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Trust Center →Switching from Zendesk
Moving off Zendesk without a big-bang cutover
Most teams do not stay on a helpdesk because it is the best tool — they stay because migrating is a project nobody wants to own. This page is the honest version: what moves, what does not, and how to test FlowTux on live traffic while Zendesk keeps running.
Run both. Decide with data.
The risk in switching helpdesks is not the import — it is committing before you know whether the AI actually closes your tickets. So do not commit.
- 1Keep your current helpdesk runningNothing is switched off. Your existing queue, SLAs, and reporting stay exactly as they are.
- 2Point one channel at FlowTuxConnect Slack, or one error tracker, or one inbox — whichever source produces the tickets you most want triaged.
- 3Import your historyWe load your ticket export so Tux AI has your categories, resolutions, and duplicate patterns from day one rather than learning from scratch.
- 4Run both for two weeksCompare the queues side by side on real traffic: what got auto-resolved, what got deduplicated, what still needed a person.
- 5Cut over, or do notIf the numbers do not justify the move, you have lost two weeks of parallel running and no data. If they do, you switch with evidence rather than a leap.
What carries over
- Tickets with their full comment threads, timestamps, and requester identity
- Ticket status, priority, and your existing category and tag taxonomy
- Organizations and end-user records
- Custom field values, mapped to FlowTux fields during import
- Attachments referenced in ticket threads
What does not
- Zendesk Guide help-center articles — export separately and reload them into your FlowTux knowledge base
- Trigger, automation, and macro logic. FlowTux replaces most of these with AI triage rather than rule chains, so they are rebuilt rather than translated
- Marketplace app configuration and any custom app code
- CSAT history and Explore dashboards, which stay in Zendesk as a historical record
Getting your data out of Zendesk
Zendesk Admin Center → Account → Tools → Reports → Export produces a JSON or CSV export of tickets and users. For larger instances the Incremental Export API is the reliable path; send us the export and we handle the mapping.
How long it takes
A single-brand Zendesk instance with under 50,000 tickets typically imports the same day. Parallel running is the part that takes two weeks, and that is deliberate.
Migration help is included — we do the import and the field mapping with you on a call, at no extra cost and on every plan.
Start with two weeks in parallel
Keep Zendesk running. Point one channel at FlowTux, import your history, and compare the two queues on live traffic before anything is switched off.