RingCentral Zendesk Integration, and Why It Pays
As far as reporting is concerned, a phone call that leaves no ticket didn't happen. That's the entire argument for a RingCentral Zendesk integration.
What the RingCentral Zendesk integration gives an agent
A softphone embedded in the agent interface, so calls are answered without alt-tabbing to a separate application. Click to dial from a ticket or a user profile. And the screen pop: an inbound call matches the caller number to a Zendesk user and opens their profile and recent tickets before the agent says hello.
On the record-keeping side you get a ticket created or updated for the call, with duration, direction, disposition and a link to the recording. Agents take notes during the call into the ticket rather than into a notebook.
That combination is the whole point. Not the dialling. The dialling was fine before.
Screen pop is only as good as your phone numbers
Matching works on caller ID against the phone numbers stored on your Zendesk users. If the profile has no number, there's no match, and the agent gets an unknown caller and a ticket with no requester attached to anything.
In practice a decent proportion of calls won't match: withheld numbers, mobiles that were never given to you, someone calling from a different office, the customer using a partner phone.
Two things improve the hit rate. Ask for a phone number on the ticket form for customers who are likely to call, and make it an agent habit to add the number to the profile after a call that didn't match. Neither is glamorous. Both compound.
Call recording attached to the ticket
Recordings on the ticket are genuinely useful. Quality review without asking agents to reconstruct conversations. A definitive answer when a customer says they were promised something. Real context for whoever picks the ticket up next, instead of a note saying "spoke to customer".
They also carry obligations. Recording consent rules vary by country and, in the United States, by state, so the announcement at the start of the call isn't decoration. Retention matters too: a recording sitting on a ticket inherits whatever access and retention policy your tickets have, and support tickets get shared, exported and merged.
Decide who can play recordings, decide how long they live, and write it down before somebody requests theirs under a data access request.
Why a call with no ticket is invisible
Run phone support outside the helpdesk and four things break at once.
The rule that fixes it's dull and works: every call ends with a ticket, even a two-line one. The integration makes that automatic, which is the difference between a policy and a habit that lasts three weeks.
RingCentral or Zendesk Talk?
If the whole company already runs RingCentral, use it. Support isn't a good reason to run a second phone system, and your extensions, routing and numbers already exist.
If support is the only team with a phone, Zendesk Talk is fewer moving parts and one less vendor. It isn't better technology. It's less of it.
One pattern shows up whichever you pick: the customer emails, waits, gives up and rings. Now there's an email ticket and a call ticket for one problem, often with different requesters, and the two share no words at all because one is text and one is a recording.
Frequently asked questions
Does RingCentral create a Zendesk ticket for every call?
It can, depending on configuration, including a ticket for missed calls and voicemails. Turning that on is most of the value of the integration.
Why does the screen pop not find the caller?
The caller number isn't on any Zendesk user profile, or it's withheld. Capture numbers on your forms and add them after unmatched calls.
Are call recordings stored in Zendesk?
Typically a link to the recording is attached to the ticket rather than the audio file itself. Check where the audio actually lives before you write your retention policy.
Does the RingCentral Zendesk integration replace Zendesk Talk?
No. Pick one. Running both means two sets of numbers, two routing configurations and reporting that agrees with neither.
They emailed, then they rang
Two tickets, one problem, zero shared wording. Ticket Merger matches on requester and time window, which is what catches this pair.
Start free trial14-day free trial. No credit card required.