When you set up Zendesk Support, you have one related email address: support@yoursubdomain.zendesk.com. Emails received at this address become tickets.
For each support address you add, the from address will match the support address the ticket is sent to. For example, tickets sent to help@acme.zendesk.com will reply from help@acme.zendesk.com.
Adding support addresses
- Connect external address Use this option to add an existing external email addresses.
- Create new Zendesk address Use this option to add variations of your Zendesk
email address.Note: There is also a Connect Other option for adding support addresses that should be used cautiously. For more information, see this support tech note.
Your original system support address always appears at the top of your list of support addresses, followed by your default support address, if it's not the same as your system support address. Every time a ticket is created from an email that was sent to one of your support addresses, the verification timestamp for the support address is updated.
This section covers the following topics
Adding a Zendesk support address
Zendesk addresses are variations of your original support address, support@yoursubdomain.zendesk.com. For example, help@yoursubdomain.zendesk.com. You can add as many support addresses as needed.
The following video gives you an overview of how to create custom email addresses:
Creating custom email addresses [0:50]
- In Admin Center, click
Channels in the sidebar, then select Talk and email > Email.
- In the Support addresses section, click Add address, then select Create
new Zendesk address.
- Enter an address you'd like to use for receiving support requests.
- Click Create now.
The email address is added to your list of support addresses.
Adding an external support address
External email addresses are owned and maintained by you, outside of your Zendesk. For example, support@mycompany.com. If you add an external email address, additional steps are required to set up email forwarding from your email server to Zendesk.
It is not recommended that you use a distribution group email or an email alias as an external support address.
The following video gives you an overview of how to connect your existing support email:
Connecting your existing email account [1:39]
- In Admin Center, click
Channels in the sidebar, then select Talk and email > Email.
- In the Support addresses section, click Add address, then select Connect
external address.
- Enter your existing support email address, then click Go.
If you have a Gmail address, and expect low volume, you can instead create tickets automatically from emails received in your Gmail inbox.
- Complete the on-screen steps to set up forwarding on your email server.
This is done outside of your Zendesk, and the exact steps depend on your mail server.
For help, see Forwarding incoming email to Zendesk Support.
- After you set up email forwarding on your server, click Yes, I finished, then
click Verify.
A test email is sent to that address to verify that you've set up forwarding properly. If successful, a message indicates the address is verified.
If the test fails, you are alerted. After resolving issues, you must perform the verification again.
If you resolve the forwarding issue, but do not retry the forwarding check, email sent to the email address will create tickets, but will not send Zendesk Support notification emails.
After you set up forwarding, you should add an SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record to verify that Zendesk can send outgoing email on behalf of your email server. This is optional, but recommended.
Accepting wildcard email addresses for support requests
As an alternative to, or in addition to, using support addresses, you can enable end-users to send email to any variation of your Zendesk address, regardless of whether it's as a known support address. For example, if a customer misspelled your support email address (for example, biling@yoursubdomain.zendesk.com) the email can be accepted and a ticket created. These types of variations are referred to as wildcards. This option can be used as an alternative to, or in addition to, support addresses.
For example, you don't need to explicitly declare any of these email variations in your Zendesk.
Wildcard email addresses use your default support address as the Reply From address. So any email sent to a variation of your Zendesk Support email address that is not a known support address, will use your default support address as the Reply From. If you have multiple brands, the default support address for your default brand will be used as the Reply From.
To enable wildcard email addresses
- In Admin Center, click
Channels in the sidebar, then select Talk and email > Email.
- Click Enable for Accept wildcard emails.
- Click Save.
Receiving email at your support addresses
Emails sent to any of your known support addresses become tickets in your Zendesk. And, if you have enabled wildcard emails (see Accepting wildcard email addresses for support requests), then emails sent to any variation of your Zendesk address, regardless of whether it's a known support address, become tickets in your Zendesk.
For tickets received via email, you can see which address it was sent to at the top of the ticket.
You can set up business rules, views, and SLA policies for tickets sent to your support address by using the "Ticket: received at" condition.
If you have set up multibrand, then the ticket receives the brand associated with the support address the email was sent to (see Adding email support addresses for multiple brands).
5 Comments
Hi, Is it possible to reduce the 65000 character limit for the "Receiving email at your support address" ?
There's no way to adjust this character limit since this is hard-coded into the software.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
It may be worth taking a look at our App Marketplace to see if there's a 3rd party integration that can help accomplish what you're looking for.
HI, we are switching away from allowing support emails to open a new ticket. We want to only allow ticket requests to be done through the web portal. I've set up the trigger accordingly to only allow from the web form. But I still find if an email is sent to those other support emails it still creates a ticket with no one or a group assigned. I assume that is because those other email addresses are still listed in our email channels, correct?
Once I make the default email our domain.zendesk.com.
Do I have to delete the other support email addresses to avoid them from still creating tickets?
Then what if someone emails directly to the support@mysubdomain.zendesk.com, will it still create a new ticket? If so how can we avoid that?
Also is there a way to leave one of the additional support email addresses but only allow it to create tickets that come from certain email addresses?
Sorry to put all this in here but thought it might be faster than waiting for support.
Support tickets are automatically created if there's an incoming email received from any of your support addresses. You can remove your external support address to stop ticket creation from that address.
Natively, there's no option to disable or stop ticket creation for default support addresses <support@mysubdomain.zendesk.com>.
As a workaround, you can set your instance to 'close' by disabling "anyone can submit tickets" therefore only registered users can submit tickets, ticket submitted by unregistered users will go to the Suspended ticket view. OR you can create a trigger to automatically close tickets received via the support address. We have a recipe here that you can use: How can I block the email channel?
Hope this helps!
Please sign in to leave a comment.