Deleting users

Agents and administrators can delete users. Administrators can also permanently delete users, which goes a step further in terms of removing a user from the system. You might sometimes need to permanently delete users because of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which is an EU regulation.

This article covers these topics:

• Deleting users to remove them from your account
• Permanently deleting users

Deleting users to remove them from your account

Both agents and administrators can soft delete end users or agents in the agent interface in Zendesk Support. Agents can delete end users, if they have permission, while administrators can delete all users except the account owner. Zendesk retains information about the account owner to continue providing its services. When the account is terminated, Zendesk follows its Data Deletion Policy to purge remaining profile data.

Agents must have permission to delete users. On Essential, Team, or Professional, click the Admin icon (), select Settings > Agents, then click Agents can delete tickets. On Enterprise, edit a custom agent role, scroll to What access does this agent have to end-user profiles, then select Add, edit, and delete all.

You can't delete an end user or agent who's a requester on a ticket that hasn't been closed yet. See What is the difference between a Solved ticket and a Closed ticket? First, the ticket must be solved before it can be closed. Second, the solved ticket must be closed by a trigger or an automation. The ticket can't be closed directly in the agent interface. To close the ticket immediately, you can create a trigger for the specific purpose of closing the ticket. For details, see the tech note How can I manually close a ticket?.

If the deleted user was the requester or assignee on a closed ticket, you can still find the closed ticket by searching the ID. If you try to access the deleted user's profile from the ticket, you will receive an error.

Note: Deleting a user's account cannot be undone, so be careful to select the correct user when deleting user accounts.

To delete a user

1. Open the user's profile by doing one of the following:
   • Click the Admin > Manage > People, and search for the user.
   • Click the user's profile from a ticket submitted by that user.
2. In the user's profile, click the User options arrow in the upper right, then select Delete.

   

3. When prompted, click OK to confirm the deletion. If you want to cancel the deletion, click Cancel instead.

   The user is soft deleted, meaning the user is still in the Zendesk database and accessible on a limited basis only to Zendesk employees with certain database privileges.

   Note: If your organization must adhere to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the user wants to be forgotten, you can now proceed to permanently deleting the user as described in Permanently deleting users.

Permanently deleting users

If your organization must adhere to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the user wants to be forgotten, after you delete personal data from all resources in Zendesk products, you must also permanently delete the end user or agent from Zendesk Support. Permanently deleting the user in Support also permanently deletes the user in Guide, Chat (for agents), Message, Talk, and Explore. The user is also permanently deleted from Insights and from all product reports.

Deleting a user permanently is a two-step procedure:

1. Soft delete the user.
2. Permanently delete the user.

You can't permanently delete the user unless you soft delete them first.

Only administrators can permanently delete an end user or agent.

To permanently delete a user

1. Delete a user as described in the previous section.
2. Click the Admin icon (), select Manage > People, then click Deleted users in the sidebar on the right side.

   A list of deleted users appears.

3. Select the user you want to permanently delete from the list.

   A screen appears with the user's name and their associated tickets.

4. Click Delete User.