Introduction: This best practice addresses the assignment of tickets in Zendesk Support when making outbound calls. It provides an explanation that may not be found in the Zendesk documentation. The focus is on scenarios where there are multiple phone lines per country, each with its own support group, and some phone lines have Interactive Voice Response (IVR) while others do not. The objective is to determine which agent group receives the outbound call ticket assignment.

Use Case: Consider a Zendesk environment with phone lines for different countries (e.g., nl, fr, en, etc.) and specific support groups responsible for each geographic location (Support NL, Support FR, etc.). Some phone lines have IVR configured, while others do not. Agents occasionally need to make outbound calls, and the question is:

to which agent group should these outbound calls be assigned? Let's explore the possible scenarios:

Phone lines:

Agent groups:

Scenario 1: Routing Group Differs from Agent's Groups
>If the routing group (in the talk settings) of the phone line is different from the group(s) the agent belongs to:

• The ticket for the outbound call will be assigned to the agent's default Zendesk group.
• The agent will be assigned as the ticket assignee.

Scenario 2: IVR Determines the Routing Group
>If the routing group (in the talk settings) of the phone line is determined by an IVR setting:

• The ticket for the outbound call will be assigned to the agent's default Zendesk group.
• The agent will be assigned as the ticket assignee.
• ⚠️ Even if you belong to one of the agent groups defined in the IVR settings, Zendesk will assign the ticket to your default group.

Scenario 3: Routing Group Matches Agent's Group
>If the routing group (in the talk settings) of the phone line is also one of the agent's groups:

• The ticket will be assigned to the group that corresponds to the routing group in Zendesk Talk for that specific phone line.
• The agent will be assigned as the ticket assignee.

Conclusion: By following these best practices for assigning outbound call tickets in Zendesk Support, you can ensure that tickets are appropriately routed and assigned to the relevant agent groups. This knowledge will contribute to an efficient support workflow and enhance the customer experience.

👉 Pro Tip: In my use case I make sure that the default groups in support are aligned with the geos where the agents are working for. In that case, the tickets will be assigned correctly regarding these default groups. (In most cases I can do a 1to1 mapping for phone lines vs agent groups)