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On a schedule

Follow up on Zendesk tickets waiting on the customer

Each morning, customers whose tickets have been pending for a few days get a polite check-in email, and you get the list.

Runs
On a schedule
Apps
Gmail, Zendesk
AI
Not needed
Access
Zendesk read; gmail.send

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: every weekday at 9am, find Zendesk tickets that have been pending for more than 3 days. Send each customer a short, polite follow-up from my Gmail, and email me the list.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A support team asks a customer for a screenshot or an order number and sets the ticket to pending. Then nothing happens. The customer forgets, the agent moves on, and the ticket either closes automatically with the problem unsolved or sits open for weeks.

A friendly check-in after a few days brings many of those customers back, so problems actually get solved and the queue reflects real work.

What you get out of it

  • Problems get finished

    A nudge brings back customers who meant to reply, so their issue is solved instead of quietly closed.

  • Agents do not have to remember

    No one keeps a list of who to chase; the morning email shows who was contacted.

  • Each customer is chased once

    Every ticket gets one follow-up, so nobody is pestered with repeat emails.

  • A cleaner queue

    Pending tickets either move forward or can be closed with confidence, which makes the backlog numbers honest.

How it works

What happens, step by step

  1. Every weekday at 9am, ClickRuntime searches Zendesk for tickets that have been pending for more than three days.

  2. It skips any ticket it has already followed up on.

  3. Each customer gets a short, polite check-in email from your Gmail, mentioning their ticket number.

  4. You get one email listing the tickets that were chased.

Before it runs live

  • Connect Google through your own Google app (a one-time, 10-minute setup), so it works with your own Gmail
  • Connect Zendesk

What you get

RunsOn a schedule
Follow up on Zendesk tickets waiting on the customertoday, 9:00Succeeded
Email · Morning follow-upsFollowed up on 4 pending tickets: #7012 Bulk import fails (ops@northwind.example), #7040 Missing invoice (ap@acme.example)…

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.
  • Your own rules

    Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.

  • Any number of apps

    One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.

  • AI where it helps

    Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.

  • On a schedule or on each event

    Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

  • Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
  • Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
  • Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
  • Combine it with other Gmail and Zendesk steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.
daily_follow_up_on_pending_zendesk_tickets.pyexample
import base64
from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from datetime import date, timedelta
from clickruntime import on_trigger, http, credentials, state, notify

ZD, AGENT = "https://yourcompany.zendesk.com/api/v2", "you@yourcompany.com"

def zd(method, path, **kw):
    r = http.request(method, ZD + path, auth=(f"{AGENT}/token", credentials.secret("ZENDESK_API_TOKEN")), **kw)
    return r.raise_for_status() or (r.json() if r.content else None)


def send_gmail(to, subject, text):
    raw = base64.urlsafe_b64encode(f"To: {to}\r\nSubject: {subject}\r\nContent-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8\r\n\r\n{text}".encode()).decode()
    build("gmail", "v1", credentials=Credentials(credentials.connection("google", "work")), cache_discovery=False).users().messages().send(userId="me", body={"raw": raw}).execute()

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    cutoff = (date.today() - timedelta(days=3)).isoformat()
    done = set(state.get("done") or [])
    tickets = [t for t in zd("GET", "/search.json", params={"query": f"type:ticket status:pending updated<{cutoff}"})["results"] if t["id"] not in done]
    if not tickets:
        return {"chased": 0}
    lines = []
    for t in tickets:
        user = zd("GET", f"/users/{t['requester_id']}")["user"]
        send_gmail(user["email"], f"Re: {t['subject']} [#{t['id']}]",
                   f"Hi {user['name'].split()[0]},\n\nJust checking in on your request #{t['id']}. Could you reply to our last message "
                   "when you have a moment so we can finish sorting this out?\n\nThanks,\nThe support team")
        lines.append(f"#{t['id']} {t['subject']} ({user['email']})")
        done.add(t["id"])
    notify.email_me(f"Followed up on {len(lines)} pending tickets", "\n".join(lines))
    state.set("done", sorted(done)[-3000:])
    return {"chased": len(lines)}

FAQ

Common questions

Will customers get more than one follow-up?
No. Each ticket gets one follow-up email. If they still do not reply, the ticket is listed for you to decide what to do.
Can I change how many days it waits?
Yes. Three days is a common choice, but you can set any number in the prompt.
Does the reply go back into Zendesk?
The email asks the customer to reply on the original ticket email, so their answer lands back on the ticket.
What permissions does it need?
Zendesk read; gmail.send. Nothing else in your accounts is used.
Does it need AI?
No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.
How many runs does it use?
One run each time it runs (on a schedule). Checks that find nothing to do and stop right away aren't counted.
Can I change how it works?
Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

Set up “Follow up on Zendesk tickets waiting on the customer” from your assistant

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