Understanding how Talk handles unknown callers

When a call is received to your call center, Talk automatically associates the phone number of the incoming call with an end user in Zendesk Support, then creates a ticket with that user as the requester. If the user doesn't exist, Talk creates a new user named with the phone number of the incoming call. For more information, see Understanding how Talk calls become tickets.

Sometimes, incoming calls will come from a blocked number or from a number where the caller ID is hidden. Talk handles these calls and tickets just the same as calls that come in from unrecognized numbers by creating a new user.

Use the information in the following sections to learn how Talk handles calls from unknown callers and some best practices to help you manage them:

• How Talk handles unknown callers
• Best practices for managing unknown callers

How Talk handles unknown callers

When a call comes in from an unknown number, the agent follows the same process as for any other call (see Receiving incoming calls).

Note: When calls come in from a digital line, the requester is currently always added as Caller Unknown. For more information about digital lines, see Understanding Talk Embedded voice.

When a call from an unknown number is received, the following happens for each call:

1. Talk creates a new, unique user in Support.
2. Talk creates a Support ticket with the new user as the requester.

Talk creates a new user for each unknown call that's received. For help managing these users, see Best practices for managing unknown callers.

Best practices for managing unknown callers

If you get a lot of calls from unknown numbers, you might end up with a large number of unknown end users being created in Zendesk Support. Here are some best practices that can help you manage these users:

• As your agents work on tickets from unknown callers, try to identify the caller, then change the ticket requester to the identified user (if that user already exists) or update the unknown user’s attributes with the caller’s details.
• End users will become ‘orphaned’ if they have no attributes or tickets associated with the user. This will happen if your agents reassign the ticket from the caller to an existing user profile. It’s good practice to have your agents delete these end users at the point where they assign the ticket to the correct end user.
• Occasionally, work through your list of unknown users and delete ones that you know you don't need. This will help prevent the list from becoming too unmanageable.