Understanding how Talk calls become tickets

Talk automatically creates a ticket in Zendesk Support for most calls. Use this article to understand how Talk calls become tickets.

This article contains the following topics:

• About tickets created from calls
• Understanding how phone numbers are linked to end-user profiles
• Merging users
• Merging tickets when a call is about an existing ticket

About tickets created from calls

Talk automatically creates a new ticket for calls in the following situations:

• When you accept an incoming phone call
• When you place an outbound call from the Talk console, and the call is answered
• When a caller leaves a voicemail

Additionally, you can control whether calls that are abandoned (for example in the queue, IVR, or voicemail) result in a ticket being created. For details, see Managing Talk number settings.

If you place an outgoing call from an existing ticket, a new ticket is not created. Call details are added to the existing ticket.

Tip: You can't disable the automatic creation of tickets. However, you could set up a trigger that immediately solves tickets from Talk calls when they are created. For details, see Can I disable automatic ticket creation for calls?

When a ticket is created, it contains details about the call or voicemail including:

• The number the call was made from and the number from which it was received.
• The time of the call and its duration. The Length of phone call time shown in the ticket includes talk time and events that were not recorded, like hold time, transfer time, and time spent in the queue.
• The name of the person who made the call and the person who answered the call.
• If available, the location of the caller.
• If configured, a recording of the call. You can configure Zendesk Talk to prevent users from accessing the live call recordings (see Enabling Zendesk Talk and configuring general settings). If your administrator has allowed the recordings to be accessible, the user can click a link to the recording from the notification email to hear it. You can delete recordings from tickets, by clicking the delete recording link (see Deleting recordings from tickets).

You can add comments to the ticket and update the ticket properties during the call.

Understanding how phone numbers are linked to end-user profiles

Talk identifies users by their phone numbers:

• If the caller is an end-user with an existing profile, and calling from a number already added to the profile, their existing profile is set as the ticket requester.
• If the number has not yet been added to a profile, a new profile is created using the calling number as the user name.
• If the call comes from an unknown caller (for example, a Skype call or a call from someone who has blocked their number), Talk will create a unique ID for each call and associate it with the ticket. You can then use the information from the ticket and call recording to match the ticket to an existing user, or create a new user. For details, see Understanding how Talk handles unknown callers.

Zendesk Support can store two types of phone number in end-user profiles:

• Direct lines are used to identify a user. When you add a unique number to a user's profile, it's automatically set as a direct line. If the caller is an existing end-user calling from their direct line, the user's existing profile is set as the ticket requester. Users can have more than one direct line.
• Shared numbers are linked to multiple user profiles. If a number that is already being used as a direct line number is added for another user, it becomes a shared number in that user's profile. When you make a call from the shared number, the call will be associated with the original caller who owns the direct line.

When receiving a call, Talk checks to see if a user is associated with the number that is calling. If no user has the number as a direct line (for example, if it’s been deleted from the user), then a new user will be created using the calling number as a direct line. The number will no longer be associated to any users that have that same number as a shared number. A user can have only one shared number on their user profile.

To add a number to a user's profile

1. In Zendesk Support, click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Manage > People.
2. Select a user and click edit.
3. In the user's profile, click + add contact and select Phone.
4. Enter a phone number for the user. If you have phone number validation enabled, this number must be in E.164 format.
5. To add additional numbers, repeat steps 2-4.

Merging users

Calls received from new, unknown users generate new end-users that are identified only by the telephone number they're calling from. Unknown users might already have a user account if they're using a telephone number that they haven't added to their user profile. In this case, you can merge the new user account with their existing user account. For more information, see Merging a user's duplicate account.

When merging users, all phone numbers that the merging user has will be added to the receiving user. The only scenario where a number is discarded during merging is when two users both have a shared number. Because you can only have one shared number, in this case, the shared number of the merging user will be discarded.

Merging tickets when a call is about an existing ticket

Sometimes, callers might contact you about an issue for which a Zendesk Support ticket has already been created. To handle this situation, complete the call and add comments as needed to the new ticket. You can then merge the new ticket with the existing ticket.

The phone number shown at the top of a ticket is the phone number that caused the ticket to be created. When merging two tickets that both have a voice comment, the number that caused the creation of the ticket being merged into will be shown.

For details, see Merging tickets.