Though Zendesk is a great customer service solution, Salesforce can be the preferred choice for enterprise organizations due to integrated Marketing, Sales, Service, and Success data on one integrated CRM platform. 

Understanding the Migration Components

It’s crucial to understand the essential components involved in a Zendesk to Salesforce Service Cloud migration. These elements are as follows:

• Business Workflow: Before initiating the migration process, it’s crucial to assess your existing business workflow. This is the time to actively restructure and optimize processes.

• Data: Data is the main component of your customer service operation. Identifying the data that needs to be migrated and how it should be handled is key.

• Integration: Consider how your data integrates with other systems within your organization and ensure a smooth transition.

Consideration While Zendesk to Salesforce Service Cloud Migration 

Assess Your workflow and re-structure actively before migration

• Consider this as a good time to re-evaluate your current processes and optimize it.

• Introduce new business processes at this point, so that it will be considered and designed correctly as part of migration.

• Identify any redundant or unused processes and exclude them from the migration checklist

Discuss the impact of Zendesk to Salesforce Service Cloud data migration 

• Data loss due to data transformation: Identify the data that may be affected by the transformation process. It’s important to note that certain Salesforce fields, such as Case Description and Case Comment, do not support rich text formatting. Therefore, we need to approach these situations with extra care and consideration to ensure data integrity and compatibility during the migration.

• Data Filtering: Discuss the volume of data to be migrated and any specific filters or criteria that need to be applied. This will help us determine which data is essential for the new system and which can be left behind. It’s important to strike a balance between ensuring all critical data is moved while avoiding the unnecessary transfer of redundant or obsolete information. This approach will streamline the migration process and make it more efficient.

• Avoid Data Duplication: While Zendesk to Salesforce Service Cloud data migration, take extra measures to avoid data duplication in Salesforce, specifically during Organization and Contact migration. Duplicate records can lead to data inconsistencies and operational challenges. By applying data deduplication techniques and ensuring that data is cleansed and verified before migration, we can maintain data accuracy and quality in the new system. This will ultimately contribute to a smoother post-migration experience.

Utilizing Salesforce to the Fullest

• Some features which are complex to set up in Zendesk could be simpler in Salesforce, identify those and use the Salesforce way to achieve them. For example, SLA Configuration, Email Notifications etc.

• Enable Salesforce additional features that can improve the overall productivity and experience like Omnichannel, Path, Supervisor Management, Assignment Rule, Case deflection etc.

• Take advantage of the power of AI in services – Case classification, Sentiment analysis, Einstein Knowledge Recommendation, Einstein Chatbot etc.

Actively Plan the Execution of Migration

• Development and Dependency Evaluation: Plan the whole implementation, identify dependencies clearly and assign it to stakeholders. Some examples – Email Templates, Self-service portal design and licenses, token and package required for integrations.

• Salesforce Licenses: Identify the number of support agents who will require additional Salesforce standard license and feature licenses and start the purchase as soon as you can as it may take some more time than expected.

• Go Live Plan: Plan deployment, go live dates, delta migration, domain switching and outage notification.

Increase adoption with effective training & fun activities

• It’s hard to convince business users to come out of their comfort zone, so plan training at regular intervals.

• Make training simple and goal oriented, try to convey the benefits of the transition, how it is going to improve the experience and productivity ultimately to themselves.

• Try to reward the person who is taking initiative to help the adoption.

Expected Outcome

Decreased Support Cost

Increased Customer Satisfaction

Integrated CRM Data 

Scalability 

Increased Customer Engagement

Finally, migrating from Zendesk to Salesforce Service Cloud can be an important move for your organization. By considering the migration components, utilizing Salesforce’s capabilities, and planning carefully, you can ensure a smooth transition that leads to reduced costs, increased customer satisfaction, and improved overall performance.