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Agent Workspace - Various Issues
Posted Mar 03, 2023
Feature Request Summary:
- User Profile should be able to show org data not just user - Zendesks own 'User Data' support app allows this
- User Profile should be adjustable to show only relevant fields instead of waste space on fields not useful to every company - Zendesks own 'User Data' support app allows this (currently the new User Profile section is a step backwards from just using the User Data app, essentially useless - the User Profile section should just be replaced with a version of the User Data app with it's additional benefits)
- Clicking buttons in the User Profile section can close the sidebar, making the user information invisible and requiring agents to re-open the side bar to see this on their tickets. When we are trying to make relevant information as visible & front of mind to agents as possible, we don't want this closing itself
- Swapping between Internal and Public notes now takes 2 clicks instead of 1
- Swapping between Internal and Public notes now doesn't move text and attachments with it, wasting time copy/pasting messages and re-adding attachments, especially after something like drafting a response you are now ready to make, or saving a response you were in the middle of making as a draft internal note to pick up later
- Order of messages is now like a chat instead of an email chain, which is not intuitive when Zendesk is used primarily with emails - requires agents to have to scroll up to the top of the latest message to re-read or reference for information. The Guide interface for our customers ('end users') allows us to customise this behaviour and pick newest or oldest first, but our Agents in support are given less options even though it is used infinitely more regularly
- Creating a new ticket with the message box down the bottom leaves a giant white empty space in the middle, between the 'subject' and 'comment' text boxes that both require input, which feels like bad UI
- Zendesk tabs now are named after the requester instead of subject, which provides much less context, especially in a B2B environment where you are often dealing with the same clients on multiple issues. It is now much harder to find the right tab
- The 'Assign' button beside agents name in the ticket view is now below their name, creating extra white space & more scrolling required in an already cluttered area. This used to be next to the name which was a better use of space for a feature that we do not use
- The 'Assign' button also shows up against a 'Zendesk' user when using Answer Bot, which isn't a user you can actually assign to. Seems like an unintentional bug (Unless Zendesk is now offering to work on our tickets for us to make up for all these issues the Agent Workspace has caused)
- The 'Jump to latest message' button often covers text we are trying to read, and does not have an easy way to clear this or prevent it from coming up on tickets in future
- The content window in general seems smaller, likely because the text box takes up more space and moves with the window. This makes it more difficult to read customer emails especially if they are longer or about more complicated problems. This can be resized but it is unproductive for us to have to constantly resize this for something that did not used to be an issue when the text box was static at the top of the page
Description/Use Cases:
Described above.
Business impact of limitation or missing feature:
Various, but most of these are simply a decrease in productivity for our team.
Other necessary information or resources:
A lot of these already have posts about them, all with upvotes, and some dating back to 2020/2021. This feedback request is just another drop in the ocean but I figure the more people pointing out specific issues with examples of why they are bad will increase the chances of Zendesk doing something, and I don't want to spam with a dozen feature requests.
Most of these issues simply need options given to Admins on how to manage these, such as a 'message order' option for the support interface, 'text box static or moving' option, or 'have tab names be ticket ID, subject, or requestor' option.
Not every Zendesk customer will be the same, and the changes may benefit some B2C clients who use a lot of chat support, but to try and fit all of your other customers into that same box with no options to make the interface work best for them seems completely out of touch.
10
25 comments
Official
Kolten Kittleson
Hello everyone!
First and foremost, thank you for the honest feedback about how the Agent Workspace UI is set up and feature requests that you’d like to see. I do want to clarify that anyone who wishes to be temporarily rolled back or excluded from a future activation can do so by simply contacting our Customer Support team. They would be happy to help with that!
I do want to also quick clarify that this post is filled with noteworthy feedback and also highlights some of the expected product behavior that is less than desirable for specific users, however I would be remiss if I didn’t note that there is a different between a known issue and expected product behavior (for example the clicking between Internal and Public notes does take multiple clicks given it also provides for the options to select a different channel to continue the conversation, so multiple clicks is necessary). Of course for anything that seems like a technical issue, please leverage our Customer Support team to help troubleshoot or confirm expected behaviors.
The team is looking into options to allow the draft from one note (Public or Internal) to transfer over, but at present this doesn’t have a date on the roadmap. The feedback from this has been given to the Product Manager who owns this area, and being used to help continue discovery.
With the Zendesk ticket tabs, the behavior for what is displayed has been changed this month and we have rolled that out over the last couple of weeks. This started on March 2nd, and at this time should be completed.
What is changing?
- Tab titles representing channels such as email, API, or system-generated tickets will now show the ticket subject in the title and the ticket ID in the subtitles
- Tab titles representing Chat tickets where a chat session has concluded will now show the ticket subject in the title and the ticket ID in the subtitle
What is NOT changing?
- Tabs representing Messaging conversations or Open chats will continue to show requester name in the Title and the last message + typing indicator in the Subtitle.
If an account is not seeing this change in the Zendesk ticket tabs, please contact Customer Support so we can troubleshoot this with you.
When toggling around the User Profile, the side-bar (after opening) should remain open and static. If anyone is experiencing a side-bar closing when toggling in the User Profile, please contact our Customer Support team to help troubleshoot.
And of course the feedback regarding the UI setup for assignments, ordering of conversations, ‘Jump to latest message’, where the ‘Assign’ button is currently placed, how we could possible repurpose an existing application within the User Profile space, and of course how the UI space is being used has all been brought to the respected teams for feedback. When there are updates to share regarding that feedback, we will be sure to update the article as soon as possible.
I appreciate getting this feedback!
-1
Eckhard Doll
I agree with everything and cannot wrap my head around it that this was released as it is now and no one really seems to work on enhancing the general user experience.
This alone is ridiculous:
"- Swapping between Internal and Public notes now takes 2 clicks instead of 1"
Who at Zendesk thought that this would be a great idea? Are they actually using their own product?
Looking forward to our forced migration on Monday.
4
Robert Jerina
Zendesk really went backwards with the Agent Workspace. If the Agent Workspace was standard back when we switched to Zendesk back in 2015 we would have hard passed on Zendesk and went with someone else. I have a LOT of angry Agents today after doing the cutover early so we could get ahead of the change. What a disaster the Agent Workspace is and whomever decided to force it on everyone at Zendesk should probably be fired because they don't know what their customers want or need.
5
Darren Bell
Have I missed something?!
Are they forcing people on to the Agent Workspace?
I keep looking at it in our Sandbox and it doesn't seem to have improved any.
1
Robert Jerina
Darren Bell They forced us at least to Downgrade (they say Upgrade) to Agent Workspace on/by March 6th (Monday). It seems like they are forcing everyone to move that route.
0
Darren Bell
I haven't seen any comms to me on it (yet). Thanks for the heads up.
Perhaps someone from Zendesk can confirm if this is the way "forward" ?
0
Robert Jerina
I received an alert on my Zendesk at the top saying they would be automatically "upgrading" me to Agent Workspace on March 6th. I assume everyone is going to be forced to it soon.
1
Michael Bright
At the top of my Zendesk, I noticed a notification informing me that on March 6th, I will be "upgraded" automatically to Agent Workspace. I anticipate that everyone will soon be required to do it.
0
Eckhard Doll
Still waiting for our forced migration/downgrade. I complained to our account manager but I am not sure if that will help. I guess that the different time zones gave us one last day of normal operation.
0
Robert Jerina
I emailed our Account Exec multiple times about it and they have yet to say anything to me in return.
1
Eckhard Doll
Same here. If there is no progress with the Agent Workspace feature set within the next months, we will seriously consider moving away from Zendesk. Not an easy task and I guess Zendesk is aware of that but something that has to be done in that case.
1
Pat
You speak from my heart, the disadvantages you listed made us switch back to the old agent interface.
0
Robert Jerina
Lucky if you can switch back. Some of us can't and are forced into this nonsense.
1
Eckhard Doll
We were migrated to the new agent workspace overnight and I reached out to support to complain via chat this morning. We were back on the old system within 15 minutes which was a pleasant surprise.
I really hope that they are going to address the known issues before that make another attempt to get us on the agent workspace.
0
Scott Patterson
Good to hear that the tab names are changing back, this has been a big problem for us. Now if we could just get the option given to us for what order we would like the messages to be in (newest or oldest first) we'd cover the majority of things our staff are complaining about. Not everything, but those are the biggest ones.
Personally, I'd also hope to see improvements in the User Profile bar as well. I don't think this is a big deal to other people, but it seems like massive wasted potential to not include functions that were in the User Data app already. Definitely feels like a step backwards which I don't understand.
0
Kolten Kittleson
Hey Scott Patterson,
I am glad we can tackle some of that for your team in the short term, and giving us the feedback for a more long-term roadmap.
As for the User Profile bar vs. User Data app, would you be open to a 30 minute 1:1 regarding that? I am the Product lead for our Built By Zendesk Apps team, and would be love to have a more personal dialogue about the differences between what we built in the application and the non-application functions.
-1
h_sz_ke
I hope I can switch back later older version of Agent Workspace, this update seems to be a nightmare. Very unfriendly service, answering to info@zendesk.com bounced back.
1
JJ Miclat
Hey everyone,
We appreciate your feedback on this topic and would love to hear more directly from you live. Please join us on Thursday, April 25th at 9 AM PDT for our PM Roundtable.
It'll be an open discussion on what is and isn't working with the recent UI changes regarding Agent Workspace. The product team would also like feedback on enhancements they plan on making in Agent Workspace, so we can design the experience tailored to your CX needs.
The link to register can be found here, we'd love to see you all there.
Cheers,
JJ
0
Scott Patterson
The time of the round table works out as 4AM for me, so I won't be able to attend, but appreciate that you're looking for feedback. Hoping the feedback isn't dismissed and things like the order of messages & locked text box become options instead of forced.
Also @... - I thought I replied to that, but if you still want to do a 30 minute thing about the User Profile bar, feel free to contact me however if you can to set something up.
1
James Hanley
Hey folks, and thanks Scott Patterson for the detailed write up.
Adding to what Kolten and JJ have already said, I can confirm that we are already working on the second bullet point in your post; allowing configuration of what fields show in the user profile (ie Essentials Card).
The first piece of this change is coming today – a new UI that replaces icons with label and will better enable custom fields into the user profile that don't have icons – the second piece is a configuration tool for admins that will launch around July.
Further to that, in the second half of the year, we're planning to expand the Essentials Card to support Organization profiles, addressing your first bullet point.
I hope this is helpful.
Thanks,
James
1
Scott Patterson
Thanks James Hanley! I know those features may not be big complaints for many, but definitely something I'm happy to hear is improving!
0
Jacob R.
- In our Help Center, we have defaulted the most recent response to be at the top of the ticket correspondence. Agent Workspace pushes this to the bottom, which with lengthy tickets is going to be a nightmare to have to consistently scroll. I know this was mentioned previously, but is there a plan to make this configurable for agents as it is for end users?
- In the old Zendesk UI there were numbers that notated how many Internal notes and Public replies were on the ticket. We found this to be incredibly useful and are wondering why it was not included in the new UI. Can this be added to the feedback for inclusion, please?
4
Craig Bailey
We're now the next victim and forced to turn on Agent Workspace which will take us backward with conversation views 30 years. (Email chains have been newest first for at least that long). This is a non-starter with our agents and I've put it off as long as we could. Very little Zen in our lives now.
"Zendesk customers who have moved to Agent Workspace are seeing 20% faster response resolutions on average." -- they'd probably be 40% faster if they weren't scrolling through long email chains to get to the bottom.
We're an email only support shop, and having conversation views upside down old to new is just unacceptable. Zendesk has quite defensively (and arrogantly in my opinion) denied that this is a proper view only because it might involve other channels. What? Scrolling to the bottom of long communication chains is faster? There is no excuse that a configuration can't be made to flip that view when it's only email. I doubt anyone at Zendesk reads their email chains oldest to newest every morning. (Gmail even gives you a choice.) To pretend this is a modern conversation method is pure gaslighting.
This is our last straw after having a grandfathered plan pulled from us this year with a massive price increase (which broke all our trust going forward). We've begun the process of replacing ZD in 2024 if they can't come up with some solution. I won't start on the internal/public comments change either, which will be hated by all my agents. Again, add a simple configuration option and disable the new behavior for those that don't want it. I miss the original Zendesk company.
3
Nicky Clark
Couldn't agree more with this point, all of our agents are so frustrated with how we can now see LESS information in the exact same amount of space - how is this even possible? With the old layout, we could view all of our own reply (unless it was a seriously long reply) and at least all of the client's most recent response with no scrolling or resizing.
Now, the client response area feels about the same but the amount of your own reply you see by default is ridiculously small. You can barely see a single paragraph and heaven forbid if you want to add an inline message (which we commonly have one or two of in a reply). If you resize it, you see too little of the client's email which contains important context. The time wasted constantly resizing the reply pane is ridiculously inefficient and currently the primary cause of frustration for us out of all the updates - beating out a very long list for the top spot, no less!
1
James Peterson - Eastern Logic
Hi All,
I know it's a bit of an old thread, but I found that some of the problems remain. We have recently updated our Drafts app on the Zendesk Marketplace to address one of the problems raised above, specifically to make a one-click button to move internal notes to a public reply. The app is free to use, so please give it a try and see if it can help. Full description of the app is on our Help Centre here. Feedback is welcom!
Cheers ~
0