The Complete Guide to Migrating from Trengo to Kustomer

This guide covers the full scope of migrating customer support data from Trengo to Kustomer — including API-driven bulk transfers, manual configuration, and the dependency logic that determines migration order.

Before diving in, it helps to understand the fundamental architectural difference between these two platforms. Trengo uses a traditional ticket-based model where each interaction is a discrete ticket. Kustomer is timeline-centric: every interaction becomes part of a unified customer timeline. This means your migration isn't a simple 1:1 copy — you're restructuring data from isolated tickets into a continuous, chronological view of each customer relationship. Keeping this distinction in mind makes the mapping decisions below much more intuitive.

Define your migration scope

API Migration

The bulk of your historical data will move through the Kustomer API to ensure speed and accuracy. This includes core resources such as Trengo Profiles and Contacts, which will be consolidated into Kustomer Customer records.

Your entire history of interactions, encompassing Tickets, Messages, and internal Notes, can be moved over to maintain a full view of the customer relationship.

Your self-service content from the Trengo Help Center, including Categories and Articles, is best handled through automated scripts.

Manual Configuration

Some elements require a human touch to ensure they align with Kustomer's unique structure.

While you can create Teams and Users via the API, you will need to manually map Trengo permissions to Kustomer specific roles and permission sets.

Static configurations like Business Schedules, the visual look of your Knowledge Base themes, and the specific URL routes for your help articles should be configured manually within the Kustomer interface to ensure they function correctly.

Data for Archiving

Certain data types from Trengo are not suitable for a live migration and should be exported for your internal archives instead.

Aggregate reporting metrics and agent performance histograms from Trengo do not map directly to the real time reporting engine in Kustomer.

For compliance or continuity, it is best to pull these as CSV or PDF files before closing your Trengo account.

Prepare Kustomer for data import

Before you begin moving records, you must set up the destination environment.

• Custom Attribute Metadata: You must define all custom fields for Customers and Conversations in Kustomer before importing data.
• Klass Creation: If you have unique data structures in Trengo, create the corresponding Klasses in Kustomer to house these custom objects.
• Team and User Provisioning: Invite your users and organize them into teams so that ticket ownership can be assigned during the migration.
• Knowledge Base Shell: Create the Knowledge Base container in Kustomer so that categories and articles have a destination.
• Sub Status Definition: Map your Trengo Ticket Results to Kustomer sub statuses to maintain your resolution categorization.

Migrate objects

The migration process follows a strict logical sequence to prevent data errors. If you import a message before its parent conversation exists, the record will fail.

1. Access and Metadata: Start by migrating Teams and Users. This ensures that when you move tickets later, the original agent who handled the case is already recognized by the system. Simultaneously, ensure your Custom Fields are ready to receive data.
2. Self Service Content: Move your Help Center content next. This involves a three tier model: Help Centers, then Categories, and finally Articles. In Kustomer, you will also handle Article Versions and Blocks to mirror any modular content you used in Trengo.
3. Core Customer Data: Trengo "Profiles" are the primary container for contact details. You will migrate these as Kustomer Customers. This is the anchor for everything else on the timeline.
4. The Timeline Migration: This is the most descriptive part of the process. You will bulk create Conversations based on Trengo Tickets. Once the conversation shell exists, you can import the Messages and internal Notes. If a message includes a file, you must handle the Media upload first to generate a URL that Kustomer can display.
5. Labels and Events: Finally, append your Trengo Labels as Tags in Kustomer to keep your organization intact. For specialized data like VOIP call logs or custom channel data, these should be imported as Tracking Events on the customer timeline.

Data Mapping

Validation and Reconciliation

Once the migration is complete, you need to verify the data landed correctly before cutting over.

• Record Count Reconciliation: Compare total counts of Customers, Conversations, and Messages between Trengo and Kustomer. Any discrepancy signals dropped records.
• Sample Verification: Pull a random sample of migrated customers and manually compare their timelines against the original Trengo data. Check that messages appear in the correct order, attachments are accessible, and tags are present.
• Assignment Checks: Verify that ticket ownership mapped correctly — conversations should be assigned to the same agents (or teams) that owned them in Trengo.
• Custom Field Validation: Confirm that custom attribute values populated correctly and weren't truncated or mistyped during the mapping.

If you discover errors, the externalId mapping (see Insider Secrets below) allows you to re-run specific segments of the migration without creating duplicates.

Post Migration Configuration

Once the data is in, you need to reactivate your logic.

• Workflows: Trengo Journeys must be rebuilt as Kustomer Workflows using the new data model.
• Shortcuts: Organize your Quick Replies into Shortcut Categories for better agent productivity.
• Search Filters: Set up Saved Searches so your agents can find the migrated tickets easily.
• Satisfaction Surveys: Reconfigure your satisfaction forms to match your new branding and response requirements.
• Knowledge Base Routing: Finalize the article routes and custom domains to ensure your public help center is live.

Insider Secrets

1. Bypass Rate Limits with the Import Flag: When creating objects like conversations or messages, include the importedAt field in your payload. This tells Kustomer the data is historical, which significantly relaxes the standard rate limit of 120 creations per minute.
2. The Media Upload Dance: You cannot simply send a file to a message. You must first POST to the media endpoint to get a temporary upload URL, send the file there, and then use the resulting ID in your message creation script.
3. External IDs are Your Best Friend: Always map the Trengo Ticket ID to the Kustomer externalId field. This allows you to run idempotent scripts that won't create duplicate tickets if you have to restart your migration.
4. Customer Update Limits: While conversations have tight limits, Kustomer allows a single customer record to be updated up to 600 times in 10 minutes via the API. Use this to your advantage when consolidating multiple Trengo contacts into one profile.
5. Handling Blocked Extensions: Kustomer will reject certain file types like .exe or .bat. If your Trengo history contains these, your migration script needs a fallback to skip these attachments or they will block the entire message from importing.

Limitations and Known Failure Modes

Beyond blocked file extensions, there are several other scenarios where the migration can break or produce unexpected results:

• Rate Limit Responses (429 Errors): Even with the importedAt flag, you can still hit rate limits during large migrations. Your scripts must handle 429 responses with retry logic and respect the Retry-After header returned by the Kustomer API.
• Partial Failures on Bulk Imports: A failed message import does not roll back its parent conversation. You can end up with conversation shells that have incomplete message histories. Track success/failure per record so you can backfill gaps.
• Duplicate Contact Consolidation: Trengo may have multiple Profiles for the same person (e.g., one per channel). Kustomer's timeline model expects a single Customer. If you don't deduplicate before import, you'll end up with fragmented timelines that are harder to merge after the fact.
• Channel Metadata Loss: Trengo is a multi-channel platform, and channel-specific metadata (e.g., WhatsApp Business API session data, email threading headers, live chat session boundaries) may not have direct equivalents in Kustomer. Audit which channel metadata you need to preserve and plan for manual mapping or archiving.
• Open Tickets During Cutover: Any tickets that are actively being worked in Trengo during the migration window can create inconsistencies — an agent may reply in Trengo after the ticket has already been migrated. Plan your cutover timing to minimize this window, or implement a final delta sync to catch changes made after the initial migration.

Summary

Migrating from Trengo to Kustomer means restructuring your data from a ticket-based model into a timeline-centric one. By following the logical sequence of creating metadata and users before importing customers and their timelines, you ensure a clean transition.

While reporting and workflows require manual effort to rebuild, the resulting clarity and control within the Kustomer platform will empower your support organization for years to come.

Further Reading:

• Kustomer API Reference
• Trengo API Reference