The Best Zendesk Features to Make Life Easier for Support Agents
- Neal Travis
- Jun 17
- 13 min read
Effectively running and scaling Support not only means making your customers’ lives easier. It also means making the lives of your agents easier as well. That way, you help them to more effectively help customers, and handle more.
The easier their lives are, the more productive they can be, the more customers they can support, and the more effectively you’ll be able to scale your operations.
Ultimately, helping agents to be more productive and work more effectively will help deliver better service to customers. It’s all about supporting the supporters, reducing friction, and adding value across the customer journey.
The best way to make agents’ work more effective, is to maximize the features of the tools that you have available to you. And Zendesk is a tool with a lot of opportunities.
In this article, we’ll cover the major Zendesk features, and ways you can leverage them to make your agent’s lives much easier.
We’ll cover the major features included in the following categories:
Zendesk’s Robust Ticketing System.
Powerful Help Center features.
Internal Help Center Management.
AI features.
Advanced customization capabilities.
Analytics and Reporting.
A Robust Ticketing System
Zendesk is quite known for being one of the largest enterprise ticketing systems in the world, and with that, there are many Zendesk support suite features and benefits that exist to make support agent’s lives easier.
Here are some of those features, what the agent experience looks like, and how to make their lives that much better.
Multi-Channel Support
Multi-channel support in Zendesk allows you to integrate customer interactions from various communication platforms into a single system. This includes email, chat, social media, and phone, all converging into unified tickets.
Experience for an agent: An agent receives a customer inquiry that started on Twitter, continued via email, and then moved to a phone call. Multi-channel support automatically links these interactions to one ticket, giving the agent a complete view without jumping between systems.
To make life easier: In my experience, consolidating channels and ensuring that you can capture customer information across them will make researching customer history that much easier. That way, agents can get the customer information when they need it rather than switching systems and getting lost looking around.
Custom Ticket Fields (and Ticket Parser Autofill)
Custom ticket fields allow you to add unique data points to your support tickets beyond standard fields.
Automated sharing, often facilitated by business rules, ensures specific ticket data or the entire ticket is shared with relevant internal teams or external partners based on predefined conditions.
Experience for an agent: For agents, custom fields are a way to log and store information, or better understand what’s happening in a ticket. Commonly used for tagging and categorization, or filling in specific information such as ‘Order ID’ there is a balance between having agents fill the information in manually vs. automatically.
To make life easier: Automate the completion of custom fields as much as possible. Pair custom fields with Ticket Parser Autofill that specifically extracts information from incoming emails or messages to automatically populate these custom fields.
When a customer emails with an order number in the subject line, the Ticket Parser can automatically extract that number and populate a "Order ID" custom field.
This automation saves the agent from manually inputting data and allows for immediate routing or sharing of the ticket to the correct team.
Multiple Language Support (and Translate Conversations)
Zendesk's multiple language support enables your support team to communicate with customers in their preferred language directly within the agent workspace.
Experience for an agent: An agent receives a ticket from a customer written in French, a language the agent doesn't speak.
To make life easier: While Zendesk does not natively allow agents to directly respond, apps such as Swifteq’s Translate Conversation assist tool does. With conversation translation, the agent can view the message in English, type their response in English, and it will be translated back to French for the customer, eliminating communication barriers without needing to leave the conversation.
Multiple Brands Capabilities
Zendesk's multiple brands feature allows you to manage customer support for several distinct brands or products from a single Zendesk account.
Each brand can have its own dedicated help center, support email addresses, and even specific agent groups.
How this makes life easier for agents: An agent working for a company with three different product lines would normally need to log in and out of separate support systems.
With multiple brands, they can handle tickets for all three brands within one Zendesk interface, streamlining their workflow and eliminating constant context switching.
Triggers are automated business rules that run immediately after a ticket is created or updated.
They perform specific actions based on predefined conditions, such as sending notifications, assigning tickets, or updating ticket fields.
Experience for an agent: When a customer submits a ticket with "Urgent" in the subject line, a trigger can automatically set the ticket's priority to "High" and notify a manager. This ensures critical issues are flagged instantly, without the agent needing to manually adjust settings or send alerts.
To make life easier: Set up triggers that agents can use to move more effectively. Some of the ones that I have used the most, are ones that catch and pre-filter known issues so that we can separate them into their own queues and create a way that agents can just focus on that one task, rather than needing to context switch.
I.e. Catch all refund requests, and sort them, then someone can just work refunds, rather than needing to go from refunds, to sign-in issues which require a different frame of thinking.
Macros are pre-defined, reusable responses or sets of actions that agents can manually apply to tickets.
They are used to quickly address common inquiries or perform repetitive tasks with a single click.
Experience for an agent: If an agent frequently answers questions about password resets, they can use a macro to insert a complete, pre-written response with instructions, saving significant typing time. This ensures consistency and frees up the agent to focus on more complex issues.
To make life easier: The use-case is clear for macros in making life easier for agents, so for this, I’d like to leave a note on how you can make life easier for the operations teams. Monitor the usage of macros.
If agents unknowingly continue to use outdated macros, or use a specific one that has been deprovisioned, it can cause a huge load on operations and the customer experience later on down the road.
Keep an eye out for that. To make sure that these agents do find the right macro to use for the right situation, use Zendesk Macro Search. Agents will then be able to search for keywords directly listed in macros.
Skills-Based Routing
Skills-based routing automatically directs incoming tickets to the agents most qualified to handle them based on their expertise.
This ensures customers connect with agents who have the specific knowledge needed to resolve their issues efficiently.
Experience for an agent: A customer has a technical question about product integration. Instead of the ticket going to any available agent, skills-based routing sends it directly to an agent with "Integration Expert" as a skill, leading to faster and more accurate resolutions.
To make life easier: Regularly update and review skills, so that agents who are less-equipped to handle specific issues don’t need to touch them at all. THis will save back-and-forth, information loss, and handover across the board. It’s better for everyone involved.
Ticket Collaboration
Ticket collaboration features in Zendesk allow agents to work together on complex tickets, sharing information and coordinating efforts internally.
This can involve private notes, side conversations with other teams, or tagging colleagues for input.
Experience for an agent: An agent receives a ticket that requires input from both the finance and legal departments. They can use side conversations within the ticket to communicate with those teams, keeping all relevant discussions organized and attached to the original customer issue.
Search
Zendesk's powerful search functionality allows agents to quickly find relevant information across tickets, users, organizations, and knowledge base articles.
It uses advanced algorithms to provide accurate and quick results.
Experience for an agent: An agent needs to recall how a similar issue was resolved last month. Using the search bar, they can quickly find past tickets with similar keywords or customer details, empowering them to provide a consistent and effective solution.
To make life easier: Enhance Zendesk search with Advanced Search Plus. Use a variety of complex "is" and "is not" filters to refine your search results by any system or custom field. Agents will then be able to find exactly what they are looking for with ease.
Powerful Help Center features
Alongside Zendesk’s core ticketing system, they also offer many features for self-service, that by nature, will support the agent experience as well.
Knowledge Base
The knowledge base is a centralized repository of self-service articles, FAQs, and guides that customers can access to find answers to their questions independently.
It reduces the need for customers to contact support directly.
Experience for an agent: Before contacting an agent, a customer can search the knowledge base for instructions on how to troubleshoot a common issue. If the answer is readily available, the customer resolves their problem independently, reducing ticket volume for agents.
To make life easier: Maximize efficiency with your knowledge management strategy. This will ensure that customers will be able to get the right information at the right time, and that agents will have the most up-to-date information as possible.
Multilingual (Enhanced with Help Center Translate)
This feature extends the knowledge base by allowing you to offer self-service content in multiple languages.
It enables customers worldwide to access help articles in their native tongue, improving accessibility and satisfaction.
Experience for an agent: A customer in Germany can access your help center articles in German, even if your main support team is English-speaking. This empowers international customers to find solutions on their own, reducing language barriers for agents.
To make life easier: You can implement and manage multilingual content in the help center, significantly reducing incoming tickets for agents who may not speak those languages. This promotes self-service and scales support efficiently.
Internal Help Center Management
Agent Workspace
The Agent Workspace is the unified interface where agents handle all customer interactions, regardless of channel.
It brings together ticketing, customer context, communication tools, and apps into a single, streamlined view.
Experience for an agent: An agent can switch seamlessly between a live chat conversation and an email ticket, with all relevant customer details visible in the same window. This integrated environment minimizes distractions and enhances agent efficiency by providing everything they need in one place.
To make life easier: You can configure and optimize the Agent Workspace layout to ensure agents have all necessary information and tools at their fingertips. This reduces cognitive load and saves agents time from navigating disparate systems.
Custom views are personalized filters that allow agents or managers to organize and prioritize their ticket queues based on specific criteria.
They help agents focus on relevant tickets and manage their workload effectively.
Experience for an agent: An agent can create a custom view to show only "High Priority" tickets assigned to their group, ensuring they address the most critical issues first. This helps agents stay organized and prioritize their work without manual sorting.
To make life easier: You can set up default custom views that help agents prioritize and organize their workload effectively. This ensures agents are focusing on the most impactful tasks and just seeing what they need to see to maximize productivity.
SLA Management
SLA (Service Level Agreement) management in Zendesk allows you to define and track response and resolution times for tickets.
It helps ensure that your team meets agreed-upon service standards and customer expectations.
Experience for an agent: An agent sees a visual indicator on a ticket showing that its first response SLA is about to breach. This alerts the agent to prioritize that ticket, helping them meet service goals and prevent customer dissatisfaction.
To make life easier: You can define and configure clear SLA policies that provide agents with immediate guidance on ticket urgency. This helps agents prioritize their work and ensures the team consistently meets customer expectations.
Audit for Logs
Audit logs in Zendesk provide a detailed history of all actions and changes made within your account, including ticket updates, user modifications, and system configurations.
This feature is crucial for security, compliance, and troubleshooting.
Experience for an agent: If an agent accidentally changes a ticket status or makes an incorrect update, a manager can review the audit logs to pinpoint exactly what happened and when. This helps in quickly correcting mistakes and provides accountability for agent actions.
To make life easier: You can use audit logs to quickly investigate and resolve issues, such as misrouted tickets or accidental deletions, reducing agent frustration and downtime. This ensures accountability and helps in troubleshooting agent errors.
Agent Collision Detection
Agent collision detection alerts agents when another agent is actively viewing or working on the same ticket.
This prevents duplicate work and ensures that only one agent is interacting with the customer on a specific issue at a time.
Experience for an agent: An agent opens a ticket, and a pop-up instantly notifies them that "Agent Smith is currently viewing this ticket." This prevents both agents from replying to the same customer, avoiding confusion and improving efficiency.
To make life easier: You can enable collision detection to prevent agents from wasting time on duplicate efforts or sending conflicting messages to customers. This streamlines team efficiency and improves the customer experience.
Zendesk Features Based on AI
Answer Bot
Answer Bot is an AI-powered tool that automatically responds to customer inquiries by suggesting relevant articles from your knowledge base.
It helps deflect common questions, empowering self-service and reducing agent workload.
Experience for an agent: A customer sends an email with a common question, and Answer Bot immediately suggests a relevant knowledge base article. If the article answers their question, the customer is helped instantly, and an agent doesn't need to intervene.
To make life easier: You can train and optimize Answer Bot to accurately deflect common inquiries, significantly reducing the volume of simple tickets reaching agents. This empowers agents to spend more time on high-value interactions.
Zendesk Advanced AI leverages machine learning to enhance various aspects of support, including sentiment analysis, intent prediction, and smart routing. It helps automate more complex tasks and provide deeper insights.
Experience for an agent: Advanced AI can analyze an incoming ticket's sentiment and automatically escalate it to a supervisor if it detects high customer frustration. This proactive flagging helps agents address potentially volatile situations more effectively.
To make life easier: You can configure Advanced AI to proactively identify and flag urgent or emotionally charged tickets, enabling agents to prioritize and tailor their responses. This helps agents manage difficult conversations more effectively.
AI Copilot acts as an intelligent assistant for agents, providing real-time suggestions and automations within the agent workspace.
It can help with drafting responses, summarizing conversations, and recommending actions.
Experience for an agent: As an agent types a response, the AI Copilot might suggest a relevant macro or provide a grammatically corrected, more empathetic version of their sentence. This reduces drafting time and improves the quality of agent communication.
To make life easier: You can deploy and configure AI Copilot to streamline agent communication by suggesting relevant macros, responses, or summarizing long interactions. This significantly reduces the cognitive load and typing effort for agents.
AI Agents (also known as virtual agents or sophisticated chatbots) are autonomous AI systems capable of handling complex customer interactions end-to-end without human intervention.
Agents are one of the key Zendesk AI features, and they can resolve issues, provide information, and even perform transactions.
Experience for an agent: An AI Agent can handle common refund requests by gathering necessary information from the customer and processing the refund automatically. This frees up human agents to focus on unique or highly complex issues.
To make life easier: You can design and implement AI Agents to handle common, repetitive customer inquiries, deflecting them entirely from human agents. This frees up human agents to focus on providing empathetic support for unique and complex problems.
Advanced Customization Capabilities
Zendesk Customization
Zendesk offers extensive customization options, allowing businesses to tailor the platform's appearance, workflows, and functionality to match their specific needs and brand identity.
This includes custom branding, ticket forms, and business rules.
Experience for an agent: An agent's ticket form can be customized to show only the fields relevant to their specific role, reducing visual clutter and speeding up data entry. This personalized interface makes the agent's daily tasks more efficient and less error-prone.
To make life easier: You can customize the Zendesk interface and workflows to precisely match the team's operational needs, removing clutter and optimizing agent efficiency. This ensures the tool truly supports the agents' daily tasks, rather than hindering them.
Zendesk Integrations and Apps
Zendesk integrates with a vast ecosystem of third-party applications and offers a marketplace of apps to extend its functionality.
These integrations connect Zendesk with other business tools like CRM, e-commerce, and project management systems.
Experience for an agent: An agent can access a customer's recent purchase history from Shopify directly within the Zendesk ticket interface, without logging into a separate system. This provides immediate context and streamlines the resolution process.
To make life easier: You can identify and integrate essential third-party applications directly into the agent workspace, providing agents with seamless access to customer data and tools. This reduces context switching and streamlines the agent's workflow.
Boost your team productivity and your customers' experience with Swifteq's suite of Automation, Help Center and Agent-Assist Zendesk® apps.
Performance Dashboard (and Help Center Analytics)
The Performance Dashboard provides insights into the effectiveness of your help center, tracking metrics like article views, search terms, and self-service rates. It helps identify content gaps and areas for improvement.
Experience for an agent: A support operations professional can see that a particular help center article has very few views despite being relevant to a common issue. This insight allows them to promote the article or improve its discoverability, reducing inbound tickets for agents.
To make life easier: You use this dashboard to analyze help center usage, identifying popular articles or search terms that could prevent tickets. This allows you to proactively create or improve content, reducing agent workload.
Satisfaction Prediction
Satisfaction Prediction is an AI feature that uses machine learning to predict whether a customer will have a good or bad satisfaction outcome based on ticket attributes and conversation history.
This allows for proactive intervention.
Experience for an agent: A ticket might be flagged with a "Low Satisfaction Risk" prediction before an agent even replies. This empowers the agent to approach the interaction with extra care or escalate it, proactively preventing a negative customer experience.
To make life easier: You can configure Satisfaction Prediction to flag at-risk tickets, enabling proactive agent intervention and specialized handling. This helps agents prevent customer churn and improve overall customer experience.
Make Your Help Desk Work for You
With such a comprehensive array of features offered by Zendesk, from its core ticketing system to advanced AI capabilities and robust analytics, it’s easy to underestimate the power of each feature.
The true power in leveraging these features lies in their collective ability to transform the daily experience of your customer support agents.
By implementing and optimizing these Zendesk features, you directly contribute to creating a more efficient, less stressful, and ultimately more rewarding environment for your support agents.
You reduce their manual workload through automation, empower them with instant access to crucial information and tools, and guide them through consistent, streamlined workflows.
This focus on making agent’s lives easier and more effective directly translates to improved agent morale, reduced burnout, faster resolution times, and ultimately, higher customer satisfaction.
Empowered agents deliver better service, and a better agent experience leads to a superior customer experience.
Boost your team productivity and make their lives even easier with Swifteq's suite of Automation, Help Center and Agent-Assist Zendesk® apps. Start your 14-day free trial today or ask for demo.
Written by Neal Travis
Curious learner and builder of customer experiences in scale-ups. He is the Head of Customer Experience at the Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR) and Host of Growth Support.