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About the email channel
Although there are many ways for customers to contact you for support using the Zendesk products (email, chat, messaging, phone, and so on), for both customers and agents email notifications and email-based conversations are at the core of the customer service interaction.
- When a customer sends an email to your support email address, a ticket is created in Zendesk Support.
- The customer immediately receives an automated email notification to let them know that their support request has been received.
- 新的支持请求创建一个新的机票在泽ndesk Support, is then added to the ticket queue and based on how your ticket routing business rules are set up, the ticket is either assigned to an agent group, a specific agent, or it sits in the queue waiting to be picked up by an agent.
- The new support request also automatically generates an email notification to the support staff when a new ticket is created, when a group or agent has been assigned to it, and then as various events occur during the course of the support conversation and resolving the ticket (for example, a reply from the customer).
- For the customer, the back and forth between an agent comes in the form of email replies in a threaded email conversation.Note:If you set up a self-service Help Center using Zendesk Guide, your users can also view their support requests and communicate with agents there also in a similar threaded conversation format, bypassing their email application. However, email notifications will still be generated by the usual ticket events such as adding a new comment to the ticket.
Even when you’re using a different communication channel with your customers, such as Zendesk Talk, email is important there as well. This is because a phone conversation also creates a ticket in Zendesk Support, and follow-on steps in your conversation with the customer can happen in email (for example, taking the support request offline because you need time to gather additional information, or when the customer is asked to rate their support experience after their issue has been resolved).
我们与客户的互动最常见和有用的rkflows, based on customer service best practices, are provided automatically for you in Zendesk Support. This means that you don’t have to sort out all this email notification and routing logic yourself, but you can customize these things to your specific needs, and this is where the role that email plays in Zendesk Support can sometimes cause confusion. What exactly is generating the email notifications that are being sent to customers and support staff? Can I turn them off or modify them? Can I control the look, wording, and timing of these email notifications?
Two types of email notifications: incoming and outgoing
It’s helpful to begin understanding how email works in Zendesk Support by focusing on email notifications because they communicate the information and provoke the actions involved in a customer service interaction. They are essential for communicating with your customers and you therefore need to understand how they work and why you should not disable them in Zendesk Support.
Think of email notifications in two groups: incoming email notifications (that your support staff see) and outgoing email notifications (that your customers see).
Zendesk Support is set up to handle the essential steps in a customer service interaction, meaning that you don’t need to necessarily set this up yourself — although you’re free to do all the workflow customization that you’d like.
Here’s what happens with email notifications by default, without you having to set up anything yourself.
- A new support request from a customer was received
- Agent group was assigned to the new ticket
- A specific agent was assigned to the new ticket
- The customer has added a new comment to the ticket/email thread
- The customer has reopened the ticket after it was marked as solved
- An automated notification to the customer that their support request was received
- An agent added a reply (a public comment) to the customer
- The agent set the ticket status to solved
Those email notifications are set up by default in Zendesk Support, but you can add many more email notifications — both incoming and outgoing. For example, if you enable Customer Satisfaction Ratings in Zendesk Support, your customers will receive an email notification after their ticket has been solved asking them to rate their support experience. Or, if the agent is waiting for more information from the customer, you can create an email notification to remind the customer.
Incoming email notifications can be set up and customized in many ways. For example, incoming support requests can be routed directly to a group or specific agent based on who the customer is, their company they work for, the category of customers you’ve included them in, the time of day the support request was received, and so on.
Both incoming and outgoing email notifications are defined and generated by triggers, automations, and targets in Zendesk Support. These define the business rules, the support workflow, that automates and streamlines the support you provide to your customers.
How triggers and automations generate email notifications
We’re assuming that you have a basic understanding of what triggers and automations are and what they do in Zendesk Support. If you don’t, take a few minutes and read these two articles:About triggers and how they workandAbout automations and how they work. Come back when you’re done.
Having read those articles, you understand that both triggers and automations take actions based on conditions. Triggers define actions that happen when a ticket is created or updated, such as sending an email notification to the customer when a new support request generates a ticket. Automations take action based on time, notifying an agent, for example that a high priority ticket remains unsolved after x numbers of hours.
To take a look at the triggers that generate the default incoming and outgoing email notifications we listed above, sign in to Zendesk Support as an administrator and selectTriggersfrom theBusiness Rulescategory. Open the trigger calledNotify requester of received request. In theActionssection, you can see how email notifications are defined.
This is the first automated email notification that a customer receives when they send you a support request. As you’re defining the customer experience using Zendesk Support, the message contained in this trigger may be one of the first things you want to customize (much more detail about these default triggers can be found inAbout the Support default triggers).
An important element in email notifications are placeholders. These are the elements in the graphic above that are contained within double curly brackets. They are references to ticket and user data that are inserted into email notifications when they are sent to customers (seeUsing placeholders).
As you’ll see later in this guide, you have lots of control over the wording and the look of your overall customers’ email support experience. You also have control of the triggers and automations that generate email notifications, but modifying those should be done cautiously.
Is it okay to modify or deactivate the default email notification triggers?
可以修改和关闭这些default triggers, but you should first ask yourself why you’re thinking of doing either. What are you trying to achieve?
Deactivating these default triggers breaks the communication you have with your customers because email notifications will no longer be sent. The support conversation will end and this will confuse both your customers and you.
修改包含在defaul的消息t email notification triggers is easy to do, as long you’re aware of the placeholders that automatically populate the data needed to be expressed in those messages and not accidentally remove them. Modify those messages all you want. However, deactivating the default email notification triggers rarely makes sense.
We’verecommendedthat you may want to deactivate theNotify all agents of received requesttrigger, because unless you have a very small support team not all of your agents need or want an email notification every time a new ticket is created. With that exception,we recommend that you do not deactivate the default email notification triggers.
If you experience issues with customers or agents either not receiving email notifications, or receiving email notifications that they shouldn’t be receiving, the problem most likely lies elsewhere (seePart 4: Understanding and troubleshooting common email channel problems).
Having a very good understanding and working knowledge of triggers and automations usually prevents any mishaps with email notifications, so here’s another recommendation to readAbout triggers and how they workandAbout automations and how they workbefore you modify existing triggers and automations or create new ones.
13 Comments
Is it possible to set up an email that will not make a support ticket but a way to view my email? If not I think that would be a great suggestion. So agents can look at there work email and see important stuff.
Hi Devin,
Zendesk isn't designed to be an email client, so that's not possible. Thanks for the input!
Hello,
I have been looking all around and I can't find where to change a string from the email a user receives when registering (which I also got upon registering on this support platform). This is what I am trying to modify:
"Create a password
If you didn’t sign up to {something} using this email address, you can safely ignore this email."
I found where to change the text above that, but not this one.
Any help is appreciated
These system-generated emails are among the earliest communications you'll have with a customer, and can be updated to better match your brand or organization's guidelines.
You may refer to the following article for the step:
Hi Team
I would like to understand the effects of deleting a support address on Zendesk? or a forwarding address created to receive emails from customers? These email ID have been used for a few years but are now being sunset in the Organization as the associated process is obsolete. Will deleting them affect ticket reporting or access to old tickets received on this ID?
I hope all is well! Deleting an external email address connected to Zendesk as a support email does not have any implications regarding access or reporting on your past tickets.
I hope this addresses your question.
Is there an accessibility feature that allows you 'talk to text' in emails? So no phone number, no SMS, just instead of typing the reply, speak your response, ZD converts to text and with some tweaks of course, can be sent
Thanks!
HI Alison, this feature is currently not available in Zendesk. However, you can maybe use external sites (lots of free sites out there) that will convert voice to text and just copy and paste if you'll be constructing a long message.
I also found one browser extension for Google Chrome that could potentially help though it looks like it is paid subscription -https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/voice-in-voice-typing/pjnefijmagpdjfhhkpljicbbpicelgkomight be worth checking with their support team as well to try to test it with Zendesk. Thanks!
I have clients that insist on sending an email for Support and I want them to only go to Zendesk and open a ticket. The reason for wanting the ticket is that i need specific fields answered for business reporting that an email just wont cover/convert.
Is there a way I can stop new ticket creations?
I have modified the reply to request they open a ticket directly - however clients are still sending emails to open new tickets.
HiCarla Mitchell
If you want to keep mail open as a channel for followups, you cannot outright forbid an initial ticket opening by mail.
However, you can use triggers to send an answer like
"We do no longer accept ticket openings by mail, please go to ... to open your ticket.
We have closed your ticket.
Thank you ..."
Include links to make it easy, and close those tickets using triggers.
I use a scheme where I set a certain tag which is sensed by a trigger which then closes the ticket. You can simply check if the ticket came by mail and is new.
You can close the ticket using triggers only - set status closed.
Is it possible to set up multiple incoming email addresses and set different triggers based on the 'from' email address?
eg.
support@domain.zd.com= trigger sets it as incident type
info@domain.zd.com= trigger sets it as task type
Howie Paul
Yes, that can be done. 2 example triggers below:
Trigger 1
Conditions
Actions
Trigger 2
Conditions
Actions
HiHowie Paul
AsRafael Santospoints out, that can be done.
We use a standardized scheme for customers opting for application support, which works like this:
With this setup, it is pretty easy to pick the tickets from our application support customers and assign specific parameters using triggers similar to the one outlined above.
Adding another customer is a matter of an hour or so, including tests.
It is important that you make things systematically, otherwise, you'll drown in maintenance.
Pleasesign into leave a comment.