Migrate from Kustomer to Zoho Desk

Kustomer Customer records map to Zoho Desk Contact. Email address is the primary dedupe and match key. Standard fields (name, email, phone) map directly; custom properties migrate to Zoho Desk custom fields on the Contact layout. The Zoho Desk Contact is created before any Conversation-to-Ticket migration so that the ContactId reference is satisfied at ticket creation time.

Kustomer Company records map to Zoho Desk Account. The Account is created before Contact import so that the AccountId lookup can be resolved during Contact inserts. Company domain and address fields map to Account Website and address fields respectively. Accounts with no associated Contacts are preserved as standalone Account records.

Kustomer Conversation maps to Zoho Desk Ticket as the primary ticket record. The conversation status (Done/Open) maps to Zoho Desk Ticket Status (Open, Pending, On Hold, Closed). Priority, channel type, and any SLA metadata migrate as standard Ticket fields. Conversation subject becomes Ticket Subject; full message history migrates into Ticket Threads and Ticket Comments. We preserve the original Kustomer conversation ID in a custom field kustomer_conversation_id__c for audit traceability.

Kustomer Messages map to Zoho Desk Ticket Threads (the structured message sequence) with individual comments as Thread entries. Author attribution (agent vs customer) maps to the Thread author type. We preserve message timestamps to maintain chronological ordering. Attachments embedded in messages are extracted and re-uploaded to Zoho Desk as Ticket Attachments linked to the parent Thread. Kustomer's internal notes migrate as internal Ticket Comments with a visibility flag.

Kustomer Users (agents) map to Zoho Desk Agents by email match. We preserve the agent's display name, email, and role. Team memberships in Kustomer map to Zoho Desk Department membership during import. Any Kustomer User without a matching Zoho Desk Agent is held in a reconciliation queue for the customer's admin to provision before the ticket import phase begins.

Kustomer Teams (used for queue assignment and routing) map to Zoho Desk Departments. Each Kustomer Team becomes a Zoho Desk Department with its own agent roster, ticket queue view, and routing rules. Department-level SLA policies are set up in Zoho Desk as a post-import configuration step. We deliver a mapping table of Kustomer Teams to Zoho Desk Departments as part of the migration handoff.

Kustomer Channel records (email, phone, chat, SMS, social) map to Zoho Desk Channel Types. Standard Kustomer channels (email, phone, chat) map directly. Non-standard or app-added channels are flagged during discovery and mapped to the closest Zoho Desk channel type, or mapped to a custom channel field if no standard equivalent exists.

Kustomer KObjects (custom schemas with user-defined fields, relationships, and validation rules) are recreated as Zoho Desk Custom Modules. We inspect the source KObject definition during discovery, document the field types and relationship graph, then create matching custom fields in Zoho Desk before importing any KObject records. Validation rules and cross-KObject relationships require manual re-implementation in Zoho Desk as they cannot be automatically translated. Custom module definitions are validated in a sandbox before production import.

Kustomer Tags (applied across Customers and Conversations) migrate to Zoho Desk Tags. Zoho Desk's native tagging supports plain-text tags. Multi-value tag sets stored as arrays in Kustomer custom properties are flattened to comma-separated tags in Zoho Desk. The customer chooses whether tag scope applies per-record or globally during scoping.

Files attached to Kustomer Messages and Notes are extracted from the export, re-uploaded to Zoho Desk via the API, and linked to the parent Ticket Thread record. Attachment metadata (filename, MIME type, size, upload timestamp) is preserved. Inline images within message bodies are handled as embedded attachments with relative URLs updated to point to the new Zoho Desk attachment URLs post-import.

Kustomer routing rules determine queue assignment and conversation routing. These are platform-specific configuration files that cannot be meaningfully translated to Zoho Desk's rule engine. We do not migrate routing rules as code. We deliver a written inventory of every active Kustomer routing rule with its trigger conditions, priority, and target queue, plus a recommended Zoho Desk Blueprint or workflow equivalent for the customer's admin to rebuild.

Kustomer SLA policies define first-response and resolution time commitments per conversation. Zoho Desk supports SLA policies scoped to departments and ticket categories. We document the source SLA definitions (threshold, priority mapping, business hours calendar) during discovery and deliver an SLA configuration guide for Zoho Desk rather than migrating the policies directly. The customer's admin applies the SLA policy to the appropriate Zoho Desk departments post-import.