How to export Zendesk data to Excel or Power BI: A complete guide

Let's be honest: your Zendesk account is packed with useful customer data, but getting it into a tool like Excel or Power BI can be a real headache. You know there are trends and key metrics hiding in your tickets, but the built-in dashboards just don't cut it. You're stuck with clunky manual exports, slow connectors, or the prospect of roping in developers for a custom API job.

In this guide, we'll break down the common ways to export Zendesk data to Excel or Power BI. We'll look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of each method, from Zendesk's own tools to more advanced options. We'll also talk about a different approach that might let you skip the export process altogether.

Why bother to export Zendesk data to Excel or Power BI?

Zendesk Explore has some decent reports right out of the box, but they can feel a bit limiting. When you pull your data into something more flexible like Power BI or Excel, you can really start digging in and find things that can genuinely improve your support operations.

Here are a few reasons why teams go through the trouble of moving their data:

• Build dashboards that actually make sense for you: You can get past the pre-built widgets and visualize the metrics that you really care about. Think ticket volume for a specific product line, agent performance during your busiest hours, or how a new bug is impacting your support queue.

• Mix support data with other business info: Support data on its own is useful, but it becomes way more powerful when you combine it with data from other departments. You could see how support interactions affect customer lifetime value from your CRM or connect ticket spikes to recent marketing campaigns.

• Get better at spotting trends: By analyzing the data more deeply, you can identify recurring problems, find gaps in your knowledge base, and get a better handle on forecasting support volume. It’s all about shifting from putting out fires to preventing them in the first place.

• Keep a secure backup: Regularly exporting your data means you have an independent copy on hand. This is great for peace of mind and can be a lifesaver for compliance, audits, or if something goes wrong.

Method 1: Using Zendesk's built-in export features

Your first instinct might be to use the export tools that are already inside Zendesk. It’s the most direct route, but it comes with some pretty big catches, especially around which plans can use it and how up-to-date the data is.

Exporting datasets from Zendesk Explore

If your company is on a Professional plan or higher, you can export entire datasets from the Explore module. This lets you grab the raw, unfiltered data from core areas like Tickets, SLAs, and Agent Updates.

You can do a one-time export for a set period (like the last 30 days) or schedule recurring exports to run automatically. You'll get a bunch of CSV files that you can then pull into Excel or Power BI.

What to watch out for:

• It's plan-dependent: This feature is only for subscribers on the Suite Professional, Enterprise, or similar legacy plans.

• Row limits can be an issue: While you can get past the 50,000-row limit you see on individual reports, dealing with the CSV files can still be a pain for accounts with tons of data.

• It’s a manual job: The data isn’t live. Every time you want to refresh your reports, you have to go in, download the new CSVs, and import them into your tool of choice.

Exporting individual reports and dashboard tabs

Need to grab the data from just one report or dashboard? You can export it directly in a few formats, including CSV, Excel, and PDF.

This works for a quick snapshot, but it’s not a great solution for building a proper dashboard. The Excel export is capped at 50,000 rows, and it won't keep any of your formatting or charts. It’s a manual process that gets old fast if you need to update your analysis more than once in a blue moon.

Method 2: Using the Zendesk API and direct connectors

If you're looking for something a bit more hands-off, the next step is usually connecting to Zendesk through its API or a dedicated connector in Power BI. These methods can create a live data pipeline, but they also bring their own set of technical headaches.

Using the Power BI Zendesk connector

Microsoft Power BI has a built-in connector for Zendesk. In theory, you just go to "Get Data," select Zendesk, type in your subdomain, and Power BI pulls in your tickets, users, and organizations.

Sounds great, right? Unfortunately, many users find it frustrating. A quick look through the Power BI community forums shows that the connector can be painfully slow, sometimes taking hours to refresh a dataset that isn't even that large. On top of that, the standard tables it pulls might not include the custom fields you rely on, leaving you to find manual workarounds anyway.

Building a custom API solution

For the most control, there's the Zendesk API. It’s the most powerful way to pull data, letting you programmatically grab almost anything from your account, including ticket comments and audit histories that you can't get from CSV exports.

But this is a serious project. Building and maintaining a custom API integration is a big job that requires developers. Your team would need to figure out:

• Authentication: Managing API tokens securely.

• Pagination: Writing scripts that can loop through potentially thousands of pages of results to get all your ticket data.

• Rate limits: Creating logic to avoid hitting Zendesk's API call limits, which can shut down your data feed if you're not careful.

• Data warehousing: Setting up and paying for a database (like BigQuery or Snowflake) to store all the data before you can even load it into Power BI.

This gives you total flexibility, but for most support teams, the cost and complexity are just too high.

An alternative to exporting Zendesk data

This brings up a different question: what if the goal isn't just to move data, but to get answers from it? Instead of wrangling raw data into spreadsheets, some newer AI tools can analyze it right where it lives and give you the insights you were looking for.

This is where a tool like eesel AI comes in. It connects directly to your Zendesk account and uses your historical ticket data, the same stuff you're trying to export, to provide useful information right away.

Get automated insights without the spreadsheets

Rather than spending hours in Power BI trying to connect the dots, eesel AI’s analytics dashboard can do it for you. It automatically goes through your resolved tickets to:

• Spot knowledge gaps: It finds the most common questions customers ask that your help center doesn't answer. It can even draft new articles for you based on your agents' best replies.

• Find automation opportunities: The simulation mode runs through thousands of your past tickets to show you exactly how many of them could have been automated. This gives you a clear picture of the potential return before you commit to anything.

This approach delivers the strategic insights you were after, but without all the manual exporting and report-building.

The eesel AI dashboard showing analytics and simulation results, an alternative to manually exporting Zendesk data to Excel or Power BI.

Turn your data into an AI agent

Beyond just giving you insights, eesel AI for Zendesk lets you put your data to work. It trains an AI agent on your past tickets, macros, and knowledge base articles. This AI can then help with frontline support by:

• Answering common customer questions instantly.

• Triaging and tagging new tickets automatically.

• Escalating the tricky issues to the right human agent.

By learning from the data you already have, eesel AI helps close the loop. It doesn't just show you what's happening; it helps you do something about it.

Comparing Zendesk data export options

So, which method is right for you? It really depends on your budget, your team's technical skills, and what you're ultimately trying to achieve. Here’s a quick breakdown to help you compare.

Feature	Zendesk's Built-in Export	API / Direct Connector	eesel AI (Insight Automation)
Ease of Use	Medium (needs setup & manual imports)	Low (definitely need developers)	High (self-serve, up and running fast)
Data Freshness	Stale (based on whenever you last exported)	Near real-time (if built correctly)	Live
Cost	Included in pricey plans	High (developer time, data storage)	Predictable subscription
Key Benefit	Basic data backup	Complete control over your data	Automated insights & actions

Pricing for Zendesk data export options

Your ability to get data out of Zendesk is tied directly to how much you're paying them. The easier export options are usually saved for the more expensive plans.

Zendesk Suite pricing

According to Zendesk's pricing page, the ability to export full datasets is only available on the Suite Professional ($115/agent/month) and Suite Enterprise ($169/agent/month) plans (billed annually). If you're on the Suite Team ($55/agent/month) plan, you'll have to rely on the API or a third-party tool.

Microsoft Power BI pricing

Power BI also has a few different tiers:

• Free: For individuals who just want to create reports for themselves. You can't share them.

• Pro: $14.00 per user/month. Lets you publish and share reports with others.

• Premium Per User: $24.00 per user/month. Adds more advanced AI features and handles larger datasets.

If you go the API route, don't forget to account for the hidden costs, like developer salaries, data storage fees, and ongoing maintenance. In contrast, tools like eesel AI offer straightforward pricing with no surprise fees, which makes budgeting a whole lot easier.

Beyond exporting: A smarter way to use Zendesk data

While pulling Zendesk data into Excel or Power BI gives you a lot of analytical freedom, the process is often manual, technically demanding, and expensive to keep up. Zendesk's own exports are limited, the connectors can be slow, and a custom API solution is a major engineering project.

These methods treat your data like something you have to manually inspect. But a more modern approach is to use that data to power intelligent automation.

Platforms like eesel AI offer a compelling alternative. They analyze your support data right where it is to give you useful insights and help automate resolutions. Instead of just building reports that tell you what went wrong last week, you can deploy an AI that actively improves your support operations today. It’s less about looking backward and more about moving forward, intelligently.

Ready to see what your Zendesk data is really capable of? Try eesel AI for free and find out what you can learn in just a few minutes.