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Nerve Centre KPIs · Audit Profile · Sentiment Settings Zendesk ticket state means little to a merchant unless it’s joined to the audit findings VortexIQ filed and to the revenue those fixes protect. This audit answers: (1) is the API token still good and the brands readable, (2) is the backlog under control (oldest open, blocked, by priority/status), (3) are people overloaded or work left unassigned, and (4) - the stickiness test - are the findings we filed into Zendesk actually getting resolved, or quietly dying in the queue (abandoned >14d, resolution rate <50%)?

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What this audit checks

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Authentication & access

  • API token valid (auth on /api/v2/users/me.json) and not revoked
  • Subdomain correct and reachable (correct data-residency region)
  • Connector account has agent/admin role with Search + Tickets read scope
  • All expected brands readable (multi-brand aggregation complete)

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Backlog health

  • Open ticket count vs 30-day baseline (sudden growth = drowning signal)
  • Blocked / On-hold ticket count + change WoW
  • Oldest open ticket age (>90 days = backlog rot)
  • Backlog-by-priority skew (Urgent+High >50% of open = firefighting)
  • Backlog-by-status distribution (New/Open/Pending/On-hold mix)

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Throughput & capacity

  • Tickets resolved (7d) dropped >25% vs prior week
  • Avg cycle time degradation >25% week-over-week
  • Assignees with >10 open tickets (overload signal)
  • Unassigned tickets > 5 (warn) / > 20 (critical) - work nobody owns
  • Sprint scope-creep (>15% added after the triage window started)

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VortexIQ findings lifecycle (the stickiness test)

  • Abandoned findings - vortex_iq-tagged tickets, no status change >14d
  • Finding resolution rate over rolling 90d (target >75%, alert <50%)
  • Avg time-to-fix for resolved findings (>14d sustained)
  • Findings closed without a deploy/evidence comment (silent dismissals)
  • Regression rate - findings reopened after Solved

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Cross-channel: revenue-at-risk (the killer area)

  • Critical findings from sibling connectors (shopify/bigcommerce/adobe/cybersource) older than 7 days with NO Zendesk ticket - coverage gap
  • Abandoned findings count rising while a commerce sibling’s refund_rate climbs - measured-but-not-fixed revenue leak
  • High-LTV customers (top decile per commerce sibling) waiting on unresolved vortex_iq tickets
  • Zendesk tickets referencing decommissioned / archived integrations - stale work

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Severity thresholds

SignalWarnCritical
vortexiq_findings_abandoned515
vortexiq_finding_resolution_rate7550
blocked_tickets38
unassigned_tickets520
oldest_open_ticket_age_days6090
cycle_time_change_pct2550
scope_creep_pct1530

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Data sources

  • GET https://{subdomain}.zendesk.com/api/v2/users/me.json - Token + account/region sanity
  • GET https://{subdomain}.zendesk.com/api/v2/brands.json - Brand inventory for multi-brand aggregation
  • GET https://{subdomain}.zendesk.com/api/v2/groups.json - Group inventory + workload split
  • GET https://{subdomain}.zendesk.com/api/v2/users.json - Agent inventory + capacity calc (assignee load)
  • GET https://{subdomain}.zendesk.com/api/v2/search.json - Backlog reads: status/priority counts, oldest-open, by-assignee, abandoned-findings, blocked
  • GET https://{subdomain}.zendesk.com/api/v2/search/count.json - Finding resolution-rate numerator/denominator counts
  • GET https://{subdomain}.zendesk.com/api/v2/tickets.json - Finding-ticket lifecycle reads (in-flight, resolved, time-to-fix)