Is Zendesk forcing us to choose between complying with GDPR or deleting key business data?
The problem:
How do we anonymize or delete PII and conversation history on CLOSED tickets?
Fun fact: You can't do it
I've been in touch with Zendesk and they confirm this problem. They are working on a pseudo solution which is in closed EAP at the moment and that feature will only be available for Enterprise customers.
So, how do we then comply with GDPR? Seems like the only way is to permanently delete the ticket from Zendesk which then means we loose key historic data.
What could we do? Well, we could export data from Zendesk into a data ware house and amend/anonymize PII there - but what is the point of Zendesk Explore then?
We're in a real struggle here and I would like to know how the community works around this issue otherwise Zendesk needs to open up and allow anonymization or deletion of conversation history and selected metadata on Closed tickets ASAP.
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We delete the customer's account in Zendesk. I've been told that will remove their PII from the tickets.
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Simon Lee if PII is present in the conversation history, how do you work around that?
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We haven't formalised a process yet, but my thoughts are we'll either redact manually using the redact tool, or delete the entire conversation.
Depends on how many interactions a user has had, if any PII is present or if we need to adhere to any regulatory/legal requirements.
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Simon Lee You can't do that on Closed tickets though. Which is our exact problem.
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Andy R the problem with automatic deletion is you also lose all the metadata on the ticket when deleting it.
We have built a GDPR Redaction app that helps remove all PII and customer data based on a ticket, a user, or an entire organization. We built this custom for a few clients then made it available as a general app. It retains metadata on the ticket so that reporting still operates as intended.
It works on closed tickets.
Find it in the Marketplace here: https://www.zendesk.com/apps/support/gdpr-redaction-app/
We have a couple of major international clients using the app and have also worked with Zendesk Services team on some of those implementations.
Please reach out to me with any questions. gdpr@thoughtexhaust.com.
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Brendan thanks but the biggest concern for us is that ticket conversation history might contain PII and there is no way to remove anything from closed tickets and we can't delete conversation history from either solved or closed tickets I believe.
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