Support your customers with Text, a feature of Zendesk Talk (available on Talk Team, Professional, and Enterprise plans). Respond to inbound texts, automate alerts, or send proactive messages. Texts automatically create tickets right in Support, so teams can apply all the advantages of automated workflows, centralized reporting and full customer history to text support. There’s no coding or additional software required, so you and your team can get started in minutes.
Step 1: Choose a Text number
To try Text, first choose a Text number. You can do so under Admin > Channels > Text.
For detailed steps, see Adding a Text number.
We currently offer the following phone numbers for Text:
- US (Local and toll-free)
- Canada (Local and toll-free)
- UK (Local and toll-free)
- Puerto Rico (Local)
- Austria (Mobile)
- Israel (Mobile
- Lithuania (Mobile)
- Australia (Mobile)
- Belgium (Mobile)
- Switzerland (Mobile)
- Chile (Mobile)
- Czech Republic (Mobile)
- Estonia (Mobile)
- Finland (Mobile)
- France (Mobile)
- Germany (Mobile)
- Hong Kong (Mobile)
- Hungary (Mobile)
- Indonesia (Mobile)
- Ireland (Mobile)
- Netherlands (Mobile)
- Norway (Mobile)
- Poland (Mobile)
- Puerto Rico (Mobile)
- Spain (Mobile)
- Sweden (Mobile)
Text is a feature of Talk, so selecting a number for Text will initiate your free trial of Zendesk Talk. Trials include one free phone number and a $1 of usage credit. Standard SMS rates are $0.0094 per inbound message; outbound rates may vary. Find more details regarding Text usage prices here.
My team has a Talk Team, Professional, or Enterprise account.
If you have a Talk Team, Professional, or Enterprise account, you may choose a separate phone number to try Text -- it'll be yours, free, for 30 days (you may be able to use the same number for Text that they use for Talk. Contact our customer service team for more information).
If you are currently trialing Talk Team, Professional, or Enterprise, your free $1 credit will apply to Text. If you are a current customer with Talk Team, Professional, or Enterprise, any Text usage fees will be applied to your account. Standard SMS rates are $0.0094 per inbound message; outbound rates may vary. Find more details regarding Text usage pricing here.
My team has a Talk Lite account.
If you are on our Talk Lite plan, you will need to upgrade to our Talk Team, Professional, or Enterprise plan to use Text. To try Text before upgrading your Talk plan, contact our customer service team.
My team uses another SMS provider -- can I use that number for Text?
If you decide to purchase Text (included on the Talk Team, Professional, or Enterprise plans), you can port over an existing phone number from another provider to use for Text. Learn more here, or contact our customer service team for more information.
Step 2: Send an inbound text
Now that you’ve started your free Text trial, send a test text from a mobile phone to your new Text trial number. You’ll see that your text will automatically create a ticket in your Zendesk Support account. Public replies in the ticket will send a text back to you.
Note: To take advantage of user identification for inbound texts, set the mobile phone number you use for testing as the “direct line” for an end-user profile. Learn more here.
Step 3: Automate an outbound text
Now that you’ve received and responded to an inbound text, take it to the next level and set up an automated outbound text.
See detailed steps and more ideas for ways to use triggers and notifications with Text here.
Next steps
Text is available as a feature on our Talk Team, Professional, or Enterprise plans. When you’ve reached the end of your free 30 day trial or use your $1 free credit, add Team, Professional, or Enterprise to your Zendesk subscription to continue using the Text channel. Learn more here.
A few more notes:
Is there a maximum character limit per SMS?
There is a standard 160 character limitation, as typical for SMS messaging. Longer messages will be split into multiple messages.
Is there a maximum number of SMS messages that can be sent simultaneously?
Yes. 250 simultaneous messages from the same number is a threshold. Number pooling may resolve this in the future; however, this is not available yet.
Does Text support short codes or alphanumeric sender ID?
Not at this time, but this feature is on the roadmap.
Does Text support MMS messages?
You can receive inbound MMS messages on US local numbers, but Text does not currently support outbound MMS messages.
Comments
12 comments
We would like to use the phone number we have in Voice to also send texts.. is this possible? Can you port your own number for Text?
Same as @Cameron - I'd like to do this too! Would be great to have a single number for my users to call or text
@Cameron @Chris
You can do this by going into Admin > Channels > Talk > Numbers > Settings, you can enable the number for text.
Is it possible to get new tickets issued after some criteria when being texted from the same phone number? In my tests it appears all texts coming from that phone number are lumped into the same ticket or reopen's solved tickets. I'd like to be able to specify when a new ticket is generated when being texted from that same phone number.
In my mind not radically different from when you receive new tickets from the same email address (but maybe different subject line)
I have the same request as @Simon, is it possible to the system create a new ticket for texts?
Hi Simon and Tim,
You will need to look at creating a tag/trigger combo that you can use to close off tickets. Basically you will need to create a trigger that marks a ticket as closed, when a particular tag is applied. I've added an example below for you.
Your agents will then need to apply the tag manually to the ticket prior to saving when they come to the end of it. Alternatively, you can look at creating a macro which can apply the tag as well. The agent would then just simply need to run the macro before saving the ticket.
Doing this effectively marks the ticket as closed. When the end-user sends through a new text about a new issue, it would then create a new ticket.
This may not be ultimately ideal in regards to your own workflow. However this is the best workaround currently in light of the lack of separate automatic ticket creation for text conversations.
Hope this helps. :)
right now messages are coming in bottom of the queue. is it possible to be notified of the texts similar to a chat format?
Please make Singapore number available for Text function! It's painful to see the exact function I need but not being able to use it because of the region.
Hey Jessica!
That's an interesting question...I'm not sure if that's possible or not. I'm going to see if I can find someone to answer this for you!
Hey Jessica,
Right now there is no window for Text like there is for Chat. One thing some of our customers have done is create a view for Text. You can create a View with the condition Ticket:Channel is Text. At least then you have them separated and easier to organize.
I hope this suggestion is helpful!
Can I send SMS messages to international numbers from a USA number?
Welcome to the Community, Esteban!
Yes, I believe that you can! You can find a list of estimated prices here.
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