Customer Service Management: Setup Guide for New Teams
Do you need to setup a helpdesk for your customers, but you aren’t sure where to begin? Wonder no more, this article will provide everything you need to get started!
First, here’s how to choose between the two helpdesk apps in Service Collection: Customer Service Management and Jira Service Management:
Customer Service Management (CSM) is Atlassian’s customized app for external customer support. Use it when you support people outside your organization - customers, partners, etc., with a branded support experience and AI-powered self-service.
Use Jira Service Management (JSM) for internal service teams, such as IT, HR, facilities, or employee support. Use JSM when the audience is internal, and the experience doesn’t require customer-facing branding.
| Important note: If you’re used to JSM, CSM will look a bit different. All the internal menu items are under the space, while all customer-facing content is under the customer experience. It looks like this: | |
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JSM:
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CSM: |
Steps to follow:
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Confirm access. Make sure Customer Service Management is enabled on your Atlassian site and that the people setting it up have the right permissions. Org admins enable the app and provision users; Jira admins can create the CSM space; project admins configure the customer experience.
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Create your CSM space. In Jira, create a new space using the Customer Service Management template. This gives your team a starting structure for customer requests, workflows, and support work.
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Create your first customer experience. Name the experience for the audience it serves, such as “Customer Support,” “Partner Support,” or “Enterprise Customers.” Link it to your CSM space so requests flow to the right team. (CSM currently supports one customer experience per CSM space.)
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Customize the support website. Add your logo, colors, welcome message, topics, and forms so customers can quickly find help and submit the right request.
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Connect your knowledge base. Link your Confluence space or create new articles for common questions. These articles help customers self-serve and give your AI agent trusted content to use.
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Set up your AI agent. Choose the agent name and tone, connect it to your knowledge, test sample questions, and define when the agent should hand off to a human support agent.
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Turn on support channels. Start with the channels your customers already use — support website, email, embedded widget, chat, or voice. Test each channel before sharing it broadly.
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Add customer context. Create customer and organization profiles, then add useful details like region, support tier, product, entitlement, or account owner so agents have the context they need.
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Invite your team and go live. Add support agents and collaborators, review queues and notifications, submit a few test requests, then publish the support experience to customers.
Before you publish
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Can a customer find the right form in one or two clicks?
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Do your articles answer the questions customers ask most often?
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Does the AI agent know when to answer, ask a follow-up question, or hand off?
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Have you tested email, website, and any embedded channels end to end?
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Do agents have the queues, notifications, and customer context they need?
Helpful resources
For a deeper walkthrough, visit the Customer Service Management product page or explore the Customer Service Management support documentation.
This quick demo lets you see CSM in action:
| Tip: Start small. Launch one customer experience/CSM space, one knowledge base, and one or two support channels first. Once your team is comfortable, expand to more audiences, channels, automations, and reports. |
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Peggy Graham
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