Deciding to switch your support platform is a major milestone for any customer service team. Moving from Zendesk to Kustomer offers a chance to embrace a more customer-centric data model, but getting your data from one place to the other requires a clear roadmap.
This guide will walk you through the process of transitioning your history and configurations while ensuring nothing gets lost in the shuffle.
Define your migration scope
Before you start writing code or clicking buttons, you need to understand exactly what is moving and how it will get there. This ensures your team knows what to expect on day one in the new environment.
What to migrate via the API
The bulk of your historical data should be handled through the API to ensure accuracy and maintain relationships between records.
This includes your end users and staff accounts, along with their identities like email addresses and phone numbers. You will also want to move yourinteraction history, specifically tickets and their associated public and private comments.
Your Knowledge Base content, including categories, articles, and article translations, is also a prime candidate for API migration. Finally, historical CSAT responses and business schedules can be imported directly to maintain your reporting continuity.
What to configure manually
Some elements of your platform are built differently and require a human touch to function correctly in the new system. Kustomer uses a unique logic engine, so your Zendesk Triggers and Automations must be manually rebuilt as Workflows.
Similarly, the visual layout of your tickets, known as Ticket Forms, will need to be recreated using KViews (Klass Views) to ensure your agents see the right information at the right time.
Redirect rules for your help center should also be set up manually to ensure your SEO remains intact during the transition.
What to archive
Migration is a perfect time to clean house. You might choose to archive very old suspended tickets or article labels that no longer serve a purpose in your current support strategy.
If you have historical audit logs or ticket events that are not necessary for daily operations, you can keep them in a separate data warehouse or export them to a static file rather than importing them into your active Kustomer instance.
Prepare Kustomer for data import
To make the import successful, the "destination" must be ready to receive the data. You should handle these configurations before the first piece of data moves.
- Define Custom Attributes: You must create Custom Attributes (Metadata) on your Customer and Conversation objects to house data from your Zendesk User and Ticket fields.
- Establish Teams: Recreate your Zendesk Groups as Teams in Kustomer so that conversation ownership is preserved during the import.
- Configure Business Schedules: Set up your operational hours to ensure your service level agreements (SLAs) calculate correctly as soon as tickets land.
- Define Klasses: If you have complex data structures, create the necessary Klasses (Custom Objects) to act as containers for that information.
- Map Organizations: Prepare your Company records if you plan to link groups of customers to specific business entities.
Migrate objects
The migration follows a specific logical sequence to satisfy data dependencies. For example, you cannot assign a ticket to an agent who does not exist yet.
Mapping Table
Zendesk Object | Kustomer Object |
Users (Agents/Admins) | Users |
Users (End-users) | Customers |
Groups | Teams |
Organizations | Companies |
Ticket Fields | Custom Attributes |
User Identities | Customer Identifiers |
Tickets | Conversations |
Public Comments | Messages |
Private Comments | Notes |
KB Categories | KB Categories |
KB Sections | KB Categories |
Articles / Translations | Articles / Versions |
CSAT Responses | Satisfaction |
Macros | Shortcuts |
Triggers / Automations | Workflows |
Ticket Forms | KViews |
Redirect Rules | Custom Domains |
Step 1: The Foundation
Start by migrating your Users (Agents and Admins) and Teams. This allows the system to correctly attribute ownership for everything that follows.
Next, import your Organizations as Companies so that customer profiles can be linked to them immediately upon creation.
Step 2: Customer Profiles and Structure
Import your End Users along with their User Identities, such as secondary emails and phone numbers. Simultaneously, you should build your Knowledge Base structure.
Zendesk Categories map directly to Kustomer Categories. However, Zendesk Sections do not have a 1:1 equivalent object, so the workaround is to map them as nested Categories within the Kustomer hierarchy.
Step 3: Content and Interactions
Now you can bring over your Articles, Article Translations, and Article Attachments. Once the people and the knowledge are in place, migrate your Tickets as Conversations.
Following the ticket headers, import theinteraction history where Public Comments become Messages and Private Comments become Notes.
Finally, link your CSAT responses to the relevant conversations to finish the data move.
Post Migration Configuration
Once your data is successfully moved, you need to turn on the lights and make the system operational.
- Rebuild Workflows: Use the manual mapping of your Zendesk triggers to build out branching logic in Kustomer Workflows.
- Design Klass Views: Create the UI screens (KViews) that agents will use to view and edit ticket information.
- Import Shortcuts: Finalize your Macros as Shortcuts, ensuring any dynamic text or placeholders function correctly in the new environment.
- Validate Satisfaction Surveys: Confirm that your Satisfaction survey triggers are ready to send for new conversations.
- Activate Routing: Assign your Queues and Routing rules to ensure incoming messages land with the right teams.
Insider Secrets
- Use the ImportedAt flag: When importing Conversations or Messages via the API, include the "importedAt" attribute in your request body; this bypasses standard rate limits and prevents your import from being throttled.
- External IDs are your best friend: Always map the original Zendesk Ticket ID or User ID to an "externalId" field in Kustomer; this allows you to perform easy lookups and prevents duplicate records if you need to run the import script multiple times.
- Attachments require two steps: You cannot simply send a URL; you must first create an attachment object to get a temporary upload policy, then upload the file to that specific URL before it can be linked to a message.
- Nesting logic for Sections: Since Zendesk has a Category/Section/Article hierarchy and Kustomer is Category/Category/Article, remember that Kustomer allows infinite nesting; you can preserve your exact Guide structure by simply creating sub-categories.
- Author linking is manual: When migrating articles or comments, the API will default the author to the owner of the API token unless you explicitly provide the user ID of the original author.
Summary
Transitioning from Zendesk to Kustomer is a strategic move toward a more integrated view of your customers.
By following a logical migration order, prioritizing your foundational data like Users and Teams, and carefully rebuilding your automation logic, you can ensure a seamless experience for your agents.
While the technical move involves many moving parts, the result is a powerful, highly customized support environment built to grow with your business.
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.