Tip: Using Agent Signatures to include gender pronouns

It is becoming increasingly common to see pronouns in social media bios and in email signatures. There are many great reasons for including pronouns, which are best explained in one of the many articles written on the subject - for example this article in the Zendesk blog titled "Why gendered language is everyone's business".

Adding or providing pronouns in communications can help to show you as allies, can help people feel welcome, and show that you as an organisation are inclusive and won't discriminate.

However, there isn't an immediately obvious way to include these in a standard way across all of our agents - and also in a way that would be optional per agent.

Solution: Allow agents to include their pronouns using Signatures

This can easily be achieved using the signature functionality - so agents can then add in their gender pronouns if desired or not if they prefer not to:

How do I do this?

Step 1 - Update the signature in your Zendesk

In the Signature/Agent Signature text box (for instructions on how to find this, follow the steps in this article), enter the following signature text:

**{%if agent.signature != blank %}{{agent.signature}}{% else %}{{agent.name}}{% endif %}**
Company Name
[CompanyWebsite.com](http://www.companywebsite.com/) | [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/company-name/)

This will include the agent signature in bold if the agent has one defined, or the agent's name/alias if they do not.

Below this, you can include your company name and any links to company websites and/or social media pages using the standard Markdown syntax.

Step 2 - Have your agents update their signatures

Your agents will need to navigate to their profile page:

And set a signature which is their name and their gender pronouns:

If they do not have a signature specified, then their full name (their Alias if it's specified, or else their name on their profile) will be used in its place.

Step 3 - send public updates on tickets

As soon as this has been configured, all public updates will automatically be suffixed with the signature and will be included in emails and ticket updates as viewed on the Zendesk request portal.

Dave Dyson

17 de março de 2021 01:18

Thanks for this fantastic tip, Dan!

Andrey Sarapulov

22 de março de 2021 08:05

Also, for more advanced signatures you can use Zignatures App

Tim G

18 de agosto de 2021 02:09

Nice tip Dan!! 👍

We've been using signatures slightly differently, so we weren't able to re-use the signature field specifically for this. What we did to get around it was:

1. Created a custom field called 'pronouns' (the field key is also pronouns) that agents can populate with the pronouns that they prefer in their profile.

2. Updated our signature in Zendesk to:

{{agent.name}} {%if agent.custom_fields.pronouns != blank %}({{agent.custom_fields.pronouns}}){% endif %}

That then lists the agent's name in the signature as normal, and if the agent has listed any pronouns, it will list their pronouns after their name (in brackets). The rest of our company signature then follows on from that on the next lines.

18 de agosto de 2021 03:17

Thanks for this, Tim!