Optimizing the Zendesk Agent Workspace

Zendesk’sAgent Workspaceis a powerful way to manage your customer requests, providing them with the best service possible no matter how they reach out to you. Follow these best practices to make the most of the Zendesk Agent Workspace. Optimizing the workspace can reduce costs, drive revenue, save time, and increase value. You must have the Agent Workspaceactivatedto use these features. The features mentioned are available for all plan types, unless otherwise noted.


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Zendesk’s
Agent Workspace is a powerful way to manage your
customer requests, providing them with the best service possible no matter how they reach out
to you. Follow these best practices to make the most of the Zendesk Agent Workspace.
Optimizing the workspace can reduce costs, drive revenue, save time, and increase value. You
must have the Agent Workspace
activated
to use these features. The features
mentioned are available for all plan types, unless otherwise noted.
This article includes these sections:

Optimize for multi-channel support
Optimize the ticket interface for your agents
Extend your data set to optimize ticket content
Train your agents to optimize their performance




Optimize for multi-channel support

With the Agent Workspace you can easily switch between communications channels,
all within the same ticket interface. You don’t have to maintain separate tickets or use
separate dashboards for each ticket type.


Best practices



Configure all the channels
your agents need to handle tickets, including email,
messaging, and voice.

For email, see
Adding support email addresses.
For messaging, see
About messaging

For social messaging, see
Getting started with social messaging.
For phone support, see
Enabling the voice channel and configuring general settings.



Configure omnichannel routing
to make sure the right tickets get to the right
agents as quickly as possible. Omnichannel routing with unified agent status allows you
to automatically direct tickets to agents based on their availability, capacity, and
ticket priority. See
About omnichannel routing.

Set up AI agents to deflect common questions across your service channels and increase
agent productivity. See Getting started with AI
agents.

Activate all available AI offerings, and consider the Copilot add-on, to enhance every
part of your service experience, from smarter conversations to
productivity tools for agents and new insights and instant
actions for admins. See Zendesk AI
offerings.





Optimize the ticket interface for your agents

The Agent Workspace enables you to customize the ticket interface so your agents have the
best experience possible to manage tickets.


Best practices



Create custom ticket statuses
for your account. Custom ticket statuses can help
manage your ticket workflows, as well as indicate a more meaningful ticket status to
your business and end users. See
Activating custom tickets statuses.

Create contextual workspaces to automatically tailor tickets to show the right
information to the right group of agents. Help them cut through the confusion by
providing them with a curated set of options to get the job done, including recommended
ticket forms, apps, macros, and knowledge searches. See
Setting up contextual workspaces. (Enterprise plans)

Define custom layouts
to handle different ticket types. Only show agents the
interface and tools they need to take on the task at hand. No developer resources are
required. See
About custom layouts. (Enterprise plans)

Configure the features included in agent copilot to provide your agents with access to AI features directly from
the ticket interface. For example, intelligent triage automatically detects a
ticket’s intent, language, and sentiment. You can also use AI to
summarize tickets and enhance ticket comments. See About agent copilot.
(Professional and Enterprise add-on)

Configure the user profile card. The user profile card appears in the context panel in
the Agent Workspace and displays information about the ticket
requester. You can change the card by adding, removing, and
reordering standard and custom user fields so that agents can
access the most relevant information. See cards to view additional information in the Agent Workspace. (Professional plans and above)

Change the ticket conversation flow
to match how agents do their work. Give
them an intuitive, comfortable interface that matches how they like to talk to
customers. See
Configuring the conversation flow and composer
location. (Enterprise plans)





Extend your data set to optimize ticket content

If you work with external systems, Zendesk custom objects allow you to seamlessly integrate
your custom data into tickets, triggers, and Explore analytics.


Best practices



Use custom objects
to give your agents access to all the data they need to
solve tickets, all without leaving the Zendesk interface. See
Understanding custom objects. (All Suite plans and Support
Enterprise)





Train your agents to optimize their performance

Make sure your team knows how using the Agent Workspace will impact their day-to-day tasks.
Also tell them about changes they can make to personalize the interface and boost
productivity.


Best practices



Share some basic information
about the interface. See
About the Zendesk Agent Workspace. If you’re migrating from
the standard agent interface, show them this
Quick reference
to highlight what’s new in the Agent
Workspace.

For agents who manage sensitive material
give them
permissionto redact ticket content and keep customer
information safe. See
Redacting ticket content.

Mention that they can:


Use the context panelto quickly access user
information and open a list of public or private apps.
Add
app shortcutsto personalize access to their
favorite apps.

Search, link, and quote content
from your
help center to include in tickets. (Growth plans and above)
If available, use agent
copilot for working in tickets, including
intelligent triage, suggested macros, ticket
summaries, comment expansion, and similar
tickets, and more. (Suite Professional plans and above)

Resize the context panel, the
ticket properties panel, and the

composer window
.

Change text color
to highlight important
ticket comments.
Use built-in
translation features
to communicate with end users and
other agents using different languages.






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