The Complete Guide to Migrating from Help Scout to Zendesk

Moving your support operations from Help Scout to Zendesk is a significant milestone for any team looking to scale their customer experience.

This process involves translating your historical data into a new ecosystem that functions with its own unique logic and data models.

By following a structured path, you can ensure that your agents hit the ground running without losing the valuable context of past customer interactions.

Define your migration scope

Before you begin the technical heavy lifting, you need to decide what exactly is coming with you. A successful transition requires a clear understanding of what can be automated and what requires a human touch.

What to migrate via the API

Most of your core data can be moved programmatically to maintain integrity and save time. This includes your primary records such as users, which include both your internal staff and your customers.

Your historical conversations and their associated threads will also travel through the API to become Zendesk tickets and comments.

Additionally, the structure of your knowledge base, including collections, categories, and articles, is best handled via automation to preserve the hierarchy you have built. Even your redirects and tags are suitable for this method.

What to configure manually

The "brain" of your help desk, or the logic that routes your data, usually needs to be rebuilt by hand. Workflows in Help Scout do not have a direct programmatic equivalent in Zendesk and must be re-created as triggers and automations.

Similarly, your saved replies will need to be manually transformed into macros. While the data itself moves via API, the settings that govern how that data is displayed, such as ticket forms and specific brand configurations, also require manual setup in the Zendesk Admin Center.

What to archive

Migration is an excellent time to leave clutter behind. You should identify older Help Center articles that are no longer relevant and archive them rather than importing them into your active knowledge base.

You might also choose to archive very old conversation logs that are no longer needed for active reporting but must be kept for compliance.

This ensures your new Zendesk environment is clean and optimized for current performance.

Prepare Zendesk for data import

Before the first bit of data moves, your new environment must be ready to receive it. Think of this as laying the foundation for your new support center.

• Re-create all custom fields for users, organizations, and tickets so that there is a landing spot for your Help Scout metadata.
• Enable user and organization tagging in your customer settings to ensure the API can properly associate these labels during import.
• Define your user segments and permission groups within Zendesk Guide to determine who can view and edit your migrated articles.
• If you are managing multiple distinct product lines, establish your brands in Zendesk to ensure data is partitioned correctly.
• Configure your groups, which will serve as the destination for your Help Scout teams and inboxes.

Migrate objects

The migration process follows a logical sequence where each step builds upon the previous one. This ensures that when complex objects like tickets arrive, all the related profiles and fields are already in place to greet them.

The Data Models Help Scout organizes agents and ticket flows through teams and inboxes. In Zendesk, these both map to groups, which are the core element of the ticket workflow.

For your knowledge base, Help Scout uses a hierarchy of collections and categories. These translate to Zendesk categories and sections respectively.

When it comes to the conversations themselves, Help Scout threads (replies and chats) become public comments, while notes are migrated as private internal notes.

Data  Mapping

Migration Order

1. Definitions and Structures: Start by creating your custom fields and help center categories so the system knows where to put incoming data.
2. Groups and Organizations: Move your teams, inboxes, and organizations next to establish the "where" and "who" of your support structure.
3. Users: Import your agents and customers, ensuring they are linked to the correct groups and organizations.
4. Knowledge Base Content: Migrate your sections, articles, and their embedded assets to populate your self service portal.
5. Conversations: Finally, import your tickets and comments, linking them to the users and tags you have already created.
6. Cleanup: Finalize the move by setting up your redirect rules to maintain SEO and survey responses to keep your historical satisfaction data.

Post Migration Configuration

Once the data is in, there are several manual steps to bring your new system to life.

• Rebuild your workflows using Zendesk triggers for real time actions and automations for time based events.
• Convert your most used saved replies into macros to keep agent responses consistent.
• Review your ticket form statuses to ensure they are correctly associated with your new custom ticket statuses.
• Customize your Help Center theme to match your brand's aesthetic.
• Verify that your redirect rules are functioning correctly for any deleted or archived content.

Insider Secrets

1. The Guide Media Shuffle: Moving images in articles isn't a direct upload. You have to follow a specific three step dance: first request an upload URL, then upload the actual file, and finally create the media object. Only after this can you associate it with an article.
2. Attachment Tokens are Temporary: When migrating conversation attachments, you must upload the files first to get a token. This token is only valid for 60 minutes, so make sure your script creates the associated ticket comment promptly before the token expires.
3. Author ID vs. Authenticated User: When you set an author_id on a migrated comment, that user appears as the author. However, Zendesk considers the person who made the API request as the actual "updater," which can cause your triggers to behave unexpectedly if you don't account for this distinction.
4. The Whitespace Trap: Zendesk is very picky about organization names. It automatically trims leading and trailing whitespace. If you have two organizations in Help Scout that differ only by a space at the end, Zendesk will see them as duplicates and reject the second one.
5. HTML Body is Your Friend: To preserve the rich formatting of your Help Scout threads, always use the html_body property for comments rather than a plain text body. Plain text can strip out essential formatting and collapse your carefully placed line breaks.
6. Bulk Import for History: If you are moving a massive mountain of history (more than 1,000 tickets), don't use the standard creation methods. Use the bulk import feature to avoid triggering unnecessary business rules and notifications to your customers.

Summary

Migrating from Help Scout to Zendesk requires balancing automated data transfers with thoughtful manual configuration.

By following the correct order, from fields to tickets, you preserve the complex relationships within your data. While the API handles the bulk of the content, your focus should remain on rebuilding the workflows that drive your team's efficiency.

With the right preparation and these insider tips, you can transform your support experience and unlock the full potential of your new platform.

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.

Further Reading

• Help scout
• Zendesk