Eliminating Cross Platform Friction via Custom Zendesk & Shipworks Integration
How Project 19 engineered a new application called Jupiter to grant customer support agents complete operational autonomy and accelerate ticket resolution.
Executive Summary
Our client operates a high scale enterprise ecommerce business running multiple online stores that generate multi million dollar sales monthly. With a massive consumer base spread across the United States, managing high order volumes requires frictionless precision from centralized logistics warehouses. However, an operational bottleneck emerged inside their customer support channel. Because customer service environments were siloed from fulfillment systems, executing routine post purchase order changes was a highly manual, time consuming challenge.
Project 19 was brought in to eliminate this friction. We engineered and deployed Jupiter, a custom application integrated directly into the client's Zendesk UI as an embedded widget. By bridging the gap between Zendesk and the client's central order processing software, Shipworks, Project 19 empowered customer support agents to update orders and process financial refunds autonomously without ever leaving their communication dashboard.
Technology Insight: What is Zendesk?
Zendesk is a cloud based customer service platform designed to help businesses manage customer interactions, support tickets, and engagement across multiple channels.
Because it consolidates all incoming customer requests into a single clean screen, it serves as the primary home base and dashboard for support teams worldwide. Project 19 leveraged this layout by embedding our custom application directly into its native user interface framework, allowing data from other internal platforms to view alongside regular client messages.
The Challenge: A Fragmented, Clunky Workflow
In high-volume e-commerce, order updates—such as changing shipping details, adjusting item quantities, or modifying item variations—frequently occur right after an order is placed. Because adjustments inherently alter the transactional financial balance, they regularly generate partial or full refunds. Prior to Project 19's intervention, the client's customer support workflow was clunky, fragmented, and heavily manual due to a complete lack of system integration:
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1
Constant System-Hopping
Agents had to repeatedly switch screens between Zendesk (to converse with the customer) and Shipworks (the core fulfillment system) to verify order states, check inventory, and log adjustments.
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Manual Refund Processing
Adjustments made to live orders did not flow to payment gateways automatically. Staff had to cross-reference multiple tools to compute and process corresponding refunds manually.
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3
Compounding Ticket Latency
This disjointed workflow dragged out the resolution time for simple tickets, resulting in support backlogs during high-traffic sales windows.
The Solution: "Jupiter"
To eliminate cross-system friction, Project 19 architected and built Jupiter. Rather than introducing another separate, disjointed platform for the agents to manage, we engineered Jupiter to integrate directly into the existing customer service infrastructure, functioning as a native widget inside the Zendesk UI. Jupiter securely bridges the gap between customer conversations and warehouse fulfillment by integrating deeply with Shipworks:
Key Capabilities
Embedded Order Management
When an agent views an open customer ticket in Zendesk, the Jupiter widget instantly surfaces real-time order logs fetched directly from Shipworks.
Autonomous Modifications
Agents can directly update shipping addresses, cancel lines, or alter ordered items right inside the Zendesk sidebar, pushing live updates straight to Shipworks.
Instant Automated Refunds
Whenever an order modification generates a financial credit, Jupiter calculates the discrepancy automatically and processes the customer's refund securely on the spot.
Business Impact & Productivity Improvements
By rolling out Jupiter, Project 19 fundamentally transformed the client's day-to-day customer support velocity, driving monumental improvements across their internal processing pipelines:
- Accelerated Ticket Resolution: The support team now processes open tickets significantly faster and with 100% accuracy. By eliminating manual data re-entry across platforms, the time to resolve modification tickets plummeted, vastly improving overall team productivity.
- Complete Support Autonomy: Customer support agents operate completely independently within their native Zendesk environment.
- Operational Security: Because agents use Jupiter to relay changes, they no longer require direct access to the main order processing system (Shipworks). This successfully shields the core fulfillment database from broad internal access and accidental manual overrides.
The Takeaway
By bridging the gap between customer communication (Zendesk) and fulfillment logistics (Shipworks), Project 19 transformed a major operational bottleneck into a competitive advantage. The client can now comfortably absorb surging sales volumes during peak seasons without requiring a proportional increase in support headcount.