With an open Zendesk Support instance you can allow customers to submit tickets without registering for an account or signing in to an existing account. This enables your customers to get help quickly, without taking extra time to register or log in.
However, if a customer submits a ticket without signing in, it will be flagged. This is done because the user supplies an email address when they submit the ticket, and it is relatively easy for a user to pretend to be someone else by using an email address they don't own. So there is an inherent risk that comes with allowing ticket submission by users who are not signed, and it can be an opportunity for social engineering.
The flag brings attention to the potential risk, without affecting the workflow of your end-users and agents. The flag appears as a warning icon beside the first comment in the ticket. The ticket is not flagged in any ticket views. You can hover over the warning flag to get more information.
- If you are comfortable with the comment, ignore the warning flag and handle the ticket as you normally would. You cannot remove the flag.
- If you are not comfortable with the comment, you can raise a concern with your manager or consider temporarily suspending the user.
Depending on the nature of the comment, you might want to raise a concern about the ticket with your manager. Also, you can consider temporarily suspending the user, to prevent them from submitting more tickets, until you can investigate and feel comfortable enough to reinstate the user. (See Suspending a user).
16 Comments
When it shows up, the option to 'view original email' is not given, which is inconvenient and confusing. Is there any reason for this?
Hey Todd!
Just to make sure I understand, do you mean that when you go into the ticket events and scroll to the bottom of the list, the "view original email" link isn't showing up?
Hey!
We find that the warning icon is way too small and unnoticeable. In our case we need to take the customer through security when they contact us while not logged in. It's too easy for agents to not to notice this atm.
Thanks for that feedback, Maria. You may want to cross-post it in the Support Product Feedback topic to see if other users have a similar concern.
I've had two customers confirmed that they did not receive an email sent from zendesk when we reply to the "flagged" ticket. Has anyone else noticed this issue?
Hi Pallav -
This sounds like something we'll need to troubleshoot with you directly and it may require discussing some of your account settings, so I'm going to create a ticket for you to continue this conversation with one of our customer advocates. Look for an email from me shortly!
Zendesk You describe here one situation in which a comment would be automatically flagged. You provide no indication that this is the only reason a comment would be flagged. Where can one read a comprehensive description of what it means for a comment to be flagged?
This article states, "You can hover over the warning flag to get more information."
However, I see no text when hovering over the flag indicator in a comment, but rather the appearance of an indicator that a drop-down is available. When I click that, I see text, "This comment has been flagged," with an icon that when clicked leads to your support article, "Enabling anyone to submit tickets." Neither that article nor this one describes how a comment can be flagged, how a comment can be unflagged, or what it means for a comment to be flagged.
Hi Phil,
Can you send a screenshot of the flag that you're seeing?
Do you have anyone can submit tickets enabled or disabled in Admin> Settings> Customers?
The reason for the comment being flagged is normally included in the text of the warning (there are not very many versions of the warning). In this example it's a user not being signed in, the other example that most commonly flags comments is if the user who submitted the comment was not CC'd on the ticket on by either an agent or the requester on the ticket, in which case the message would say "X was not part of this conversation".
Comments can't be unflagged. Changing user or ticket permission based on on flag that is on a ticket will prevent future flagging in a lot of cases; for example if a user wasn't CC'd, but then was added as a CC by an agent after the flag was spotted any future comments they made on the ticket would not have the warning. However the original comment would still show as flagged in the ticket history.
Gail: I'm happy to do so. How can I filter by or search for tickets that have comments that are flagged?
Also, where in the Zendesk Support docs can one learn how a comment can be flagged, how a comment can be unflagged, and what it means for a comment to be flagged?
Hi Phil,
As I mentioned in the previous comment comments cannot be unflagged. You can address or ignore the reason something was flagged, but the original flagged comment will retain warning as part of the ticket record.
The flags aren't criteria that goes into searching, so you'd have to have agents manually tagging the tickets if you wanted to aggregate them because you're seeing an issue. Can you tell me more about why this is an issue for your team and provide the example of the warning that you're seeing? I'll be better able to search for more information it if I can see the exact warning.
I'm not aware of a specific article focusing solely on flagged comments, but I will bring this up to our documentation team and see if we can get one created to make it easier going forward.
Gail: Why is this "an issue for my team"? In some tickets, I notice what appears to be a warning indicator. Wondering what that means, I click the thing, and I see text, "This comment has been flagged," with an icon that when clicked leads to your support article, "Enabling anyone to submit tickets." But there's nothing relevant there. Neither that article nor this one describes how a comment can be flagged, how a comment can be unflagged, or what it means for a comment to be flagged. See what I'm saying? The implication is that I can go read about flagging of messages, but then that's not what I find.
Hi Phil,
I haven't run into the particular flag you're describing before, which is why I'd love to see a screenshot of an example to so that I can dig into it further and try to get you a more complete answer here. Could you post an example of the type of comment where you're getting this particular flag that includes the warning message?
Gail: I'll get a screen shot. I want to be sure I understand you. I believe you are indicating that the concept of "flagging" a message is not described in user documentation of Zendesk Support. Is that accurate?
Gail:
Hey Phil,
This article I've linked talks about flagged comments which I believe is exactly what you're looking for: Comments by users not explicitly added to the ticket will be flagged
Let me know if I can help clarify the flag any further.
Cheers!
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