Predictive Forecasting: Salesforce + Zendesk
Can you trust your forecast for next month? askotter reads Salesforce and Zendesk together and answers it for your business, by text.
How does predictive forecasting with Salesforce and Zendesk work for a small business?
askotter reads Salesforce and Zendesk side by side so it can forecast with live numbers from every connected account. Forecasts that update as your numbers change, with a likely range attached.
Read the full answerShow less
The owner asks follow-up questions by text.
- From Salesforce
- Leads and opportunities, Account and contact data, Pipeline stages and velocity.
- From Zendesk
- Ticket volume and resolution, CSAT scores, Agent performance.
- Status
- Salesforce and Zendesk are on the integration roadmap, so the matching described here starts when that connector ships.
- Not for
- Replacing Salesforce or Zendesk. Both keep working exactly as they do now.
Can you trust your forecast for next month?
Most small business forecasts are last year's numbers in a spreadsheet. They miss that your ad spend doubled this quarter or that the busy season started early.
How askotter handles it
askotter reads Salesforce and Zendesk side by side, so it can forecast with live numbers from every connected account.
A person checks the result before it reaches you. This is part of our PPC management work.
How Salesforce and Zendesk records line up
Salesforce and Zendesk both store the customer's email address. askotter lowercases and trims it on both sides before matching, so the same person shows up as one customer across the two tools.
Both tools can hold a phone number. Numbers are normalised to one international format before matching, which catches customers who never gave an email.
Shared between the two: the customer email address, the phone number and the company or account.
What predictive forecasting uses from each
Predictive forecasting needs enough history to see the seasonal pattern.
From Salesforce that means open pipeline by stage and close date. From Zendesk it means ticket volume by week.
Salesforce and Zendesk are on the integration roadmap, so the matching described here starts when that connector ships.
What each tool sees on its ownShow less
Salesforce on its own
Salesforce sees leads, accounts and opportunities. It knows which campaign produced a lead only when someone records it there.
Timing. Salesforce opportunity stages move when someone updates them, so pipeline data is as current as the team's CRM habits.
Access. A connected app with read-only access to Lead, Contact, Account and Opportunity.
Zendesk on its own
Zendesk sees the complaint and how it was handled. It cannot see what the customer is worth or whether they bought again.
Timing. Zendesk timestamps every ticket, reply and status change.
Access. The Zendesk Support API with a read-only token.
Related guides
- LinkedIn Ads to Salesforce: Why Your Attribution Is Broken. The gap between what LinkedIn claims and what your CRM shows is a measurement problem nobody set up correctly.
- The Marketing Metrics That Matter (and the Ones That Do Not). Most marketing reports are long because the numbers in them are weak. A useful report is short.
Services that use these connections
Other analyses: Salesforce + Zendesk
Questions about Salesforce + Zendesk
Do I need a developer to connect Salesforce and Zendesk?
How is askotter's Predictive Forecasting different from what Salesforce shows on its own?
Salesforce + Zendesk is coming soon
Talk to us about your timeline, and we will confirm the launch date before you commit.
Self-managed is $99/mo and scales with the compute you use. Our team runs it from $600/mo.