Recurly for Zendesk

Recurly is excited to provide our merchants with three integrations for Zendesk: Recurly for Zendesk Chat, Recurly for Zendesk Support, and Recurly for Zendesk Sell.

The first release enabled support agents to find details on a customer’s account and subscription information directly within their Zendesk interface. The second release adds the ability to Pause, Cancel, and Refund subscriptions; also within the Zendesk interface. From speaking with many of our customers, we understand your support agents use both Recurly and Zendesk, and we are happy to help streamline your operations. These integrations are available on all Recurly plans (Starter, Professional and Elite).

The Recurly for Zendesk Sell integration is a read-only version of the integration. The ability to Pause, Cancel, and Refund is not available from Sell. A sales agent can click the View in Recurly button and be automatically taken to the users Recurly account. From there, upgrades, downgrades, and one time purchases can all be applied to the account.

Installation

Installation will require an administrator for your Zendesk instance and access to a Base64 encoded Recurly API Key. To get started, Download Recurly for Zendesk Support and/or Recurly for Zendesk Chat.

1. Once the application is installed, use your Recurly subdomain and Base64 encoded API key available under your Recurly Account > Integrations > API Credentials.
2. Create a new API key called "Zendesk". The API key entered into Zendesk must Base64 encoded. See the image below for an example of where to find the dropdown arrow to get the Base 64 encoded value. The Base64 encoded API key is the characters after “Authorization Basic”. Another option is to take the private API key and Base64 encode locally. This value is not displayed after submitted for security reasons.
3. Your subdomain can be found in the URL of the page. If the URL is "site.recurly.com/*", enter only "site" in the subdomain field.
4. Configure your desired permissions for each role in Zendesk (see the Permissions section below) and start using the integration.

A few additional setup notes.

1. You have the ability to setup read-only API keys, but they edit functionality will not work with a read only API key.
2. If your company uses the Essential Zendesk Plan, you will not have access to the Zendesk Marketplace and will need to upgrade your plan to install this Marketplace app.

Customer Lookup

Find a customer by using the email address associated with their Recurly account. If Zendesk has an email address for the customer, it will display the result automatically.

Account

Once you are viewing the customer’s account, your support agents have multiple new Recurly capabilities directly within the Zendesk interface. They can see high-level account information such as name, brand of credit card, and last 4 digits of credit card numbers. This ensures you have the correct billing information on file.

If the customer wants to change any of their information, your agents can send the Hosted Account Management or Hosted Payment Payment page URLs directly to the customer. If there are more complex scenarios required, simply click “View in Recurly” and the support agent will be taken directly to the customer’s account in Recurly once they have authenticated.

Subscriptions

With the Recurly for Zendesk integration, you can view all of the details about your relationship with your customer without having to leave the conversation. This is crucial, so you don’t trigger a negative customer experience by asking them for information they expect you to know. Support agents can see plan name, subscription status, next bill date, payment status, the amount of last invoice, and the dates of their current billing period. All Active subscriptions display towards the top, and Expired subscriptions display towards the bottom. If your Recurly site uses the aggregated invoices feature, the invoice amount will include any subscriptions in that invoice.

Pause

Pausing a subscription is a great way to retain a customer and keep them from churning. It gives the customer a way to not pay when they won’t use the subscription, instead of fully cancelling the subscription. From the Recurly for Zendesk integration, you can pause a subscription between 1-12 billing cycles which will prevent the customer from being billed until the pause has ended. Once a pause has been scheduled, agents will see a temporary notification on the account detail screen. The next billing date and subscription term dates will not be updated until the next bill date. This feature is only available to agents with the Edit or Admin permissions.

Cancel

Support agents have the ability to Cancel a subscription at three time frames: Now, Next Bill Date, or End of Term. Depending on your plan settings, Next Bill Date and End of Term could be the same date. When performing an immediate cancellation, you can decide to only Cancel or also provide a refund in the same step. Cancelling at Next Bill Date or End of Term will not provide any refund options. Cancel functionality is only available to agents with the Edit or Admin permissions.

Refund

Refunds are a frequent action that support agents perform. In order to streamline your team’s workflow, we provide the ability to issue a refund for any amount less than or equal to the last invoice. An agent can refund using the refund flow, or from the Cancel Now flow described above. Refund functionality is only available to agents with the Edit or Admin permissions. If your Recurly site does not have Credit Invoices enabled, you will not be able to issue refunds from Zendesk.

Permissions

Zendesk administrators have the ability to change permissions within the application for the specific roles/groups in your Zendesk instance. Each role/group can be set to Read, Edit, or Admin. Agents with read permissions will not be able to view the Pause, Cancel, and Refund buttons. Enterprise Zendesk customers have access to Roles and Groups. Professional customers only have access to groups.

Agents with Edit or Admin will have the ability to Pause, Cancel, and Refund subscriptions. Only agents with the Admin permission have the ability to see the Permissions screen. Agents can access the permissions screen by clicking the Settings icon in the top right of the Zendesk interface.