Open a Zendesk account that has been live for a few years and you can read its history. Macros written for a returns policy that has changed twice since. Triggers named after agents who left. A view for a tier 2 team that was folded back into tier 1. Copying all of that into Gorgias is the easy part of a migration, and also the part that guarantees you pay to move your clutter.
This guide follows the order in which decisions come up on a real move: whether to go at all, what the new account should hold, how the switch happens and what the first month looks like.
First, check that Zendesk is the problem
Before anyone exports a file, be sure the helpdesk is what's holding the team back. Two situations look similar from the outside and need opposite answers.
In the first, the tool is the bottleneck. Agents jump to Shopify for every order question, the bill climbs every renewal, and a small routing change needs the one admin who remembers how everything connects. Gorgias usually fixes this, because the order data sits next to the conversation and the rules are simple enough for an ops lead to own.
In the second, there's no support process to speak of. No agreed tone, no escalation path, nobody responsible for the macro library. A new helpdesk won't change that. The same habits will rebuild the same mess in Gorgias within a few months. Write the process down first, then pick the tool.
There's also a third case. Gorgias runs several stores from one account, but some large setups with many brands, regions and separate teams sit better in Zendesk. If yours is one of them, we'll tell you on the first call instead of selling you a project.
What the 4-8 weeks are spent on
A migration takes 4-8 weeks. Several brands, a dense routing matrix, a long list of custom fields or many connected apps push it toward the long end.
The price is scoped and fixed before you sign. Add to it the Zendesk seats you keep paying while the old account stays readable after the switch.
Be wary of a plan that promises the whole job in a fortnight. The time saved almost always comes out of the audit, and the audit is what protects your ticket history.
The audit: read the account as it's used today
The opening weeks go into studying Zendesk as your team uses it now, which is rarely how it was configured. We pull recent resolved tickets and look at which macros agents applied, which triggers fired and which views anyone opens. In most accounts a small share of the macros covers most of the replies. That share gets rebuilt. The rest becomes archive.
Every object then lands in one row of this table.
| In Zendesk | In Gorgias | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Open and closed tickets, full threads | Imported and searchable from day one | When a customer writes back, the agent needs the earlier conversation |
| Customer profiles | Filled from the Shopify integration, with orders attached | The store is a better source for order data than the old helpdesk |
| Custom ticket fields | Moved when Gorgias has a clean equivalent | Fields with no match get merged or retired |
| Macros | Rewritten, only the ones in use | Importing the full library imports the clutter with it |
| Triggers and automations | Rewritten as Gorgias Rules | The two engines are built differently, so each rule is rebuilt around what it achieved |
| SLA policies | Set up again on business hours and priorities | The settings don't translate field for field |
| Views and groups | Drawn from the team you have now | A view for a team that no longer exists is noise |
| Unused apps, dead integrations, reports nobody reads | Left in Zendesk | Nobody will miss them |
Tickets go through Gorgias's built-in Zendesk import, with our own mapping for the fields it can't place on its own.
A good migration ends with a Gorgias account noticeably smaller than the Zendesk one you're leaving. If both are the same size, the project copied when it should have cleaned.
Rebuilding in Gorgias's own logic
Macros get written for the questions customers send today, with Shopify variables so the order details fill in without the agent typing them. One clear macro per real situation beats a handful of near duplicates that agents have to choose between.
Rules start from the outcome you want, such as "VIP customers with an open order skip the general queue", and work backwards to the conditions. Trying to reproduce the exact granularity of Zendesk triggers produces brittle rules that break the first time a tag changes.
SLAs follow the same thinking. List the promises you actually make to customers, like a first reply on email within your business hours, and build those. Leave out the conditions nobody has checked in a year.
Views follow the jobs your agents do now: returns, order issues, presales, escalations. Whatever the org chart looked like three years ago doesn't matter.
Rehearsal before the date
Agents should practise in the new account, on copied data, before the switch. Short daily sessions work better than one long training the Friday before. Record them so new hires can watch later.
Three documents save a lot of friction:
- A paragraph explaining why the brand is moving, so the team hears the reason before the change lands on them.
- A list of everything agents relied on in Zendesk and where it now lives in Gorgias.
- A rollback plan that names the hour at which, if something is broken, inbound goes back to Zendesk, and who makes that call.
On the technical side, draft the email forwarding for switch day and warn customers if any support address changes. AI Agent gets tested on copied conversations, never on live traffic, before go-live.
The switch weekend
We schedule the switch over a weekend, so the team arrives on Monday to an inbox that already works.
- Friday evening. New email stops landing in Zendesk and forwarding sends it to Gorgias. Agents can still close out what's already open in Zendesk.
- Saturday. A final import picks up anything created after the forwarding changed.
- Saturday and Sunday. We test each channel end to end, sending real messages through email, chat, Instagram, WhatsApp and voice.
- Monday. The team works in Gorgias, with a shared channel to flag anything odd. For the first two days we review quality every hour and adjust rules as problems appear.
AI Agent earns its permissions
Most brands want AI Agent live on the same date as the switch. That works, on one condition. During the first week a person reviews its replies before customers see them.
After that week, automatic replies open one category at a time, starting with the topics where its drafts needed no edits, such as order status or address changes. Each category stays under watch until it holds up, then the next one opens.
A team will forgive a new inbox for a rough few days. An AI that answers wrong in its first days gets switched off, and turning it back on later is a much harder conversation.
The month after
Zendesk stays read-only for 30 days, so agents can look up old context when they need it. After that, export a final archive and close the account.
Don't extend that window. As long as the old tool is open, part of the team will keep drifting back to it, and the new habits never settle.
Expect the first week to run slower than normal and staff for it.
Mistakes that cost the most
- Switching in the run-up to Black Friday or any other sales peak. Pick a quiet month.
- Importing every macro "just in case".
- Leaving agent training until after go-live.
- Recreating each Zendesk SLA condition one by one.
- Letting AI Agent send on its own from the first hour.
- Keeping both tools open past the read-only month.
- Handing the project to someone in ops as a side job "because we're technical". The time the whole team loses while ramping up usually costs more than outside help.
Before you decide
If you're still weighing the two platforms, start with our Gorgias vs Zendesk comparison for Shopify brands. If you've decided, here is how we run migrations.
On a 30-minute call we open your Zendesk on screen share and tell you whether moving makes sense. If it doesn't, you leave with a list of what to fix in Zendesk instead. CTRL runs on Gorgias, and our team was named Best European Gorgias Partner 2024.
Book a call. Half an hour, no deck.
