How do I indicate the urgency of my issue when I contact Zendesk?

When you contact Zendesk Customer Support, you set the issue’s urgency when you select a business impact in the widget's ticket form. This article explains how to identify the urgency of your issue.

After you set the initial urgency, Zendesk Customer Support continues to assess the impact as the request is processed to provide the correct level of support.

Internally, Zendesk Customer Support refers to this as business impact and uses this level of urgency to determine the order in which to process tickets. This helps ensure that critical issues are resolved as quickly as possible.

Tip: To create custom ticket fields in your Zendesk account, see Adding custom fields to your tickets and support request form.

This article contains the following sections:

Understanding how Zendesk defines business impact and urgency levels

Understanding how Zendesk uses urgency to prioritize tickets

Understanding how Zendesk defines business impact and urgency levels

When you create a ticket, select how the issue affects your business, as shown below in the widget.

Level 1 (Critical) - We can’t sign in or use Zendesk

This level indicates the highest criticality. Use it in any situation where you are completely unable to use Zendesk to communicate with your customers.

Level 1 issues persist, require immediate resolution, and have no reasonable workaround until the issue is resolved. Any incident where you are concerned about the security of Zendesk data should also be marked with this value.

Sample scenarios:

All agents are unable to sign in to Zendesk

All agents have one-way audio issues during calls

The widget doesn’t load for end users

End users don’t receive ticket updates

High-risk security vulnerabilities. Example: Single sign-on (SSO) doesn’t work.

Level 2 (Major) - A major feature is broken

Level 2 indicates high urgency. Use it when your ability to communicate with your customers or perform normal business operations is significantly degraded.

Level 2 issues require immediate resolution and may have workarounds, but they require significant effort to maintain normal operations. Level 2 issues don’t take priority over Level 1 issues.

Sample scenarios:

Triggers or automations malfunction

Reports won’t load for any agents or admins

You see significant latency, such as a pause longer than 10 seconds, when you use Zendesk

You encounter errors that don’t prevent ticket updates but confuse your agents

Level 3 (Moderate) - I have an issue that’s slowing me down

Level 3 indicates moderate urgency. Use it for issues that slow normal business operations.

Level 3 issues require timely but not immediate resolution, and workarounds exist that you can perform without much effort. Zendesk Customer Support typically responds to Level 3 issues within 1–2 business days.

Sample scenarios:

You can’t export to XML format

Call audio files appear on a ticket later than normal

You see a short delay when you submit a ticket update (up to 5 seconds)

Explore reports fail to export (workaround: access reports directly and take screenshots)

Level 4 (Limited) - I have a question

The issue or request is informational and its resolution doesn’t directly impact current business operations.

Sample scenarios:

Your reports have unexpected or mismatched results that you need help to understand

You request information on a new channel or workflow that you don’t use yet

You can’t enable a sandbox

Markdown in tickets doesn’t render correctly

Understanding how Zendesk uses urgency to prioritize tickets

Zendesk Customer Support prioritizes issues that completely impede business operations to ensure timely resolution.

More critical issues appear at the top of the queue, so Zendesk Customer Support can begin to troubleshoot with you in real time. Expect responses to Level 1 or Level 2 issues to be sent live through the widget. If you need to leave the conversation or step away, updates can be sent by email instead. The team responds to Level 3 or Level 4 issues by email so Zendesk Customer Support can research potential solutions for a thorough response. Return to the widget to continue a conversation or open a new conversation for a separate issue.

Zendesk Customer Support ensures that ticket priority aligns with business impact and can increase the priority if it’s set too low.