Service Incident - July 16, 2026 - Chat | Pod 25 - Ticket creation delays

Summary

On July 16, 2026 from 03:50 UTC to 05:36 UTC , Chat (Agent Workspace) customers in Pod 25 experienced degraded performance, primarily elevated latency and delays when creating tickets. Messaging was not affected.

Timeline

July 16, 2026 5:23 UTC
We are actively investigating an issue affecting customers in Pod 25, which is causing a degraded experience in Chat within Agent Workspace. Customers may experience delays when creating tickets. The Messaging product should not be affected. Our engineers are actively working to resolve the issue, and we will provide an update as soon as more information becomes available. Thank you for your patience.

July 16, 2026 5:56 UTC
The service has now recovered, and performance returned to normal levels at approximately 5:36 AM UTC. We are continuing to monitor closely for any recurrence and investigating the underlying contributors to help ensure stability and prevent a repeat. Thank you for your patience.

July 16, 2026 6:34 UTC
We’re happy to share that the issue causing degraded Chat performance in Agent Workspace has been resolved, and service is now operating normally again. We’ve also put preventive measures in place to help reduce the likelihood of recurrence while we continue our follow-up investigation. Thank you again for your patience and understanding.

Root Cause Analysis

This incident was caused by a sudden surge of high-volume ticket update activity from a single customer account, which led to unexpected load on the database supporting Ticket Log Service in Pod 25. That database load resulted in processing delays that impacted Chat ticket creation in Agent Workspace.

Resolution

To fix this issue, we implemented a temporary rate limit on the high-volume traffic pattern to protect overall service stability. After the limit was put in place, database load reduced and service performance returned to normal.

Remediation Items

To reduce the likelihood of this happening again, we are taking steps including:

Improving query-level monitoring and alerting so we can detect expensive database query patterns earlier

Reducing unnecessary database work in Ticket Log Service that can amplify load during traffic spikes

Reviewing safeguards (such as targeted throttling) to prevent a single customer’s automation from degrading performance for other customers on the same Pod

FOR MORE INFORMATION

For current system status information about Zendesk and specific impacts to your account, visit our system status page. If you have additional questions about this incident, contact Zendesk customer support.