Support Operations
That Actually Work

Challenge

Support team needed a way to standardize severity definitions across all Support teams and Engineering. Inconsistent escalation criteria led to misaligned priorities and delayed resolutions.

Solution

• Met with Engineering to define each severity level (Minor, Important, Urgent, Critical) and align with existing workflows
• Collaborated with Customer Experience team to map customer priorities (S4, S3, S2, S1) to impact criteria
• Built a JavaScript-based calculator using four weighted factors:

• Customer Impact (Production down vs. workaround available)
• Customer Ranking (Top tier vs. SMB)
• End-Users Affected (50%+ vs. <10%)
• Customer Urgency (Contract at risk vs. calm discussion)

Result

Created a standardized, objective framework that both teams could use to assign and validate ticket severity. The calculator is still in use today and has eliminated confusion around escalation priorities.

Rollout: Introduced incrementally with Support leadership buy-in, validated with Engineering, and reinforced through escalation workflows rather than policy alone.

Scope: Used by a multi-team Support organization working with Engineering across enterprise and SMB customers.

Challenge

Client needed different description text for the Description field depending on which request form users selected in their Zendesk Guide, but the platform didn't support this natively.

Solution

Implemented custom JavaScript to:

• Target the field description element dynamically
• Detect which form was selected by the user
• Change the description text in real-time based on form selection
• Ensure seamless user experience with no page reloads

Result

Users received contextually relevant guidance for each request type, improving form completion quality and reducing back-and-forth clarification requests.

Scope: Implemented across multiple Zendesk Guide request forms serving both internal and external users.

Challenge

Client wanted to personally greet logged-in users when they navigated to the Zendesk Guide page and needed a way to display important announcements (system outages, holiday schedules, etc.).

Solution

• Implemented JavaScript to pull the signed-in user's name and add it to the search bar placeholder text
• Integrated Bootstrap framework into the Guide page
• Created customizable notification panels that agents could show/hide and update with announcements
• Built admin-friendly controls for managing announcement content and links

Result

Enhanced user experience with personalized greetings and improved communication channel for time-sensitive updates. Agents could manage announcements without developer intervention.

Scope: Deployed to customer-facing Zendesk Guide with agent-managed announcement system, reducing dependency on development for urgent communications.