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Zendesk Talk Outbound Features Needed

Answered
Devin Chaloux

We recently made the switch to Zendesk Talk as it was part of the overall Enterprise package that we are part of. However, as a primarily outbound service, we are finding that Zendesk Talk lacks several important features that are standard/basic in most other telephony tools:

Limiting agent access to specific numbers (i.e. assign agents to certain phone numbers)

We have several different support numbers. Right now, we cannot limit agents to specific numbers. This is only possible for inbound calls through routing. We should be able to assign agents and/or groups to specific numbers so that they cannot call outbound from a number they are not supposed to.

At the very least, make the Talk app in the browser be "sticky" where the last number used is the one that it defaults to for that agent.

Ability to Create Tickets for Non-Answered Outbound Calls

While there is reporting on non-answered outbound calls, we would like the ability to create a ticket for these types of calls to take notes on the call. 

Ability to Turn Off Inbound - Direct to Voicemail

Since we are primarily outbound, we want the ability to have people who call inbound on these numbers to be directed to voicemail by default. Right now, there is no way to do this.

Outbound IVR (Consent to Call Recording)

Right now there is no way to get a customer to consent to a call recording before talking with an agent. (See https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4409216995738-Zendesk-Talk-Outbound-Call-Greeting?input_string=Zendesk%20Talk%20Outbound%20Features%20Needed for more).

 

These are just some of the basic outbound features completely lacking in Zendesk Talk and need to be addressed ASAP, especially if Zendesk wishes to compete with other telephony systems.

10 Comments

  • Official comment
    Rohan Gupta
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hello everyone,

    Thank you for reaching out. We hear you and we do care about the feedback we receive from the community. 

    The suggestions here are much appreciated and some will be addressed. Below are some solutions to achieve the above use cases, hope they help. 

    Regarding Limiting agent access to specific numbers (i.e. assign agents to certain phone numbers for outbound calling), this feature request is in our backlog and we will be assessing it. One immediate suggestion is that you can ‘nickname’ a number so it’s easier to remember and less prone to errors by agents (something like brandName-RecordingEnabled).

    Regarding Ability to Create Tickets for Non-Answered Outbound Calls, can you elaborate on what you would use a ticket for non answered outbound calls? Some of our customers would prefer not to create a ticket as its leads to overhead. One immediate suggestion can be agents create a new ticket and use a macro to populate some fields such as assignee and ticket text automatically.

    Regarding Ability to Turn Off Inbound - Direct to Voicemail, you can either leverage IVR to send a call directly to voicemail or you can set out of business hours schedule on phone number which can automatically take the caller to the voicemail. It is important to note that from a an agent productivity standpoint, you should expect your agents to have to spend time listening to voicemails.

    Regarding Outbound IVR (Consent to Call Recording), this feature request is in our backlog and we will be assessing it. One immediate suggestion is to use agent level call level recording functionality - have the agent request if it is ok to call record.

    Thanks

    Rohan

     

  • Nick Wurm

    Good luck with the Outbound IVR (Consent to Call Recording)

    There are multiple tickets out there asking for this, and Zendesk hasn't publically responded and acknowledged them in years...

    https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4409216995738-Zendesk-Talk-Outbound-Call-Greeting?page=1#community_comment_4459095597466

    https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/4408867856154-Pre-recorded-greeting-at-the-beginning-of-the-call-that-clearly-announcing-that-the-call-will-be-recorded?page=1#community_comment_4459102401562 

    3
  • Devin Chaloux

    Nick Wurm - one can only hope they'll address this soon. Lacking basic functionality for outbound service is a potential deal breaker.

    2
  • Ola Timpson

    The lack of default outbound phone number for agents is a huge pain point for me

    2
  • Devin Chaloux

    Agreed Ola Timpson - we have four phone numbers and used to have more on a previous telephony system because we host several different brands. The fact that we can't assign agents to a specific number is opening the possibility for error...not to mention that several teams cannot record calls and it would be bad if they called out from a number that does record calls.

    2
  • yanko.chakarov
    • Edited

    Hello,

    The Ability to Create Tickets for Non-Answered Outbound Calls is something we would like to have as a feature as well.

    Use case for us: We have a customer that we wish to call => He does not answer our call => A ticket is created and goes to a view of our choice => Later an agent goes over the tickets inside the view and tries to call all customers with non-answered outbound calls again.

    It will basically help us track which customer did not answer our call and we will be able to proactively call them once again.

    This is needed for our business because if customers do not answer our outbound call, we risk to miss getting in touch with them. Whereas if we have this feature, such risk is basically non-existent.

    Another very important reason why we need this feature is because we are a regulated business that reports to relevant regulation authorities that require us to provide them reports with all customer interactions (including unanswered outbound calls). At the moment we rely on agents to manually save such correspondences which is never the best practice.

    Please, review such possibility because it is very important for us to have it.

    Thank you.

    3
  • Devin Chaloux

    Yanko, 

    I agree. My use case would be that it would allow the agent to take notes so they know how to follow up the next time. By pushing this onto the agent to create a ticket, it's leaving the opportunity open for the agent to not follow through on this. Automatic creation would solve that issue. And ideally, this is a toggle that can be turned on/off. 

    1
  • Devin Chaloux

    Rohan - thank you for the update on the process. If there's anything that's the most urgent for me, it's the ability to limit access to numbers by agent/group. As I mentioned, we have four numbers and really we meant to have up to 8 but considered that untenable without this feature.

    0
  • Joey Barrett
    Zendesk Product Manager

    Hi @...

    The Ability to Create Tickets for Non-Answered Outbound Calls is something we would like to have as a feature as well.

    There is an option today to overcome this challenge,  Agents could manually create a ticket and make outbound calls from that newly created ticket. Where an outbound call is not successful, your agents could be encouraged to make notes stating an outbound call was not successful. Tagging and using Views / Business Rules would be a great way to manage these tickets.

    Thanks, 

    -2
  • yanko.chakarov
    • Edited

    Hi Joey,

    Thanks for the suggested workaround.

    At the moment we rely on agents to manually save such correspondences which is never the best practice.

    Our main goal here is to reduce the manual work for them.

    3

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