Zendesk has introduced a new program to help customers upgrade to the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
The Zendesk Agent Workspace maximizes productivity for your teams by bringing you all the tools, context, and capabilities they need to deliver exceptional customer experiences, all from a single, unified interface. This includes:
- Delivering the conversational service your customers want
- Working smarter with powerful tools and built-in intelligence
- Boosting agent well-being for a better customer experience
This article includes the following topics:
- What's happening?
- Why is Zendesk making this change?
- What do I need to do?
- We're listening
- What new features are available after upgrading?
What's happening?
If your account admin received the email, your Zendesk account has been selected to be automatically upgraded to the Agent Workspace. We are helping customers automatically upgrade because Agent Workspace is the interface of choice for Zendesk going forward. It includes all the latest features and enhancements Zendesk has made to support agent productivity across channels.
Why is Zendesk making this change?
Zendesk built this new interface to help your agents provide fast and personalized support for customers and ensure they have all the tools and context they need to manage customer requests efficiently.
We want you to take advantage of our latest innovations and join our customers who have already made the switch. On average, accounts on Agent Workspace experience 17% faster replies to customers and 20% faster resolutions to customer requests by moving to our unified Agent Workspace.
What do I need to do?
Zendesk will automatically activate the Agent Workspace on your account during the timeframe Zendesk provided in the email we sent you.
However, instead of waiting for an automatic upgrade, we strongly encourage you to start the upgrade now. This gives you and your agents time to prepare for the change.
Zendesk recommends that you:
- Upgrade now on your own terms. It's best to upgrade at the time of day when your account activity is the lowest.
- From now until the automatic upgrade date, you will be able to temporarily deactivate the Agent Workspace.
We recommend turning it on and off to get yourself and your agents acquainted with the key differences in the interface. This gives you time to generate any necessary training materials for your team. - If you are wary of upgrading your production account, you can always create a free Zendesk trial account to try out the workspace. All trials have the Agent Workspace activated.
To help you in the transition, we have created a resources page with more information. See Resources for upgrading to the Zendesk Agent Workspace. Also, for a brief summary of the main interface changes, see our Quick Reference.
We're listening
We appreciate all the comments you have made about automatically upgrading to the Agent Workspace. Your feedback is important to us and we have taken this into account. For details, see this statement from Jonathan Aniano, Sr. VP of Product.
What new features are available after upgrading?
In addition to a unified conversation interface based on the latest technology, the following is a list of new features Zendesk introduced that are available only in the Agent Workspace. Going forward, as you enhance and modernize your customer support offerings, these are valuable tools.
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Native ticket redaction
You can natively redact, or remove, sensitive information found in ticket comments and attachments so that your account stays secure and compliant. You don’t need to install a separate app. See Redacting ticket content. -
Ticket translation
Agents can communicate with end users and other agents, even if they are using different languages, using the native translation feature in the Agent Workspace. See Translating conversations. -
Context panel
When you’re working on a ticket, it’s often useful to have contextual information that falls outside the basic ticket content. For example, you might want to know more about the customer who requested the ticket. In addition, you may need to open Zendesk apps that can help you solve the ticket or search for articles in your help center that are relevant to the ticket. See Using the context panel. -
Knowledge in the context panel
Directly from the ticket interface, you can quickly search for content in your help center that might help your customers solve issues, view suggestions for content based on ticket content, or add feedback to flag existing articles. See Searching, linking, and quoting content in tickets and Flagging articles in Knowledge. -
Context panel resizing
You can change the width of the context panel to give you a better view of customer context, sidebar apps, or Knowledge articles. See Resizing the context panel. -
Ticket properties panel resizing
You can change the width of the ticket properties panel to give you a better view of ticket fields. This feature is particularly useful if you’re working on tickets with a lot of fields. See Resizing the ticket properties panel. -
Channel switching in the composer
You can easily switch between communications channels, all within the same ticket interface. You don’t have to maintain separate tickets or use separate dashboards for each ticket type. See Switching channels in the composer. -
Composer resizing
You can resize the ticket composer window as needed to meet your requirements. For example, you can use a smaller window for chats and messages, but you might want to use a larger window for long email messages. See Resizing the composer window. -
Color text in the composer
You can use formatting options to change the text color and the text background color in ticket comments. This feature is useful for drawing attention to important items in your comments. See Changing text color.
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Fixed composer (doesn’t disappear when scrolling)
You can also use the scroll bar on the right side of the ticket to scroll up or down through previous responses without losing sight of the reply you're composing. Separated scrolling is useful if you're working on a long ticket with a lot of details. See Scrolling through a conversation. -
Contextual tabs
Agents may have to manage multiple tickets at the same time. You can use tabs at the top of the interface to help you move easily between many types of conversations (email. chats, phone, and messages). Tabs provide important information and help you see which tickets are the most critical to address. See Using ticket tabs to manage conversations. -
Zendesk messaging
Messaging lets you have rich conversations with your customers that are persistent, with full context and history. When you enable messaging, you can connect it to your website or help center, mobile apps, and social channels, making it easy for your customers to self- serve or connect with your agents. See About messaging. -
Flow builder
You can use Flow Builder to create answers for your conversation bots, giving your customers the opportunity to self-serve their support issues before connecting with agents. See About flow builder. -
Easier process to add social messaging channels
You can send and receive social messages in the Zendesk Agent Workspace as part of the main conversation flow. Messages sent from these channels become tickets in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. See About messaging channels. -
Omnichannel routing and unified agent statuses
The omnichannel routing enables you to direct tickets from email, messaging, web form, and API to team members based on their availability, capacity, and the ticket priority. Using omnichannel routing means that the highest priority tickets are assigned to the agents who are most available to work on them. See About omnichannel routing and Configuring agent statuses -
Custom ticket statuses
Zendesk supports a set of system ticket statuses which are used to help you manage your ticket workflows. Custom ticket statuses enable you to create additional, more-specific ticket statuses. Custom ticket statuses can help manage your ticket workflows, as well as indicate a more meaningful ticket status to your business and end users. See Activating custom ticket statuses.
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Draft mode
Agents can compose public replies as drafts first, before updating a ticket. This enables agents to make sure everything is correct before replying to a customer. See Writing drafts of public replies in tickets.
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Custom ticket layouts
Admins can create custom ticket layouts to support different ticket workflows for agents. Custom layouts allow you to specify which components are included in a ticket and control the location of where the components appear. Components include ticket conversations, ticket properties (fields), customer context, third party apps, and more. See About custom layouts.
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Using AI to summarize and enhance ticket comments
Zendesk offers several AI-powered features that help agents be more productive while still providing a high level of customer service. See Using AI to summarize and enhance ticket comments.
Features that harness generative AI powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT include:- Summarizing ticket comments to help agents get up to speed and quickly respond to customers.
- Enhancing agent comments by adding additional content, making the content more friendly, or making the content more formal.
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Essentials card configuration
The essentials card appears in the context panel in the Agent Workspace and displays information about the ticket requester. You can configure the card by adding, removing, and reordering standard and custom user fields so that agents can access the most relevant information. See Configuring the essentials card. -
Custom objects
Admins can define custom objects, build out their schema with custom fields, specify object-level permissions for agents, and add lookup relationship fields to tickets to surface your custom data in tickets. Agents can add and manage custom object records and preview related records within tickets. Then, you can use your custom objects and records in triggers and analytics. See Understanding custom objects. -
App shortcuts
Agents can create shortcuts for their favorite apps and pin them to the context panel sidebar. App shortcuts enable agents to quickly open apps without searching through the full list of apps in the Apps panel. Each agent can add their own personal set of shortcuts. See Managing app shortcuts.
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Conversation flow configuration
To create the optimal conversation flow for your agents, customers on Enterprise plans can use layout builder to configure how conversations and the composer appear in a custom ticket layout See Configuring the conversation flow. -
Auto-accept for messaging and live chats
When admins turn on auto-accept the Conversations and Accept buttons no longer appear in the Agent Workspace. Incoming conversations are automatically routed to available agents. See Automatically accepting messaging and live chat conversations. -
Agent invitations
During messaging conversations, agents can collaborate with colleagues to solve a customer’s support request without reassigning the ticket to another agent or admin. Using @mentions to include other agents in a conversation makes the conversation more collaborative and provides a streamlined agent experience. See Collaborating on messaging conversations.
139 Comments
Hello Onur, For more information, see Resources for upgrading to the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
Since you are now forcing ppl ove to this - you obviously have ensure possibility for having latest reply on top - like we have been used to for 7 years.. RIGHT!?
Doesn't look like it Dan. :(
Hi Dan,
Moving the reply box to the top of the ticket interface is a common request from Agent Workspace customers. Unfortunately, it doesn't work well for messaging-based conversations like chats and social messages, which are an integral part of the Agent Workspace design. You can request product enhancements and vote for your favorite product features on our Community site. If you have issues with your account upgrade, contact Zendesk Customer Support.
Hi Lisa,
we bought into zendesk because it provided a good UX/UI for support, not for chat or social messages. I find it absolutely ridiculous that our experience 7 years ago was BETTER than the one we now have.
If the current UI less optimal for chat/social media - fine provide a different layout for them - but don't force the rest of us over to one where us that use mail is an afterthought.
We are on the enterprise plan, but i don't feel enterprise - i feel ignored.
What is it exactly your stock reply should accomplish? Feature requests have been known to be left ignored for a decade (like simple split/merge features that every single basic free-to-use forum have).
What can support do for me? Can they ensure we are not forced to an experience that simply does not fit those of us that have mail as our mail channel?
I agree with Dan - we should be able to continue using the existing interface and not be forced into something that will make it more complicated. So please postpone the "late August" deadline until you can provide an option to the Agent Workspace!
I agree with Dan and Amund. The folks I support are OUTSIDE of my company. I do not need to "chat" with them. As it is, MIMECAST - the spam blocker of choice in the legal sphere - typically blocks our emails from ZenDesk and we have to call our users and remind them repeatedly to check their spam folders for our responses and mark us as a safe sender. I would see that as a more critical item to address than literally turning our worlds upside down. Partner with MIMECAST, provide whatever certificates are required so response is seamless and not delayed.
Hi Folks,
If you have issues with automatically upgrading your account to the Zendesk Agent Workspace, contact Zendesk Customer Support.
Unless support can ensure we are NOT moved to workspace i dont see what that would help - but i have made a ticket to see if i can request to NOT be forced to an inferior UI
I'm also in contact with the Customer Support Center. But why do you mean this would help us Lisa Kelly? They just confirm that there is no way back... We actually started using Zendesk because the existing workflow works very well. If it's not convenient anymore, I guess we will start to investigate if we can find another system to be used instead. So, please - give it a new discussion inside your Dev / Product team before you do this - I am pretty sure you will get a lot of complaints when this change is forced on all customers.
In a big surprise to nobody this is the reply i got
And that's exactly the same answer I got... :-(
I find it baffling that you would introduce a whole new UI, but break the main existing functionality. We use Zendesk for Customer Support via email. Having the latest messages on Top is a fundamental part of the that process which we have been using for years. We are not interested in Chat nor social messaging.
Surely someone along the design, development and test process noticed this fundamental change and questioned whether your customers would actually like this?
Can we delay this switchover until a resolution can be found, or if that's not going to happen, not do it at all?
Have to agree with many here. We're only using email so the new format seems to work in the opposite of what's always been the standard. It makes sense for chat/sms but not for email.
I'm dismayed that markdown support was killed with no indication it would not be supported. I see now that links can be used in another way and now I'll have to spend time updating macros to support this.
Like many other Zendesk customer our support is B2B and all via email channel. Chats and social messages are of no interest - so it is disappointing to hear that the Workspace interface will be optimised for a scenario that is not relevant to us and we are going to have this change forced on us at a time of Zendesk's choosing.
We started using Zendesk over 10 years when email was the only channel and it worked really well for our use case.
Are there any options to postpone the transition? We've got a lot of going on presently and don't need unnecessary, non-value-adding disruption for our team.
Jesse Papocchia markdown should now be supported in Agent Workspace as mentioned in this article: Need feedback on the release of a Markdown enhancement in Agent Workspace we're continuously making improvements to Agent Workspace so please keep sharing your feedback with us!
Adrian Bell I've created a ticket on your behalf so we can take a look at your account with you.
Thanks!
Brett Bowser could you also add me to that ticket or create one on my behalf also. I want to also postpone our migration to this Workspace. See my comments above.
dont bother, we got rejected outright they just want you to make a ticket so its not visible in here
This is the reply we got when creating a ticket regarding this:
I would love to know what population they used to test this new interface. Who expressed the love for upside-down thread response? Why on earth would they not give users a OPTION on the direction of response feed? Even MS gives you options on how you want to read your email and for those of us on Mac, we get to CHOOSE if we want to upgrade to the new OLK for Mac. We are not being forced into it. I'm going to get my team involved. We may be looking for a new tool.
I agree. When they changed the reporting system it was made unnecessarily complicated. Now we are getting a change to workflow without any Beta testing to see how it works or show my employees how it works.
This will be a disaster trying to retrain my staff on something that even I can't see how it works
Hi David,
To help prepare for the upgrade, refer to this article: Resources for upgrading to the Zendesk Agent Workspace
@david - i hope your scrollwheels is lubed and ready if your main channel is mail
Echoing the responses of many: Why on earth would such a radical and ridiculous change be forced on accounts that EMAIL is the primary method of communication? Not chat. Not social messenger. Email. And who on earth thought that changing the response feed direction with no option to change it as a preference was adding anything but time, training, and wasted energy? I too will be seeking other options for our enterprise, which by the way, has used Zendesk happily for over 10 years. This is not a value added "feature", and to again echo the responses of many, having the current response at the top of the thread is imperative to functionality and work flow.
The way Zendesk has managed this comes across as arrogant. There seems to be a strategy to give the impression Zendesk cares. But the use of canned responses/macros following the same sequence for all concerned demonstrates what is effectively a charade.
1. "Hi XXXX,
Thank you for your feedback regarding the Agent Workspace migration. I've escalated your request to roll back to the legacy Interface for approval. I'll let you know as soon as we've evaluated your request.
2. "Hi XXXX,
I'm sorry to inform you that unfortunately your request to delay the agent workspace migration has been denied. This means that your account will continue to migrate to the Agent Workspace interface. We want you to take advantage of our latest innovations and join our customers who have already made the switch."
It's goes back to what customers must weigh up when selecting a Cloud Vendor for their essential systems. Note all Cloud Vendors are like this. Our accounting runs on a product called Xero. There are always changes in pipeline largely brought on by Government statutory changes. The warnings from Xero come way in advance and are always crystal clear. I couldn't be happier with Xero and have been with them for more than 10 years as well.
I'd be really interested to know of any Support Desk software that focuses on Email response, supports more than 12 views, has a customer portal, allows export of ticket data, supports a conversion of all historical data from Zendesk, has a stable product/focus and communicates with it's customers. I don't care about bots, ticket ratings, social messages, chats or Knowledge Bases. We work with Corporate Customers and use MS Teams in conjunction with our Helpdesk.
Customers could have been warned way in advance of this significant change. They had already decided the customer would have little or no input. The timing is bad for us. Bitterly disappointed.
I agree with the others here. The reason why we switched from Intercom to Zendesk 7 years ago was to avoid Intercom's small chat/message field at the bottom of all our email correspondence with our customers.
@Zendesk product team; Please reconsider if this is the right way to go.
I switched over to play with it. Integrated translation function is very nice but it is very annoying the when you switch from Private to Public comment or vice versa the comment does not carry over. Very annoying
David B. (L2) Any chance you can show us some screen shots? Now that you have gone down the rabbit hole, there is no turning back right? THAT is another needle in my thigh in this whole thing. No beta testers, no live pilot group, but also NO TURNING BACK, no choice. Guess what, my CEO owns our company and we will make our own choices and potentially take our dollars elsewhere, as others have said.
Yes, screenshots of the changes and workflow would be extremely helpful! Will any old data be lost??
From what I read here, it sounds like you have just gone ahead, consulted not one of your customers and made a change based on your own team decision makers who clearly don't use the product to communicate over e-mail with Zendesk.
No sane mind would choose to see the most recent comment at the end of a conversation over e-mail. It increases time scrolling, it makes it confusing, and it ads time to retrain people right before we start with Labor Day Sale, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas... terrible time for this update, and not a well researched update. Why force something onto customers that are begging you not to? Are you not just scared you will loose them all? Aren´t our customers your focus and the reason for your company existing?
I have left every single company that did this to us, and Zendesk I guess is the next one to go.
SWITCH what you did wrong, acknowledge the error, postpone the changes and FIX IT, so it works in a intuitive way for EMAIL which is your main user base.
The new mode doesn't suit any customer that works tickets in email only mode.
How hard it would have been for Zendesk to add to two new configuration settings:
1. Toggle Switch (Email Only | Email, Chat, Social
2 Thread Sort order: Oldest to Newest | Newest to Oldest.
Mind-boggling.
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