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How can I be absolutely sure an Internal Note will not be seen by an end user?
Posted Jun 03, 2021
Hello,
I've recently started working with a small customer support team that uses ZenDesk. They currently have a strict rule not to use the internal note function of the platform as they have had occasions where the end-user could see the notes made that were intended for agents viewing only.
I have done some research on public vs private comments and it seems incredibly convoluted. We do not use organizations, light agents, or anything of that manner. It's basically set up so tickets come in, and then one of our agents picks it up and responds.
I really think this "internal note" feature would be very helpful to our process, but my support team is now afraid of it as in the past notes have been seen by end-users.
What would be the cause of an end-user seeing an internal note for an organization using the base product (no organizations, groups, light users, etc)? Is there a simple way for a support team to be absolutely certain that an internal note will not be seen by an end-user?
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8 comments
Gabriel Manlapig
In this scenario, the email notification was sent to an internal user since the screenshot that you have provided shows "You are a follower on this request". Followers are internal users such as agents, light agents, and administrators that receive email notifications when a ticket is updated.
Note these things about using followers:
- Followers can add and receive public comments and private comments (Internal note).
- Followers can reply to a public comment with a public comment, and reply to a private comment with a private comment.
For reference, please see this article: About CCs, @mentions, and followersI hope this helps! Thank you!
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Nicole
Jason Schaeffer I'm not so sure I would say never. Attaching a screengrab of an email I received. The ticket was updated in ZD, but the email that went out shows the internal note. I would love to learn more about how internal notes work, what their expected behavior is. I came here to the articles when I saw this email seeking some answers or clarification and stumbled on this thread.
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Jason Schaeffer
Thank you!
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Marcus Sibley
I was hoping to get a little clarification as well. I have ran into a similar issue as the original poster with coworkers expressing concern with having a customer's email address being attached to a note out of fear that a customer would see the internal notation.
Today, I left an internal note only to have the customer reply to the internal notation asking what happened. How is that possible? How can we be confident that internal notations will not send emails and/or notifications to a customer?
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Andrew J
This is of course still subject to humans doing odd things, like manually sending someone an email that they received as an agent through their email client. It might be possible to reduce the possibility of this by stopping emails sending that contain the specific text around an internal note, but I haven't experimented with that yet. Something you would have to do in the email client as a sending rule, or possibly in your email processor.
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Andrew J
Definitely not from an email from Zendesk.
Even using an email trigger, if you send a notification that is set to put full ticket history, it will not send internal notes to a non agent email.
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Alejandra
Question about that. If a user is CC'd in the ticket, will that person see our internal comments?
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Andrew J
Can you explain how end users saw an internal note? Unless your people forget to make a note internal, or the end user is accidentally added as an agent... or your agents directly forward an email to the client... this should not be possible.
You can set internal as default to avoid accidental public messages. You would be best to disallow agents from emailing directly to customers (only use the Zendesk portal).
The Zendesk mail system automatically restricts agent only content to agent users - however humans do odd things.
Our general rule is to never put something in an internal note that could not be read by an end user in an extreme situation - for example - perhaps an end user might join your team 4 years down the track and find disparaging notes etc :)
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