and Resolved Ticket. The metrics will appear on an individual’s profile and can be used in segments and flows. Within each tracked event includes the subscriber information, description of the ticket, tags for incident type, ticket status, and more. This information can be used to identify common complaints or spikes incidents, as well as excluding customers with open tickets from receiving marketing messages.

When to use it

75% of shoppers today expect customer support to be faster. With greater expectations, businesses are using the speed and intimacy of texting to keep pace.

For common inquiries like returns, exchanges, or shipment tracking, SMS is typically a faster and more preferred method of communication.

When you connect Klaviyo and Zendesk for SMS, your customers will no longer have to periodically check their email to get help, instead they’ll be contacted directly and can text back from their mobile device as soon as they get a response, no matter where they are.

Be proactive by using SMS to initiate conversations and drive more sales

72% of shoppers say they are more likely to purchase online if they could ask product related questions in real-time. By inviting subscribers to ask questions you can help build customer confidence before they make a purchase.

The easiest way to encourage more conversation is by asking subscribers if they have any questions via Klaviyo flows. Here are a few flows that can benefit by offering proactive assistance:

• SMS Welcome Series – if after a handful of days a new SMS subscriber still hasn’t made a purchase, provide help from an expert to find the perfect product for them.
• Browse or Cart Abandonment – let potential customers know they can reply with any questions about shipping or sizing and your team will make sure their order goes smoothly.
• Post-Purchase Flows – often new customers or with certain products, purchasers can benefit from a little extra guidance to obtain the best results. Easily set FAQ quick responses or allow customers to reply back with their questions for an expert to respond.

Exclude customers waiting for help from marketing messages

One of the powerful ways you can use the Zendesk ticket information syncing directly to Klaviyo to create segments of customers who have an open ticket that has yet to be resolved. Now that these profiles are identified, you can exclude the segment from certain flows and campaigns within Klaviyo to avoid potentially frustrating the customer even further. A great place to start is excluding them from flows like upsell, cross-sell, review requests, as well as promotional campaigns.

Pinpoint and address problem areas

Within each Zendesk Open Ticket event syncing to Klaviyo, you have access to more detailed information including the ticket reason or incident type. This is helpful if you’re noticing a spike in customer support tickets and aren’t sure why. From within Klaviyo, you can filter the tickets by the customer issue and quickly view the most common incidents being reported.

Being able to view the total number of tickets reported by incident will help you address the most common issues, but doesn’t do much for the customers already experiencing it. Thankfully, we have the same ticket information available to us when creating segments in Klaviyo too. By identifying customers experiencing the same issue, you can send them updates, an apology, and/or a discount for future purchases via email or SMS.

Ready to streamline your support efforts? Enable the Klaviyo-Zendesk integration today!

For more information on the Klaviyo-Zendesk integration, visit our help article here.