Auto-triage and tag Zendesk tickets using Claude Cowork

Prerequisites

Overview

Claude Cowork lets you define a recurring task in plain English and have Claude execute it on a schedule — no script or skill file required. You describe what you want Claude to do, and it uses its built-in tools to call the Zendesk API directly, classify tickets by reading their content, and apply tags. This is the fastest way to get ticket triage working with zero code.

Step 1: Find your Zendesk API credentials

In Zendesk, go to Admin Center → Apps and integrations → APIs → Zendesk API. Enable Token Access if it isn't already, then click Add API token.

You'll need three values:

• Subdomain: the acme part of acme.zendesk.com
• Email: your Zendesk account email
• API token: copy from the API token page (shown once on creation)

Step 2: Create groups if needed

Navigate to Admin Center → People → Teams → Groups. Make sure you have groups matching your topic areas:

• Billing Support
• Shipping Support
• Product Support
• Account Support
• Technical Support
• General Support

If these groups already exist, skip this step.

Step 3: Create the Cowork task

Open Claude Desktop and go to the Cowork tab. Click + New task.

Title: Triage and tag untagged Zendesk tickets

Description:

You are a support ops assistant. Your job is to classify untagged Zendesk tickets by topic and assign them to the correct support group.
 
Steps:
1. Search for open tickets that don't have any topic tag yet:
   GET https://{SUBDOMAIN}.zendesk.com/api/v2/search.json?query=type:ticket status:open -tags:topic-billing -tags:topic-shipping -tags:topic-product -tags:topic-account -tags:topic-technical -tags:topic-uncategorized
   Auth: Basic — username: {EMAIL}/token:{API_TOKEN}
 
2. For each ticket, read the subject and description.
 
3. Classify each ticket into one topic:
   - topic-billing: invoices, charges, payments, subscriptions, pricing
   - topic-shipping: delivery, tracking, packages, lost items, shipping delays
   - topic-product: product quality, defects, wrong item, size/color issues
   - topic-account: login, password, account access, profile settings
   - topic-technical: errors, bugs, API issues, integrations, crashes
   - topic-uncategorized: anything that doesn't fit above
 
4. For each classified ticket, update it via PUT:
   PUT https://{SUBDOMAIN}.zendesk.com/api/v2/tickets/{id}.json
   Body: {"ticket": {"tags": [EXISTING_TAGS, "topic-{category}"]}}
   Do NOT remove existing tags — always merge.
 
5. If the topic has a matching group, set the group_id too:
   - topic-billing → Billing Support
   - topic-shipping → Shipping Support
   - topic-product → Product Support
   - topic-account → Account Support
   - topic-technical → Technical Support
   - topic-uncategorized → General Support
 
6. Print a summary: how many tickets checked, how many classified per topic.
 
Important:
- Skip tickets that already have a topic-* tag.
- Never remove existing tags — only add.
- Use your judgment for ambiguous tickets — a message like "my order never showed up" is a shipping issue even without the word "shipping."

Replace {'{'}SUBDOMAIN{'}'}, {'{'}EMAIL{'}'}, and {'{'}API_TOKEN{'}'} with your real values.

Step 4: Set the schedule

Frequency: Every 30 minutes

Cowork will execute the task on this cadence and show you the output each time.

Step 5: Run manually first

Before trusting the schedule, click Run now in Cowork to test it. Claude will:

1. Call the Zendesk search API for untagged open tickets
2. Read each ticket's subject and description
3. Classify each ticket into a topic
4. Apply the tag and group assignment via the API
5. Print a run summary

A successful run looks like:

Searched for untagged open tickets. Found 8 to classify.
 
#48201 "Why was I double-charged?" → topic-billing (Billing Support)
#48205 "Package still hasn't arrived" → topic-shipping (Shipping Support)
#48208 "Getting a 500 error on checkout" → topic-technical (Technical Support)
#48211 "Can't reset my password" → topic-account (Account Support)
#48215 "The item arrived damaged" → topic-product (Product Support)
#48219 "How do I update my payment method?" → topic-billing (Billing Support)
#48222 "Integration with our CRM stopped working" → topic-technical (Technical Support)
#48225 "General question about your service" → topic-uncategorized (General Support)
 
Done. Tagged 8 tickets: 2 billing, 1 shipping, 2 technical, 1 account, 1 product, 1 uncategorized.

Step 6: Refine the task description

After the first few runs, review the tagged tickets in Zendesk. If classifications are off, add examples or exceptions to the task description:

"Tickets mentioning 'payment method' or 'update card' should be tagged as topic-account, not topic-billing. Tickets about items arriving damaged should be tagged as topic-product, not topic-shipping."

Cowork's task description is your prompt — the more specific you are, the better Claude performs.

When to use this approach

• You want triage working today without writing or deploying any code
• Your ticket volume is under 200/day and 30-minute batching is acceptable
• You're evaluating categories before committing to Zendesk triggers or a cron script
• You want AI-quality classification without setting up a separate Anthropic API key

When to switch approaches

• You need triage to run 24/7 reliably → use the Agent Skill with cron or GitHub Actions
• You need instant classification → use Zendesk native triggers (keyword-based, fires on creation)
• Your ticket volume is high and batching creates visible delays → use n8n with a webhook trigger

Cost

• Cowork uses your Claude Desktop subscription — no additional API costs
• Each run processes up to 50 tickets and takes 1-3 minutes depending on volume