Use Zendesk from your MCP Client

This guide demonstrates how to connect your Zendesk workspace to Claude Desktop using the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Once connected, you can analyze support tickets, track customer satisfaction trends, and generate response templates without leaving the Claude interface.

As Zendesk doesn’t provide an official MCP server, this guide uses the open-source zendesk-mcp-server that bridges your Zendesk workspace and Claude Desktop.

Here’s what the connection looks like in action:

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have:

• Claude Desktop  installed
• A Zendesk account  with admin access or API permissions
• The uv  Python package manager

Setting up a Zendesk application

In your Zendesk dashboard, click the Settings icon in the sidebar.

On the Settings page, click Apps and integrations. Then, click API tokens in the left navigation menu and click the Add API token button.

Zendesk then displays the API token creation form. Enter Zendesk MCP token in the Description field and click Save.

Copy the generated token immediately and save it securely. You won’t be able to view this token again. You’ll need this token to configure the Claude Desktop connection in the next step.

To make sure you can make API requests to the Zendesk API with the token, navigate to the API configuration page and select the Allow API token access option displayed there.

Installing the Zendesk MCP server in Claude

To install the Zendesk MCP server, you need uv installed on your machine.

For macOS users (recommended):

For other platforms:

Note: If you install uv using the script method and Claude Desktop can’t find the uv command, you may need to use the full path in your configuration: /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/.local/bin/uv instead of just uv.

Once it’s done, clone the zendesk-mcp-server project.

Then, navigate to the newly cloned project.

Install the project dependencies and the project itself:

Inside the project, create a file named .env. Add your Zendesk credentials to this file:

• ZENDESK_SUBDOMAIN: Add the subdomain part of your Zendesk URL. For example, if your Zendesk URL is https://mycompany-123.zendesk.com, then use mycompany-123.
• ZENDESK_EMAIL: Add the email address associated with the account you used to create the API token.
• ZENDESK_API_KEY : Add the API token you created earlier.

The file should look like this:

Now, update your Claude Desktop configuration to include the MCP server.

In Settings, go to Developer > Edit Config.

In the claude_desktop_config.json file that opens, add the Zendesk MCP Server configuration:

Replace PATH_TO_MCP_SERVER with the absolute path to your cloned zendesk-mcp-server directory.

Restart Claude Desktop to load the server.

Testing the connection

Test that the Zendesk MCP server has been installed correctly by entering the following prompt:

You should receive a similar reply to the following:

Then, ask Claude to add comments to the tickets to show they’re being addressed. For example:

You should see the comment added in your Zendesk dashboard.

Conclusion

Now that you can access your Zendesk workspace through Claude Desktop, try combining this functionality with other MCP servers. For example, you could use the Slack integration to automatically notify your support team about urgent tickets, or connect with your CRM to update customer records based on ticket resolutions.