To deliver a truly seamless customer experience, businesses must meet their customers where they are. In particular segments like gaming, web3, and developer tools, Discord stands out as a highly relevant and popular community platform. Originally gaining popularity in the gaming sector, Discord has since evolved into a versatile tool for facilitating engagement, collaboration, and customer support. Companies with communities on Discord can elevate the user experience, by allowing users to submit queries directly on this channel. However, managing these interactions efficiently can be challenging without integrating this channel with a scalable support system. By connecting Discord with a robust platform like Zendesk, businesses can streamline their support operations, optimize user interactions, and deliver prompt, efficient resolutions to queries and issues.

‍

Quick Intro to Discord and Its Role in Customer Support

Discord is a voice, video, and text communication platform that supports the formation of communities around shared interests. Its customizable servers, channels, and bots make it an ideal hub for fostering user interaction. Startups can leverage Discord for customer support by enabling users to submit support requests directly through the platform, thereby engaging users where they are already active. Typically, these support interactions take place through private threads or designated channels accessible only to the user and the company.

‍

Options for Integrating Zendesk with Discord

Several integration solutions bridge Zendesk with Discord, each offering different functionalities to meet various needs.

‍

Off-the-Shelf Plugin: Discorder by Oapps

Discorder by Oapps presents a seamless solution for integrating Zendesk with Discord. This plugin is designed to convert Discord messages into Zendesk tickets, ensuring that support teams can manage Discord queries efficiently. Discorder enables teams to sync conversations between the two platforms, and this connectivity means that support representatives can track and resolve user requests originating from Discord without leaving Zendesk, boosting productivity and response times. 

‍

‍

‍

Pros:

• Easy to set up
• Integrates seamlessly with Zendesk

Cons:

• Users must initiate tickets via a command, which may not be intuitive
• Limited ticket triaging options compared to web forms or chatbots, as users can only open a ticket and input text without guided flows

Note: there are various other plugins listed in the Zendesk app store, but these are primarily for sending notifications into Discord, or letting your support team answer tickets from within Discord versus enabling users to create tickets in Discord.

‍

Creating Your Own Bot

For those with technical expertise or seeking a customized solution, creating a bot can be an option. You can create this from scratch of check out open source projects, such as zen-bot, which offers guidelines on developing a personalized integration between Zendesk and Discord. By following the instructions provided in the GitHub repository, tech-savvy teams can tailor an integration that suits their specific requirements, offering greater flexibility in linking the two platforms.

Pros:

• No subscription fees
• Extensive customization and extension possibilities 

Cons:

• Requires significant development resources
• The default setup in the open source code relies on channels rather than private threads, which can be limiting due to Discord's channel limit. This requires manual channel deletion and prevents users from accessing previous ticket responses

‍

Using a No-Code Tool

A second option is using no-code tools such as Zapier or Make.com to connect Discord and Zendesk. These platforms allow you to use new channel messages as triggers to automatically create a Zendesk ticket. Zapier also provides the capability to use new Discord forum posts as triggers, offering added flexibility.

Pros:

• Easy to set up if familiar with no-code tools

Cons:

• Limited to public support channels, as you must predefine the channel you want to trigger tickets from (e.g. #support). This prevents users from opening private tickets accessible only to themselves and your support team.

‍

‍

Native Integration - Mava

‍

Mava is a support platform that offers native integration capabilities between Discord and its support platform. This solution is ideal for startups seeking advanced support features for Discord. Mava's integration includes a chatbot builder and powerful triaging capabilities, which are essential for sophisticated support operations. However, it's important to note that Mava serves as a replacement for Zendesk, thereby requiring companies to shift their entire customer support system to Mava’s platform. 

‍

‍

Pros:

• User-friendly ticket panel
• No coding skills required to set up the integrations
• More advanced capabilities, such as the ability to create chatbot flows and conversational forms and linking those to categories, agents and tags in the support platform
• Option to use AI as a first line of defense in both private tickets and public channels in Discord
• Ability to sync Mava support agent profiles & Discord profiles, enabling team members to reply from both Discord and the Mava support dashboard, while maintaining accurate analytics

Cons:

• Mava is a full-suite support platform, integrating with Discord, Email, Web Chat & Telegram and using Mava would require switching from Zendesk

‍

Conclusion 

Integrating Discord with your support platform can significantly boost a startup's customer support efficiency and improve user experience. Each option discussed in this post has its strengths, from easy-to-deploy plugins and customizable bots to platforms like Mava with native Discord integrations. While transitioning to Mava involves switching from Zendesk, the enhanced capabilities and comprehensive suite offered make it a compelling choice for startups aiming for sophisticated and scalable support solutions, with a strong focus on Discord.  

‍