Every business experiences incidents, even multiple at once, and customers expect timely and accurate updates.
Working in Zendesk, agents can use problem ticket types to track the root cause of an issue and incident tickets to track each affected customer. But proactive communications, like mass email campaigns, didn’t have such an option, leaving teams with limited visibility and more difficult tracking.
That’s the real challenge.
Problem vs Incident tickets in Zendesk
Referring to the Zendesk guide, Problem and incident tickets help teams manage issues reported by multiple customers. But how do they differ?
A Problem ticket represents the root cause of an issue, while Incident tickets track each affected customer’s request. Linking multiple Incidents to a single Problem keeps everything organized, giving agents a clear overview and making it easier to resolve related tickets efficiently.
While this setup works perfectly for customer-reported tickets, proactive email campaigns didn’t fit into it — until now.
The visibility gap in proactive communication for incidents
Payment system glitch, a missing order, a login failure, or unexpected downtime in the software. Incidents like these happen quite frequently. And to keep customers informed, companies need to send proactive email campaigns. These messages help reduce frustration and maintain trust.
The challenge is that, until now, agents couldn’t see which campaign addressed which incident, and managers had limited visibility over all communications.
Without this connection, Zendesk teams face several issues:
- Incomplete incident histories make it hard to track what’s been communicated.
- Duplicate messages risk confusion for customers.
- Missed updates leave customers uncertain about the status of their issue.
- Extra work for agents, who have to manually track campaigns and related tickets.
Connecting incident email campaigns to problem tickets
Using the Proactive Campaigns integration for Zendesk, you can easily send mass emails about your service incidents to affected customers. And what’s more important, you can now automatically link all campaign tickets directly to the relevant problem root ticket.
This ensures that every proactive email is connected to the underlying issue. This way, teams can:
- see which emails correspond to which problems, maintaining accurate records;
- keep customers informed consistently without sending duplicate messages;
- track the complete history of incidents and updates, making management easier;
- save time, as agents no longer need to manually link campaigns to tickets.
How to link every campaign email to the right incident
To keep track of every sent incident campaign, agents can use the Proactive Campaigns app, which allows them to connect every created ticket to the correct problem. Here’s a simple workflow:
1. Create your incident email campaign
Draft your mass email to update customers affected by the incident. Use clear messaging and placeholders to personalize the content so each customer gets relevant information.
2. Choose the ticket form and select Incident as the ticket type
On the final step of your campaign setup, select a ticket form that includes the Type field. Then choose Incident as the ticket type. This ensures that the emails are linked to customer issues rather than general announcements, keeping communication focused and organized.
3. Select the related Problem ticket
A drop-down menu will show all active Problem tickets. Pick the one representing the root cause of the incident. Every ticket created by this campaign will automatically link to that Problem ticket.
4. Send the campaign
Click Run the campaign. All campaign tickets are created and connected instantly. Agents no longer need to track emails manually or guess which incident they belong to.
5. Track and manage with full visibility
Each proactive email is now tied to the accurate problem ticket. Your team can easily track customer responses and see the full context of the incident.
Benefits of linking mass emails to problem tickets
First of all, it gives your team full visibility. Every proactive email is connected to its corresponding problem, so managers and agents always know what has been communicated.
Next, it ensures consistent customer updates. Customers get timely, accurate information without duplicates or missed messages.
It also simplifies incident management. Instead of handling each Incident ticket separately, resolving the Problem ticket automatically resolves all linked tickets, saving time and reducing errors.
Finally, it saves agents valuable time. Manual tracking of campaigns is no longer necessary, letting your team focus on resolving issues rather than organizing emails.
In short, linking emails to Problem tickets makes communication faster, clearer, and more organized, while keeping customers informed and confident.
Conclusion
Proactive communication during incidents isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s essential for every business that values its customers. And such simple but effective workarounds, like linking all proactive email campaigns to specific problem tickets in Zendesk, can make a huge difference.
No more lost emails, duplicate messages, or manual tracking. Now, your team can handle multiple incidents with confidence, maintain trust, and provide a seamless experience for every customer, even when things go wrong.
Streamline your incident updates and never lose track of emails again. Get started with Proactive Campaigns for Zendesk today!