Integrating Salesforce and Zendesk can feel a bit like trying to put together a puzzle using pieces from two different boxes. On one side, you’ve got Salesforce, which is fantastic for managing customer relationships, keeping track of sales deals, and storing detailed account histories. On the other, there’s Zendesk, your go-to for handling customer support tickets, conversations, and all that helpful knowledge base content.
Both systems hold important parts of the customer journey, but when they don’t talk to each other, your teams can easily miss key information. Your sales folks might not know about a big support issue happening right now, and your support team might not have a clue about how valuable a customer is or what they’ve bought in the past. This kind of gap can really frustrate everyone involved.
But connect these two platforms, and you get one clear picture of the customer. This breaks down those walls between teams and gives everyone the information they need, right where they’re already working. Imagine support agents seeing a customer’s recent purchases from Salesforce inside a Zendesk ticket, or sales reps checking the status of an urgent support problem directly in Salesforce. That’s what happens when you connect them smoothly.
This guide will walk you through how to link these two essential platforms, show you the good stuff that comes from having that single customer view, and even touch on how AI can make this connection even better.
What you’ll need
Before you jump into connecting Salesforce and Zendesk, it’s smart to have a few things lined up:
- Active accounts: You’ll need current subscriptions for both Salesforce and Zendesk. Pretty straightforward!
- Admin access: To get the integration set up, you’ll usually need administrator permissions in both your Zendesk Support and Salesforce accounts. Just a heads-up, according to Zendesk’s own docs, an API-only Salesforce user isn’t enough to make the connection work.
- Know your data: Think about which pieces of information are most important to share between the systems (like customer contact details, account status, ticket priority) and how you want that info to move back and forth.
- How you’ll connect them: Decide if you’ll use a built-in connector, a tool from another company, or build something custom yourself. Each option has different requirements and things it can do.
Getting these ducks in a row before you start makes the whole process much, much smoother.
Why connect Salesforce and Zendesk?
Linking your CRM (Salesforce) and support platform (Zendesk) isn’t just a tech task; it’s a smart move to improve how your business talks to customers and how your internal teams work together. The main point is to make sure both sales and support teams can see the same, up-to-date customer information, no matter which system they’re using.
When data moves easily between Salesforce and Zendesk, you get rid of those information walls that can slow things down and annoy customers. Sales teams can see support history to help them reach out better, and support teams can check important CRM data like customer value or contract details to figure out which issues are most urgent and give more personal help.
Having everything in one place means you can work together better and know more about your customers throughout their entire journey with you.
Real benefits of a single view
Bringing Salesforce and Zendesk together offers some real benefits that help with how efficiently you work, how well teams collaborate, and ultimately, how happy your customers are.
- Understand customers better: With a full picture of the customer, mixing sales history and support conversations, your teams can guess what customers might need next and give them more personal service. This helps fix past problems and builds loyalty.
- Teams work together better: Sales and support teams can team up more effectively when they can easily see relevant data and ticket info inside the system they prefer to use. This cuts down on constantly asking each other for info or copying data manually.
- Work faster and smarter: Automatically syncing data means less manual typing and less time wasted switching between systems. Support agents can quickly grab CRM data, and sales reps can check ticket statuses without leaving Salesforce.
- Solve problems quicker: Agents have instant access to customer context, so they can understand the whole story and fix issues faster and more effectively. They can also prioritize based on sales data.
- Get smarter insights from your data: Connecting data gives you a richer pool for reports and analysis, showing you things about customer behavior, common support issues, and how your agents are doing.
How to connect Salesforce and Zendesk
There are a few ways to connect Salesforce and Zendesk, from built-in options to other tools that are more flexible. Your choice depends on what you need, your tech skills, and how much you want to customize things.
Built-in connection
Both Salesforce and Zendesk offer ways to connect them right out of the box. Zendesk has a built-in connection that lets you link your Salesforce account directly through the Zendesk Admin Center. This usually involves installing something called a managed package in Salesforce, and then setting up the link from Zendesk.
This built-in way gives you a direct connection, letting sales teams see Zendesk tickets in Salesforce and support teams see Salesforce data in Zendesk. It’s a good place to start for many businesses, but it might not be as flexible in terms of customization or the exact types of data you can sync compared to other methods.
Other apps and iPaaS tools
Lots of tools from other companies and iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) platforms are built specifically for connecting different business apps, including Salesforce and Zendesk. Tools like Zapier or Exalate offer ready-made connectors and ways to build your own data sharing setups.
These tools usually let you be more flexible in deciding exactly what data syncs, setting up specific triggers, and matching up fields between the systems (Source 3, 5). They can be really helpful if you need to connect other apps too, or if you need more advanced automation. Some are pretty easy to use without much coding, while others, like Exalate, let you use scripting for really specific situations.
Building it yourself
For companies with really specific or complicated needs, building a custom connection might be the way to go. This means using the tools (APIs and APIs) that Salesforce and Zendesk provide to create a connection built just for your workflows.
Building it yourself gives you the most control, letting you make the connection work exactly how you need it to. However, it takes a good amount of tech know-how, time, and resources to build and keep running.
Choosing the right method means thinking about how easy it is to set up, the cost, how flexible it is, and if it can grow with you, all based on what you’re trying to achieve with the connection.
Step-by-step setup (a common way)
While the exact steps can change depending on how you choose to connect them, here’s a general idea of how it works, covering common steps like getting your platforms ready and making the link.
Step 1: Check salesforce session settings
An important thing to check for many Salesforce connections, including with Zendesk, is making sure your Salesforce session settings aren’t tied to specific IP addresses. If they are, the connection might break when sessions expire.
Here’s how to unlock Salesforce sessions from an IP address:
- Log in to your Salesforce account.
- Click the gear icon (Setup) in the top right corner, then click Setup.
- In the Quick Find box, type “Session Settings” and pick Session Settings under Security.
- Uncheck the box that says Lock sessions to the IP address from which they originated.
- Click Save.
Step 2: Connect zendesk to salesforce
How you actually make the connection will look a bit different depending on if you’re using the built-in way or a third-party tool. It’s always a good idea to try it out in your Zendesk and Salesforce test environments first.
If you’re using the built-in Zendesk connection:
- In Zendesk Admin Center, go to Apps and integrations > Integrations > Integrations.
- Find and click on the Salesforce connection.
- Click Add connection (if you haven’t already).
- Choose your Salesforce account type (Production or Sandbox).
- Agree to the terms and click Connect Salesforce.
- You’ll be sent to Salesforce to sign in and say it’s okay to connect.
- Once you’ve said yes, you’ll go back to Zendesk Admin Center, and the new connection should show up.
If you’re using a third-party tool like Exalate:
- Install the tool’s app or package in both your Salesforce and Zendesk accounts.
- From one system (like Zendesk), start a connection and put in the web address of the other system (Salesforce).
- The tool will give you a code that you’ll need to accept in the other system.
- Accept the code in the other system to make the connection.
Step 3: Tell them what data to share and what should happen
Once they’re connected, you need to set up exactly what data will sync and what should happen automatically between the two systems. This is where you decide what information is shared and how it’s used.
Common things you might set up include:
- Sending Salesforce data to Zendesk: Automatically update Zendesk users and organizations with important info from Salesforce Accounts, Contacts, or Leads. This makes sure support agents have the latest customer info in Zendesk.
- Seeing Zendesk data in Salesforce: Set up a view or section inside Salesforce Account, Contact, or Opportunity pages to show related Zendesk tickets live.
- Sending Zendesk tickets to Salesforce: Copy Zendesk tickets over as Salesforce Cases or other items, so sales teams can keep track of support conversations within Salesforce.
- Setting up automatic actions: Set up rules so that things happening in one system (like a new Zendesk ticket, or an updated Salesforce Opportunity) automatically cause something to happen in the other (like creating a Salesforce Case, or updating a Zendesk organization).
Make your connection smarter with AI
Connecting Salesforce and Zendesk means you have all your customer info in one place. But just having the data is only part of the story. Using that data to automate tasks, give smarter support, and learn more about your customers is where AI really helps. While the AI tools built into Salesforce or Zendesk might do some basic things, adding a flexible AI platform can help you get the most out of your connected systems.
Instead of just showing Salesforce data in Zendesk, imagine an AI agent that can use that data to solve tickets. For example, if a customer asks about their order status in a Zendesk chat, the AI could safely grab that info from Salesforce and give them an instant, correct update. Or, if a really valuable customer (identified in Salesforce) sends in a support ticket, the AI could automatically make it a priority and send it to a special agent.
Luckily, eesel AI works smoothly with your existing helpdesk, like Zendesk, and can connect to tons of data sources, including the data you’re now sharing between Salesforce and Zendesk.
You can train eesel AI using your combined Salesforce and Zendesk data, plus other info like internal documents or past tickets. This helps it understand customer situations much better than a bot trained on just one source.
With eesel AI, you can set up bots to do specific things based on the connected data. For instance, an AI agent could:
- Grab customer-specific info from Salesforce (like contract details or recent purchases) to give context in a Zendesk ticket.
- Update records in Salesforce based on info collected during a Zendesk conversation.
- Smartly sort and send tickets to the right place based on customer group or value data from Salesforce.
- Automatically answer common questions by pulling relevant info from both support history (Zendesk) and customer details (Salesforce).
This ability to take action and understand context goes beyond just showing data. It lets the AI actively help solve problems and manage workflows, using that single view you created by connecting Salesforce and Zendesk.
Tips for a smooth connection and using AI
Connecting two big platforms and adding AI might feel like a lot, but following some simple tips can help things go smoothly.
- Know what you want to achieve: Before you start, be really clear about exactly what you want the connection to do. Is it faster ticket answers, sales and support working better together, or something else? Clear goals will help guide how you set things up.
- Start small and add more later: Don’t try to sync absolutely everything or automate every single process at once. Begin with the things that will make the biggest difference quickly, and then slowly add more as you learn and improve things.
- Keep your data clean: How well your connection works depends on how good your data is. Tidy up any duplicates or conflicting info in both Salesforce and Zendesk before you start syncing.
- Make sure your teams know how to use it: Be sure both your sales and support teams understand how the connection works, what data they can see, and how to use the new ways of working effectively.
- Keep an eye on how it’s working: Regularly check how your connection is performing and that data is syncing correctly. Look at your reports to see how it’s affecting things like how quickly you solve issues or how happy customers are.
- Test the AI carefully: If you’re adding AI, use testing features to make sure it does what you expect before you let everyone use it. With eesel AI, you can test responses and workflows in a safe place before going live.
- Keep training the AI: Your business and what your customers need will change. Keep the AI’s knowledge base up-to-date by training it on new data or improving the info it already has. eesel AI makes this easier by letting you train it on different sources and offering tools to simulate how it will respond.
Pro tip: Pay close attention to making sure data fields match up correctly. Make sure that info in Salesforce goes into the right spots in Zendesk to avoid mistakes or losing information when they sync.
Put your connected data to work with AI
Connecting Salesforce and Zendesk is a smart move to make things smoother for your customers and your team. By getting rid of those data walls, you give your sales and support teams a single view of the customer, which helps them work together better, solve problems faster, and keep customers happier.
Whether you use a built-in connector or a tool from another company, the main goal is to make sure data flows easily between your CRM and support platforms. Having this connected base is key to really understanding your customers and working more efficiently.
Taking this connection further with AI, like eesel AI, lets you use all that combined data for smart automation. Instead of just having data available, AI can actively use it to solve tickets, send inquiries to the right person, and give personalized support, even at a large scale. This turns the connection from just sharing data into something that actively helps improve your whole customer service operation.
Ready to see how AI can boost your Salesforce Zendesk connection? eesel AI connects with the tools you already use and helps you automate tasks using your combined data. You can see how eesel AI works with Zendesk on our integration page for Zendesk.
Find out how eesel AI can help you get the most out of your connected platforms. You can start a free trial today (no credit card needed) or book a demo to see it in action.
