Question
Why are existing users not correctly identified when they call in on Zendesk Talk?
Answer
There are two requirements for Talk to be able to identify an existing user from their telephone number:
- The number in the user's profile must be formatted with the internationally standardized E.164 format, like so +16175551212. For more information, see the article: What are the accepted phone number formats for Talk?
- The number must be marked as the user's direct line. Zendesk cannot identify a user if they are using a shared number.
The newly created user (Caller) can be merged into the desired end user profile. When the customer calls from that number in the future, they will be identified as the correct end user upon ticket creation. For more information about merging users, see the article: Merging a user's duplicate account.
8 Comments
I'm finding this to be a problem also. When an end user that I have previously set up upon a ticket creation returns my call, the inbound call is only identified by the phone number that they are calling from. Why does it not tell me who is calling since they have been set up in the system? This makes it difficult when I am only answering returned calls and I don't know who is calling.
Hi Regina -
I see that this is your first post to the Zendesk Help Center. Welcome to our community!
The reasons that your callers aren't being identified are most likely the ones listed in the article above - either that their number isn't formatted with the E.164 format, or that they're calling from a shared (rather than direct) line.
I'm using the Lite version of Talk. Could this be the reason that the caller id function is not working? I have set the customers (end users) up with the +1 phone number that it shows them coming from and the numbers are listed as direct lines, but when a customer returns my call, it only shows the phone number and not the name of the customer. I'm trying to decide what the benefits of upgrading to a paid plan would be. I would also like to change it so that when I call a customer, the name of my company shows up on their caller id instead of the Zendesk number that my customers do not recognize, so they don't answer and I have to play phone tag with them.
Hey Regina,
I don't believe Caller ID is tied to a specific Talk plan. If the number is not showing up correctly, you'll want to confirm that the formatting from the inbound call matches the formatting in the users profile. More information on accepted phone number formatting here: What are the accepted phone number formats for Talk?
Let me know if you have any other questions for me!
Hi Guys
Can you please help with this as I couldn't find anything online for it.
In our tickets it happens that we call multiple people for arrangements but when checking the communication history all the outbound calls only identified with the phone numbers and not with the contact name, even though we have correctly followed formatting the numbers.See below example from the user profile and the same number in the ticket which is only identified by number.
FYR, the To:xxx in the ticket under the Agent's name is just showing the ticket's requester's name and it's not the contact name related to the phone number.
Hey Ehsan,
To automatically associate incoming calls with the correct user profile, we rely on the number to be in the E.164 format.
If a user has +1 (415)-555-1212 in its profile, it will not match to +14155551212. These will be counted as separate entities, and the best practice here would be to merge end-user profiles that relate to the same customer with different number formatting variations.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
Hi Brett
Thanks for your reply, but i'm not sure if you can see the photo I posted with my comment or not. If yes, you can see that the phone number format in the user profile is E.164 format but still on outgoing calls the name is not recorded inside the ticket and just phone number. This is happening only for outgoing calls within a ticket. For example the ticket is email base or even voice base but another requester, however, we are calling out to different person than the requester within that ticket. in this case not name is recorded for the call receiver.
But for incoming calls everything works fine, I guess because all incoming calls will become a new ticket.
Hi Ethan,
I'm going to create a ticket on your behalf so we can take a look at the ticket in question here.
You'll receive an email shortly stating your ticket has been created.
Cheers!
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