## Introduction
Customer support (CS) teams in startups and growing companies rely heavily on day-to-day metrics to understand ticket volumes, response times, and resolution rates. Zendesk’s CS Reporting feature is a popular solution to disseminate these insights via automated reports shared with stakeholders. However, Zendesk pricing for this feature can be costly or restrictive, especially for startups or teams wanting more control over their reports.
In this article, we will build a detailed end-to-end automation workflow using n8n that mimics and replaces Zendesk’s CS Reporting feature with complete flexibility and zero ongoing costs beyond hosting. This workflow will fetch daily ticket metrics directly from Zendesk, process the data, generate a summary report, and share it with stakeholders via Slack and email.
This solution benefits startup CTOs, automation engineers, and operations specialists by giving them control over CS reporting automation without vendor lock-in or extra fees.
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## Tools and Services Integrated
– **Zendesk API**: To fetch customer support ticket data
– **n8n**: Workflow automation platform to orchestrate the data extraction, processing, and distribution
– **Google Sheets or Database (optional)**: For historical data storage or extended reporting
– **Slack**: To share daily metrics summaries to relevant channels
– **Email (SMTP or integrated provider like Gmail)**: To email detailed reports to stakeholders
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## Workflow Overview
### Trigger:
A **Scheduled Trigger** in n8n set to run daily at a specific time after the support day ends (e.g., 7 AM UTC to capture the previous day’s data).
### Steps:
1. **Zendesk API Request**: Query the Zendesk API to fetch ticket data filtered by the previous day.
2. **Data Transformation**: Process the JSON response to calculate key metrics like:
– Total tickets created
– Tickets resolved
– Average first response time
– Average resolution time
– Backlog tickets
3. **Report Generation**:
– Summarize data into plain text or formatted HTML
– Optionally, append the data to a Google Sheet or database for historical tracking
4. **Slack Notification**: Post the report summary into a Slack channel using Slack API
5. **Email Distribution**: Send the full detailed report to a mailing list of stakeholders
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## Step-By-Step Technical Tutorial
### Step 1: Setting up n8n and Scheduling the Workflow
– Deploy n8n using your preferred method (Docker, cloud service, or self-hosted).
– Create a new workflow and add the **Cron node** to trigger the workflow daily at your desired time.
### Step 2: Fetching Zendesk Ticket Data
– Add the **HTTP Request node** configured to make a GET request to Zendesk’s Tickets API endpoint.
– Use the endpoint: `https://{subdomain}.zendesk.com/api/v2/search.json?query=type:ticket created>{yesterday_date}`
– Authenticate using Zendesk API token or email/password API token as per your setup.
– Use n8n expressions to dynamically calculate yesterday’s date for the query filter.
### Step 3: Processing Data for Metrics
– Add a **Function node** that:
– Parses the `results` array from the API response.
– Calculates total tickets created, resolved, average first response time, average resolution time, and any other KPIs needed.
– Example pseudo code inside the Function node:
“`
const tickets = items[0].json.results;
const totalCreated = tickets.length;
const resolvedTickets = tickets.filter(t => t.status === ‘solved’).length;
// Compute averages by accumulating relevant fields
return [{json: {
totalCreated,
resolvedTickets,
// … other metrics
}}];
“`
### Step 4: Generating the Report
– Use a **Set node** or **Function node** to format the output into a human-readable summary, e.g., markdown or HTML.
– Optionally, integrate with **Google Sheets node** to append daily data for trend tracking (requires Google API credentials).
### Step 5: Sharing Report on Slack
– Add the **Slack node** configured with your Slack Workspace Bot Token.
– Post the summary message to the configured Slack channel.
– Use markdown formatting for readability.
### Step 6: Emailing the Detailed Report
– Configure an **Email node** (SMTP, Gmail, or other)
– Send the detailed report as the email body or attach as a file.
– Use addresses of stakeholders collected manually or from a list.
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## Common Errors and Robustness Tips
– **API Rate Limits**: Zendesk has API rate limits; implement error handling and retries with exponential backoff using n8n’s Error Trigger node.
– **Date/time zone handling**: Confirm time zones align across API calls and scheduling to avoid missing data.
– **Authentication failures**: Securely store API tokens in n8n credentials; monitor tokens expiration.
– **Data volume**: For large ticket volume, paginate API requests and aggregate results across pages.
– **Slack and Email limits**: Monitor limits and queue messages if necessary; split large reports.
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## Adapting and Scaling the Workflow
– Extend the workflow to include other Zendesk metrics such as agent productivity, customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, or ticket tags.
– Integrate other communication tools such as Microsoft Teams or PagerDuty for critical alerting.
– Add database integration (PostgreSQL, MongoDB) in n8n to build customized dashboards.
– Modularize and template the workflow to reuse for multiple Zendesk subdomains or support teams.
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## Summary and Bonus Tip
By building this workflow with n8n, you replace a costly CS reporting feature in Zendesk with a flexible, customizable, and scalable automation that fits your exact business needs and budget.
**Bonus Tip:**
Enhance your reports with charts by integrating the workflow with data visualization services or using Google Sheets charting features, then sharing the charts as images or links in Slack and email reports.
This empowers you to maintain full control of your customer support reporting stack while saving on expensive licenses and gaining agility in your automation.
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