Moving from Freshdesk to Kustomer is a significant step toward a more unified, customer centric support experience.
While the technical details can seem dense, approaching the transition with a clear plan ensures that your historical data remains intact and your team hits the ground running.
This guide will walk you through the essential steps to move your operations smoothly between these two platforms.
Defining Your Migration Scope
Before you begin moving data, you need to understand which parts of your Freshdesk instance can be automated and which require a personal touch.
What to Migrate via the API
Most of your core data has a direct path from Freshdesk to Kustomer. This includes the essential building blocks like agents, groups, companies, and contacts.
Your historical data, such as tickets and their full conversation threads, can also be moved automatically.
This category also covers your self service content, specifically solution articles and canned responses, which find new homes in Kustomer’s knowledge base and shortcuts sections.
What to Configure Manually
Certain elements of Freshdesk are tied to specific settings that do not have a direct data link. You will need to manually recreate your ticket forms within Kustomer’s settings to ensure your data collection remains consistent.
Specific roles and their associated permission sets also require manual setup to ensure your team members have the correct level of access in the new environment.
Finally, the actual logic of your assignment rules and skills must be rebuilt to fit Kustomer’s routing engine.
What to Archive
Migration is a perfect time to clean up your database. Freshdesk automatically archives tickets that have been closed and inactive for 120 days to improve performance. You should identify similar old data that is no longer needed for daily operations.
If you have forum threads or old discussions that aren't critical for live support, you might choose to archive them into custom objects for reference rather than cluttering your new conversation timeline.
Preparing Kustomer for Data Import
To ensure the data you are moving has a place to land, several configurations must be built in Kustomer before you start the import.
- Define Custom Attributes and Klasses: You must create the data schema in Kustomer first so that custom fields from Freshdesk have a corresponding destination.
- Establish Teams and Users: Replicate your Freshdesk groups as Kustomer Teams and ensure all agents are invited as Users.
- Set Up Business Schedules: Define your support hours in Kustomer to ensure your reporting and SLA calculations remain accurate.
- Create SLA Policies: Rebuild your service level standards in Kustomer to match the expectations you set in Freshdesk.
- Build Knowledge Base Structure: Set up the categories and folders in Kustomer so your solution articles have a organized hierarchy to populate.
Migrating Your Objects
Data Mapping
Freshdesk Object | Kustomer Destination |
Agents | Users |
Groups | Teams |
Companies | Companies |
Contacts | Customers |
Tickets | Conversations |
Ticket Replies | Messages |
Ticket Notes | Notes |
Attachments | Attachments |
Canned Responses | Shortcuts |
KB Articles | Articles |
Custom Objects | KObjects |
Satisfaction Ratings | Satisfaction |
Business Hours | Business Schedules |
SLA Policies | SLAs |
Time Entries | KObjects |
Skills | Queues & Routing |
Ticket Forms | Settings |
Automation Rules | Workflows |
The actual movement of data must follow a logical sequence to maintain relationships between different pieces of information. For example, a ticket cannot be assigned to a customer who does not exist yet.
The first step is moving your Users and Teams. Freshdesk agents become Kustomer Users, and your groups are transformed into Teams.
Once your staff structure is in place, move your Companies. This allows you to associate customers with their organizations right from the start.
Next, migrate your Customers. Freshdesk contacts map directly to Kustomer Customers. It is vital to use unique identifiers like email addresses to prevent creating duplicate records during this phase.
After your customers are settled, you can bring over your Knowledge Base Articles and Shortcuts. Freshdesk solution articles move into KB articles, while canned responses become shortcuts.
The most complex part of the process is the migration of Conversations and Messages. Freshdesk tickets are converted into Kustomer conversations.
Within these, ticket replies are migrated as Messages, while both private and public notes from Freshdesk are moved into Kustomer’s internal Notes object.
If these communications have Attachments, they are created and linked to the specific message or note they belong to. Finally, you can migrate historical Satisfaction Responses to preserve your customer feedback history.
Post Migration Configuration
Once the bulk of your data is in the system, you must rebuild the automation and routing logic that makes your team efficient.
- Rebuild Workflows: Freshdesk automation rules for ticket creation, updates, and hourly triggers must be manually remapped into Kustomer’s powerful Workflow engine.
- Configure Queues and Routing Rules: Recreate your assignment logic to ensure conversations are automatically directed to the right teams.
- Set Up Sub Statuses: If you used custom ticket statuses in Freshdesk, you will need to manually configure Sub Statuses in Kustomer to match that workflow.
- Verify Knowledge Base Themes: Ensure your public facing knowledge base looks correct by reviewing your migrated content within Kustomer’s theme editor.
Insider Secrets
- Bypass Rate Limits for KObject with importedAt: Standard API calls are restricted, but Kustomer allows a special privilege for migrations. If you include an importedAt timestamp in your API request body, those calls are generally not subject to the standard rate limits.
- Order of Creation for Attachments: You cannot upload an attachment in a vacuum. You must first create the message or note it belongs to, and then use that specific ID to link the file.
- Preserving Your Timeline: To keep your migration from looking like everything happened today, Kustomer allows administrators to manually set createdAt and modifiedAt values for messages and conversations. This ensures your historical timeline remains accurate.
- Custom Objects for Time Entries: Kustomer doesn't have a built in "Time Entry" object like Freshdesk does. The pro move is to create a custom Klass specifically for time logs and link each record to its respective conversation.
- Sequential KB Migration: When moving your knowledge base, you must create your Categories and Folders first. Articles require a folderId or categoryId upon creation, so the structure must exist before the content can be placed.
- Deep Pagination Warnings: When exporting data from Freshdesk, avoid requesting page numbers over 500. These requests are performance intensive and can lead to extremely slow response times or timeouts.
Summary
The journey from Freshdesk to Kustomer represents an evolution in how you manage customer relationships. By following a logical sequence, you ensure that no detail is lost.
While rebuilding automation logic requires manual effort, it provides an excellent opportunity to optimize your processes within Kustomer’s framework.
Utilizing advanced API features like the importedAt property will save you time, and once your workflows are live, you will have a more robust view of every customer interaction.
If you’d rather focus on your revenue instead of wrestling with mapping sheets and pagination loops, ClonePartner can handle the full migration for you. Every project gets a dedicated engineer who understands the nuances of both APIs and ensures zero downtime.