Getting started with Zendesk Suite - Part 3: Understanding how end user accounts are handled

Articles in the series

• Introduction: Getting started with Zendesk Suite
• Part 1: Accessing Zendesk Suite admin settings
• Part 2: Adding team members
• Part 3: Understanding how end user accounts are handled
• Part 4: Managing user access security and authentication
• Part 5: Adding support channels
• Part 6: Routing incoming support requests
• Part 7: Managing support requests during non-business hours
• Part 8: Guaranteeing customer support expectations with service level agreements
• Part 9: Reporting on support activity
• Part 10: Enabling customer satisfaction ratings
• Part 11: Using the Zendesk developer platform to extend your support solution
• Part 12: Rolling out your Zendesk Suite support solution

In addition to team members, the other type of users added to your Zendesk account are end users (the people you support, your customers). They can be added by importing them into your account, added manually by agents, or automatically as they contact you for support using the communication channels you set up.

Your customers can contact you via any of the communication channels you set up, and all those interactions from those different channels are captured in their user profiles if the end user’s channel-specific contact points (telephone number, messaging handle, etc.) have been added to their user profile.

Therefore, it’s possible to be in contact with a single customer using multiple channels and have more than one user profile for that customer. For example, a customer first contacted you for support via email message (and their user profile was created using that email address). Then later, they called your support telephone number, and the agent they spoke to did not inquire if they had already contacted them for support or asked for their email address. Likewise, that same customer could contact you using one of their other email addresses, creating a new user profile.

To manage these cases, you can easily merge duplicate end user accounts to track every support transaction in a single user profile. See Merging a user's duplicate account.

Although an email address is not always required for an end user account to be created, it’s best, if possible, to acquire each end user’s email address because an email message is often the best way to follow up on a support conversation that occurred on a different channel such as live chat and voice.

Note: Each end user’s email address is required when you bulk import users via a CSV file (see Bulk importing users) or if you require end users to sign in to your Zendesk account to access your help center and submit a support request (see Managing end user settings).

Having multiple accounts for a single end user is not a technical issue; you can successfully support your customers on any channels you set up, even though separate channel-specific user profiles might be created. However, if maintaining a single user profile is important, you should always ask ‘new’ contacts if they have previously reached out for support and ask for their contact details to see if you can match them to an existing user profile.

You can also organize end users if needed. For example, you can segment your end users into organizations and then view, route, and report on tickets specific to those organizations.

For more information about end user accounts, see Adding end users.

Continue to Part 4: Managing user access security and authentication.