Why is updated visitor information not reflecting in Agent Workspace?

Question

Some of my visitors change their name during a chat but agents are unable to see this. Why is updated visitor information not reflected in Agent Workspace?  

Answer

All changes to visitor information are only applied to a requester in the Agent Workspace if they are made before a visitor initiates a chat or after a chat ends, yet before the next chat session is started. The only exception is the requestor's name which is detailed later in this article. 

There are a few different scenarios to take note of if a change is initiated during a chat session:

Updating email to a new address

If a visitor from Chat updates their email to one that does not currently exist in Agent Workspace, a new support user will be created using the new email. The new requester will be applied to the support ticket once a chat ends.

The new user will be created with the name saved with the new email. 

To illustrate: 

1. Visitor A initiates chat with the email address [e-mail]
2. Support ticket created with Visitor A as the requester
3. Visitor A edits their name and email to Visitor B, [e-mail](new)
4. The agent still sees Visitor A, [e-mail] as requester
5. Agent and visitor ends the chat 
6. New user Visitor B, [e-mail] created 
7. Ticket updated with new requester Visitor B, [e-mail]

Updating email to an existing address

If a visitor from chat updates their email to one that currently exists in Agent Workspace, Zendesk maps the updated email to an existing user. The new requester will then be applied to the support ticket once a chat end event happens. 

The name provided from the visitor will be ignored but a notification will appear in the user profile section of Agent Workspace. For the new name to be saved, you can edit the user profile directly in support. Once updated, the notification will disappear. 

To illustrate:

1. Visitor A initiates chat with email [e-mail]
2. Support ticket created with Visitor A as requester
3. Visitor A edits name and email to Visitor C, [e-mail](existing user)
4. [e-mail] exists in support as Visitor C, [e-mail]
5. Agent still sees Visitor A, [e-mail] as requester
6. Agent and visitor both end the chat 
7. Ticket updated with new requester Visitor C, [e-mail]

Updating name 

If only the name of a visitor is updated, there will be no change to the requester in Agent Workspace and the new name will be ignored. A notification will appear in the user profile section of Agent Workspace. For the new name to be saved, you can edit the user profile directly in Support. Once updated, the notification will disappear.

For more information, see this article: About the Zendesk Agent Workspace