## Introduction
Collecting and managing customer feedback efficiently is pivotal for product development, customer success, and overall business growth. However, customer feedback often comes from multiple tools such as email, Google Forms, support tickets in Zendesk, or social media mentions. For operations teams, manually consolidating this information is time-consuming and error-prone.
This guide demonstrates how to use n8n, a powerful open-source workflow automation tool, to centralize customer feedback from multiple sources into a single Google Sheet or database. This automated workflow improves visibility across teams and accelerates response times. It benefits operations specialists, product managers, and customer success teams.
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## Tools and Services Integrated
– **n8n:** The automation platform where we will build the workflow.
– **Gmail:** To extract feedback sent via email.
– **Google Forms:** As a direct feedback collection tool.
– **Zendesk:** For customer support ticket data.
– **Slack:** To send notification alerts when new feedback arrives.
– **Google Sheets:** As the centralized repository for all feedback.
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## High-Level Workflow Overview
1. **Trigger:** Periodic scheduler triggers the workflow every hour.
2. **Extract Gmail Feedback:** Search for new emails with customer feedback labels.
3. **Extract Google Forms responses:** Pull new form responses.
4. **Extract Zendesk tickets:** Retrieve recent tickets tagged with ‘feedback’.
5. **Aggregate & Format:** Normalize data fields across sources into a unified structure.
6. **Update Google Sheets:** Append new feedback entries.
7. **Notify Team:** Send a Slack message summary with new feedback counts.
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## Step-by-Step Tutorial
### Prerequisites
– Set up n8n (self-hosted or cloud) and access to your workspace.
– Active Gmail account with labeled feedback emails.
– Google Forms linked for feedback collection.
– Zendesk account with API access.
– Slack workspace with an incoming webhook or bot.
– Google Sheets with a predefined feedback spreadsheet.
### Step 1: Create a New Workflow in n8n
– Log into n8n, create a new workflow.
– Rename it “Customer Feedback Sync Workflow”.
### Step 2: Add a Scheduler Trigger
– Add the **Cron** node.
– Configure to trigger every hour (or as needed).
– This ensures periodic syncing without manual intervention.
### Step 3: Connect Gmail Node
– Add a **Gmail** node.
– Use the “Search Emails” operation to find emails with the label “customer-feedback”.
– Fetch unread or recently received emails.
– Extract relevant fields such as sender, subject, date, and body.
– Mark emails as read after processing to avoid duplication.
### Step 4: Connect Google Forms Node
– Add the **Google Sheets** node to fetch Google Form responses since Google Forms responses are stored in a linked Sheet.
– Use the “Read Rows” operation.
– Apply a filter to fetch only new responses by checking a timestamp column or using incremental logic.
### Step 5: Connect Zendesk Node
– Add a **HTTP Request** node or a dedicated Zendesk node (if available).
– Configure it to query the Zendesk API (
e.g., `https://yourdomain.zendesk.com/api/v2/search.json?query=type:ticket tag:feedback status