Zendesk is a highly versatile, powerful customer service product and a robust sales CRM. No matter how you're using Zendesk, it can help your customer relationships thrive. But as you make life easier for your clients, it never hurts to make life easier for yourself, too. Taking advantage of Zendesk integrations can help you work smarter, not harder.

We'll introduce you to seven tools that you can integrate with Zendesk to improve your workflows, then explain each of their pros and cons.

3 Zendesk Integrations for Customer Support

Originally launched as a help desk software, Zendesk is best known for its customer engagement solution, Zendesk Support. This solution can help customer service agents manage ticketing, collaborate, create self-service content, and more.

Integrating Zendesk Support with some of your favorite business software is easy. The platform offers hundreds of Support integrations that allow you to streamline your team's processes. Here are three of these integration options:

1. Jira

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Jira is a widely used issue-tracking software that can help engineering teams fix bugs on SaaS and ecommerce websites. When you install the Zendesk Support add-on on Jira (and vice versa), your customer support team can better collaborate with engineers when bugs start to impact the customer experience.

As soon as your support team receives a new ticket they can't resolve themselves, they can escalate to engineers straight from Zendesk Support. Engineers can then view client conversations and keep support teams in the loop straight from Jira. Neither team needs to leave their primary platform.

The Zendesk Support for Jira isn't quite as customizable as the two platforms alone. However, this integration can still ensure you always have the right experts handling the right Zendesk tickets.

2. Zapier

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Zapier is well-known for helping businesses set up automations and connect workflows between a variety of apps — including Zendesk. Here are just a few examples of how Zapier's Zendesk integration can help you automate your to-do list:

• Turn GMail emails into Zendesk tickets

• Create Trello cards when you receive new tickets

• Add Zendesk tickets to Google Sheets

• Post the contents of new tickets as Slack messages

Keep in mind that Zapier's Zendesk integration is not available with a free Zapier account. Zendesk is considered a premium app on Zapier. You'll need to invest a minimum of $29.99 per month (or $19.99 per month, billed annually) to connect any premium app to Zendesk.

3. Salesforce

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If you use Salesforce as your primary customer relationship management tool (CRM), it can help you rapidly improve your customer satisfaction. When you connect Zendesk and Salesforce, you'll be able to see each client's complete CRM data right next to your support tickets.

On Salesforce, you can view, update, or create tickets to resolve issues faster. Plus, once your accounts are linked, Salesforce can help you analyze your Zendesk tickets, so you can easily identify trends and improve your customer support processes. It's a win-win situation, no matter which tool you spend more time in.

Salesforce isn't the most affordable CRM. Its cheapest option, $25 per user per month, is only available with annual billing and for up to 10 users (after which you'll need to pay at least $75 per user per month). But if connecting your CRM with your Zendesk account is important to you, this integration can definitely help you out.

2 Zendesk Integrations for Sales

In addition to offering a strong support solution, Zendesk offers a sales management software known as Zendesk Sell. Using this solution, you can better prioritize high-quality leads, get insight into your sales pipeline, and contact prospects from one central tool.

Zendesk Sell can work seamlessly with Zendesk Support, so relevant tickets can easily turn into leads. It can also integrate with dozens of third-party tools, including these two helpful options:

1. Ada

Image credit: Zendesk

Ada is an AI chatbot solution that can save your company time by automating many of your client interactions. Zendesk integrates with Ada Engage, a chatbot made especially for sales and marketing teams. 

When you link these two tools, Ada can prompt your website visitors to engage with your brand and automate your lead qualification process. When Ada spots a high-value prospect, it'll input their data into Zendesk Sell and hand off the conversation to your sales reps at the right time.

Though Ada isn't built for small businesses, this integration can help sales reps at mid-sized businesses and larger enterprises make better use of their time.

2. FreshBooks

Image credit: Zendesk

Whether you're working with current clients or you've just converted a lead, billing is an important task for many businesses. If you're using FreshBooks for your invoicing, you can streamline your workflow by connecting it with Zendesk Sell. This Zendesk integration can help you:

• Automatically populate invoices with Zendesk sales CRM data for faster invoice creation

• Review documents, expenses, and payment histories

• See which invoices are paid or outstanding

While FreshBooks is a complete accounting software, the FreshBooks for Sell integration doesn't support further accounting automation.

2 Zendesk Integrations for Live Chat

As part of the Zendesk Suite, you can access Zendesk's live chat software, known as Zendesk Messaging. It lets you manage your customer interactions on a number of channels, like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, all on one platform — and with client data readily available for more context. Using these two Zendesk integrations, you can improve your team's productivity and send better messages.

1. Advanced Shortcuts by Pythia

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Pythia offers a handful of integrations created especially for Zendesk users, with Advanced Shortcuts being its solution for Zendesk Messaging. Connecting these two tools allows you to utilize "shortcuts," which are canned messages, during your live conversations with clients and leads.

The Advanced Shortcuts by Pythia integration offers reply suggestions based on relevancy. However, you can always search your shortcuts based on the titles you give them or key terms. This can help your sales and support agents work faster, instead of retyping the same messages over and over again.

Advanced Shortcuts costs won't break the bank at $15 per user per month, but it can only be used as part of this integration. Pythia solutions aren't compatible with any tools other than Zendesk.

2. TypeGenie for Chat

Image credit: Zendesk

When you don't have canned messages prepared for a conversation, you can still respond to live chat messages fast by using TypeGenie for Chat. This Zendesk integration can help your sales and support agents reduce the amount they need to type by auto-completing your sentences — with your brand voice in mind. This tool can improve over time, as TypeGenie gets to know how your team members write.

The biggest downside to this integration is the fact that you'll need to invest in TypeGenie, which requires a $199-$699 monthly fee on top of per-user costs.

Work Smarter With Zendesk Integrations

With the ability to use hundreds of Zendesk integrations that make your sales CRM and customer engagement software more powerful, Zendesk can provide everything you need to make all your customer interactions count. You can resolve tickets faster, streamline the sales process, and reply to messages efficiently.

When you want to offer clients an even more personalized way to interact with your sales and support teams, consider adding ServiceBell to your toolkit. ServiceBell is a live video chat solution that lets clients jump on a call with you from any page of your site, at any time. Create a free ServiceBell account to offer real-time, face-to-face support that helps you continue building strong client relationships.