Category: Applications

Zendesk Support is a customer support platform. It is used by businesses of all sizes to provide support in various ways.

In this post, we will discuss the basics of Zendesk Support to help you understand the core concepts.

• Channels
• End Users
• Agents
• Tickets
• Groups
• Views

Channels

Zendesk has numerous channels of communication

• Email – this is accessible by your customer emailing an address found on your website, or provided after purchasing a product, or even when they reply back to a marketing newsletter you send out
• Webform – this channel is when a customer completes a form on your website or within your app
• Chat – this channel works when a customer visits your website and can start talking using their keyboard to your business
• Phone – this method is the good old fashion way of picking up the phone and calling your business during business hours.

End Users

Your customers in Zendesk terminology are End Users. These can be members of the public, potential customers, existing customers who need support or employees of a business that is your client.

Agents

Agents are your staff. They are responsible for responding to your customers using the Channels that you have activated. If you subscribe to the Zendesk Enterprise platform, you will have access to create your own Roles that you can assign to your Agents to limit or grant them privileges based on your company’s requirements.

Examples of the Roles that Agents can have our;

• Staff
• Advisors
• Team Leaders
• Contributors
• Administrators

Tickets

Tickets are the items of concern when it comes to interactions between your End Users and your Agents.

When a Agents or End User starts any Channel of communication, a Ticket is created and assigned a Ticket Id.

Every subsequent interaction is called a Comment. This will keep updating the Ticket back and forth until the Ticket’s status is set to Solved.

Tickets have can the following Statuses over the lifetime of the Ticket;

• New – when the Ticket is first created and has not been reviewed by any Agent yet
• Open – when the Agent has responded to the End User with an update to request from information or clarification
• Pending – when the Agent is working on the Ticket and does not require any information from the End User
• Solved – Set by the Agent when they believe that they satisfactorily completed the End Users request
• Closed – after the Ticket is Solved and then 4 days of inactivity

Groups

Groups allow you to break up your team into logical company cohorts. For example, you might choose to have groups of teams that service different products or regions that your company provides for.

Views

Views are used to show Agents only the tickets that concern there day to day job.