If you have an existing phone number that you use for support calls, you might be able to port this number to our Talk phone service provider, Twilio.
This article contains the following topics:
- Before you start
- Information to submit when porting a number
- What to expect after your request
- Porting a number out of Zendesk Talk
Before you start
To get this process started, we need some information from you about your current number and your provider. Before initiating a port request with us, keep the following in mind:
- You must be a paid subscriber to Zendesk Talk for us to port a number. We can't port phone numbers for customers on a Zendesk trial. We are unable to make exceptions to this.
- Porting US and Canada numbers can take between one and four weeks. Other numbers can take 6 or more weeks, it's always a good idea to check with Twilio for the specific porting timeline. During the process, consider forwarding calls from your current provider to a phone number in your Zendesk Talk instance to provide a smooth transition.
- Once a porting date is set by us, changing it can be difficult and cause potential issues. Don't initiate ports until you are ready.
- Notify your current carrier to not disconnect the number until you tell them it's OK.
- Zendesk Talk is compliant with Canadian CRTC regulations.
Porting is available in the following countries, if its not on the list, it's not going to be possible.
🇺🇸USA |
🇨🇦Canada |
🇦🇺Australia |
🇮🇪 |
🇳🇱 |
🇳🇿 |
🇵🇷Puerto Rico (US, PR) |
🇬🇧 |
🇩🇪 |
🇸🇪
|
🇩🇰
|
🇪🇸
|
🇮🇹
|
🇨🇭
|
🇧🇪
|
🇫🇷
|
Information to submit when porting a number
When you are ready to port your number, contact Zendesk customer support with the following information:
- The phone numbers you want like to port.
- The phone carriers for the numbers.
- Does the carrier use Twilio?
- The country for the phone number.
- Your most recent billing statement for the number.
- If you are porting a US-based number, include this Twilio Letter of Authorization form. If you are porting from a different country, our team will reach out to you for any additional forms we may need
- If you are moving a number from another Twilio-based carrier and have your Twilio SID from the current carrier, please also include that. If you are moving from a current Zendesk account to a different Zendesk account, give us the subdomain the number is currently on and the one it is being moved to.
- If the number to be ported is a cellphone number, you'll need to submit your account details and PIN number in the porting request
What to expect after your request
We will keep you up to date throughout the porting process. We might reach out to you to obtain additional documentation or information if specific countries have different requirements. If at any point in the process you have questions, let us know.
Porting a number out of Zendesk Talk
Timeline: Zendesk is not in control of the timeline of port-out requests, this is controlled by the gaining provider.
If you want to move your Zendesk Talk number to another provider for any reason, you can email us for guidance. Typically this is initiated on the gaining providers side first, and we automatically approve (if your account is in good financial standing) when your gaining provider attempts to move the number from Zendesk Talk.
26 Comments
If we port a number from our current provider to Talk - how doe usage charges work? What does the monthly cost look like?
Hey Tablo -
We aren't able to answer pricing or billing questions in Knowledge Base comments or the Community. I'll create a ticket to connect you with someone in our sales department to get an answer to your question - look for an email from me shortly!
Hi,
Could you let me know if it's possible to use our own virtual numbers for Talk instead of Twilio's, as we have many resources of our own and can't use third-party resources? I presume we could implement a porting of our existing numbers quite easily, there is only the question if you are allowing non-Twilio virtual resources.
If call forwarding to Zendesk is a more preferred option for this, please let us know what is the best practice in these situations.
Looking forward to your reply.
Hi Elvis!
I see you're getting help with this in a ticket. We'll take care of you there!
Hi this is very confusing? It says that you need to port your number over to Twilio but then lower on the page here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/215118307-Porting-numbers-into-Zendesk-Talk#PortingfromexistingTwilio it says if you have your number already on Twilio to port it to Zendesk? So do I port our numbers to Zendesk OR to Twilio??? And if I need to port them to Zendesk it does not say how to do that on here? My numbers (toll free and local numbers) are with Line2 right now. Please can someone help me with this?
Hello Julia,
Twilio is the telephony service provider that ZenDesk uses. The instructions above are several sets of directions depending on where you number is currently hosted (with another carrier, with Twilio and a service besides ZenDesk, already with ZenDesk but moving to a new ZenDesk Account, etc.). If you need to port your number into ZenDesk from Line2, follow this set of instruction:
Step 1: Submit docs to Zendesk customer service team
To get started, send an email to support@zendesk.com that contains the following:
Thanks for jumping in to help, Jose!
No problem! =) Just happened to be viewing the article myself for porting and thought I'd chime in! Hope that is alright.
It's more than alright! We love it when folks help their fellow Zendesk users. :) I hope you stick around!
Question here, upon porting my number to Talk, will the phone numbers from the end-users be recognized?
Hi Gabriel! Welcome to the Community!
If the end-users are already in your Zendesk, and their phone number is associated with their user profile, then that user profile is what will be added to the ticket as the requester. If a user calls you from a number for the very first time, a new user profile will be created because prior to their call that number didn't exist in you Zendesk. If that user has already contacted you via other channels, you can merge that new profile with just the phone number into their existing profile, and future calls from that user will be recognized by Zendesk.
I hope that makes sense! Let me know if you have any other questions!
Hi!
We are currently using a danish Softphone app called Firmafon. As our webshop is built on Shopify, we love Firmafon as it has an integration with Shopify, so if the customers calls from a number that is in Shopify, we can help them faster. Same goes for Zendesk support - Linked directly to Shopify orders which is awesome. We are considering a change to Zendesk Talk, however we need the above feature. So my question is:
Does Zendesk Talk also support access like Firmafon and Zendesk to Shopify orders?
Does this process work for 1-800 numbers, too? Are there any additional considerations that should be taken into account?
Hey Marty,
I reached out to our Talk team and it looks like the same process will work for 1-800 numbers. No additional considerations necessary.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
If I buy a number directly in Zendesk Talk and in Future from some reason want move out of Zendesk support and/or talk to some other support platforms(for example say move from Zendesk to Service now) will I be able to retain toll free number which I purchased in Zendesk (port the number from Zendesk to other platform)?
Hi,
Yes, the numbers can also be ported out of Zendesk if you do end up changing platforms.
I see that it's recommended not to initiate a port until the go-live date. Why is it important not to port early? I imagine we'd want to port as soon as possible since there's a 1-4 week timeline to ensure everything is working properly prior to receiving requests. Any insight?
Hi Ashley Blystone,
The carriers execute ports on their own timeline. I've seen ports happen in 2 hours. Others take 2 weeks. And we can't really tell them when and what time to do it.
The caution here is that if you have a working number that you're using and you are not quite ready to go live with Zendesk Talk (Agents logged in, ready to take calls, trained, etc), then you could potentially have calls coming to Zendesk Talk and going to Voicemail or sitting in the wait queues without you knowing!
Ensuring everything is working correctly is unfortunately sometimes a bit of a scramble when it does port over. I suggest testing it out with your existing Zendesk Talk number. Have a group of people call your current Zendesk Talk number and test out the IVR, wait times, etc. Use that to train your Agents.
I am sure you thought of that, just making a note in case it helps others.
Sincerely,
Heather
I followed the advice and opened a support ticket 2 weeks ago. No reply. Yesterday I added a "hello, anybody there?" to the ticket. Still no reply. Today I called the zendesk global helpline 888-670-4887 and after 8 minutes of waiting on hold got put through to voicemail. Totally unacceptable service.
Hello Tomasz Wiglasz,
I'm sorry for the delay you are running into. Currently, our Support team is experiencing a higher than average ticket volume. I've gone ahead and escalated your ticket so we can get one of our specialists on this asap.
Best regards.
Please consider turning this into a form submission request. It is common that there are short timelines for flipping switches and it has equally as often caused frustration.
Hi Team,
Is there is any expected downtime when the number is ported?
Thanks
Hello Jay ishibashi,
Porting US and Canada numbers can take between one and four weeks. Other numbers can take 6 or more weeks. It's always a good idea to check with Twilio for the specific porting timeline. I would recommend forwarding calls from your current provider to a phone number in your Zendesk Talk instance to provide a smooth transition during the process.
Best regards.
Hi everyone, UK based company here: is it worth it? The charges seem very high.
Devan - Community Manager: That wasn't the answer to Jay's question. I am also wondering the same thing. Is there any downtime when porting? I understand porting numbers can take several weeks however the number will upon porting still work?
Hey Emma,
To answer your question, yes, there will indeed be a downtime once the porting process has started - this is also the same reason why we recommend not initiating the port until your go-live date to prevent porting early, which may cause unavailability of your numbers. For the best customer experience, it's recommended that you forward the number to one of your Zendesk Talk numbers to avoid any issues as Devan mentioned above.
Hope this clears up any confusion!
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