How to use Zendesk skill type for multiple skills per ticket

Getting tickets to the right agent quickly is one of the most impactful things you can do for customer satisfaction. Faster resolution times directly correlate with higher customer satisfaction scores. When a French-speaking customer submits a complex technical issue, you don't want it sitting in a general queue because your routing system can't handle multiple requirements at once.

Zendesk's skill types solve this problem. Instead of treating every ticket the same, you can tag tickets with multiple skills (like "French" + "Technical" + "Enterprise") and route them only to agents who have all the necessary qualifications. This guide walks through exactly how to set this up.

What you'll need to get started

Before diving into configuration, make sure you've got the basics covered:

• Zendesk Suite Enterprise or Enterprise Plus plan. Skills-based routing is not available on Team, Growth, or Professional plans. You'll also need an Enterprise-level Support plan.
• Admin access to the Zendesk Admin Center. You'll need permission to modify business rules and agent profiles.
• A clear picture of your team's skills. Document which agents speak which languages, who handles technical issues, who covers specific product lines, and so on.
• A plan for your skill structure. Start simple. You can create up to 10 skill types, but we recommend beginning with 3-5 core categories.

If you're on a lower-tier plan or want to avoid the complexity of manual skill configuration, tools like eesel AI can handle intelligent routing without requiring Enterprise access.

Understanding skill types and multiple skills per ticket

Think of skill types as categories and skills as specific values within those categories. Here's how it works:

A single ticket can have multiple skills from different skill types. For example, a ticket might have:

• Language: French
• Product Line: Product A
• Expertise Level: Senior

Here's the key: agents are only considered a match if they've got all the required skills on that ticket. If your ticket requires French + Technical + Enterprise skills, only agents who have all three will be eligible to receive it.

Skills can be marked as Required or Optional:

• Required skills never time out. The ticket will wait indefinitely for an agent with that skill.
• Optional skills are subject to a timeout you configure. If no matching agent is available within that timeframe, the ticket routes to any available agent.

This matters because if you make every skill Required and no agent's got the full combination, your ticket will sit unassigned indefinitely.

Step 1: Create your skill types

Start by creating the categories that organize your skills.

Navigate to Admin Center > Objects and rules > Business rules > Skills. This is where you'll manage all skills for your account.

1. Click the New skill type button.
2. Enter a unique name (max 96 characters). Keep it clear and descriptive.
3. Press Enter to save.

Common skill types to consider:

• Language for multilingual support teams
• Product for companies with multiple product lines
• Technical for complex troubleshooting
• Department for specialized teams (Billing, Sales, etc.)

Remember: you can create up to 10 skill types. Start with your most critical routing needs and expand from there.

Step 2: Add skills to each skill type

Once you've created skill types, add the individual skills within each category.

1. In the Skills page, find the skill type you want to add skills to.
2. Click New skill.
3. Enter a name for the skill (max 96 characters, unique within the skill type).
4. Press Enter to save.

Each skill type can contain up to 30 skills. For example, under a "Language" skill type, you might add French, Spanish, and German. Under a "Product" skill type, you might add your different product lines.

Important: After a skill is created, you can't move it to a different skill type. If you need to reorganize, you'll have to delete and recreate the skill in the correct type.

Step 3: Set up triggers to apply multiple skills

Now for the automation part. You'll create triggers that automatically apply multiple skills to tickets based on their content.

Navigate to Admin Center > Objects and rules > Business rules > Triggers.

1. Click Create trigger.
2. Under Conditions, specify when the trigger should fire. For example:
   • Ticket language is French
   • Subject contains "API" or "integration"
3. Under Actions, select Add skills.
4. Choose the skills to add. You can add multiple skills from different skill types in a single trigger action.
5. For each skill, set the priority: Required or Optional.

Example trigger setup:

• Conditions: Ticket language is French AND Subject contains "billing"
• Actions: Add "French" (Required) + "Billing" (Optional)

This ensures French billing questions route to agents who speak French, but if no billing specialists are available, the ticket can still be handled by any French-speaking agent after the timeout period.

Step 4: Assign skills to agents

With your skills and triggers configured, assign those skills to the agents who have them.

1. Go back to Admin Center > Objects and rules > Business rules > Skills.
2. Click on a specific skill.
3. Under Agents, click Manage.
4. Select the agents who have this skill. You can select up to 50 agents at a time.
5. Click Save.

One agent can have multiple skills across different skill types. A bilingual senior agent might have French, Spanish, Technical, and Enterprise skills. This flexibility lets you build complex routing scenarios.

When planning assignments, consider skill coverage across your team. If only one agent has a particular skill combination, that creates a bottleneck. Make sure you've got enough agents with common skill sets to handle expected volume.

You can also set skill priority per agent (Normal or High) if you're using omnichannel routing. High-priority skills help ensure specialists receive tickets that match their expertise before general tickets consume their capacity.

Common challenges with multiple skills

Even with careful planning, teams often hit snags when implementing skills-based routing with multiple skill types.

Skill coverage gaps. If a ticket requires French + Technical + Enterprise skills but no agent's got all three, that ticket can't be routed. Plan for common skill combinations and ensure you've got agents who cover them. Use Optional skills strategically to prevent bottlenecks.

Over-engineering with too many skill types. It's tempting to create a skill for every possible scenario, but this quickly becomes unmanageable. Stick to your initial 3-5 core skill types. Remember, you can have up to 10 skill types and 30 skills per type, but you don't need to use all of them.

Follow-up tickets don't inherit skills. When a customer replies to a closed ticket and creates a follow-up, that new ticket won't have the skills from the original. You'll need triggers to re-apply skills based on the new ticket's content.

Maintenance overhead as team changes. When agents join, leave, or change roles, you need to update their skill assignments. This ongoing maintenance is often underestimated. Consider quarterly reviews of your skill structure to keep it current.

Required skill bottlenecks. A Required skill means the ticket will wait indefinitely for a matching agent. This is appropriate for specialized issues that truly require specific expertise, but overusing it creates bottlenecks. Most skills should be Optional with reasonable timeouts.

A simpler approach with eesel AI

Setting up skills-based routing in Zendesk works well for teams with the right plan and resources to maintain it. But it's not the only way to get tickets to the right agents.

If the manual configuration feels overwhelming, there's an alternative. Instead of defining every skill and creating complex trigger logic, you can use an AI teammate that'll learn your team's expertise automatically.

Here's how it works. You connect eesel AI to your Zendesk account. Our AI reads your past tickets, help center articles, and agent responses to understand your business. It identifies patterns in how different types of tickets have been handled and by whom.

When a new ticket arrives, eesel AI analyzes the content and routes it based on demonstrated expertise rather than predefined skill labels. If Sarah has handled 47 billing disputes in the past month and has a 95% resolution rate on them, billing questions route to Sarah. No manual skill assignment required.

The routing instructions use plain English. Instead of building complex trigger conditions, you write simple rules like "Route refund requests over $500 to the senior team" or "Always escalate enterprise accounts to Alex." Our AI interprets these instructions and applies them intelligently.

You can start with a progressive rollout. Have eesel AI draft replies for agent review first. Once you're confident in the routing accuracy, expand to full automation. This lets you verify our AI understands your business before it's handling tickets directly.

For teams looking to implement intelligent ticket routing without the maintenance overhead of manual skills configuration, our AI Triage product handles the routing automatically. And unlike Zendesk's native skills feature, it works with any Zendesk plan, not just Enterprise.

Getting started with smarter ticket routing

Whether you choose native Zendesk skills-based routing or an AI-powered alternative, the goal is the same: get tickets to the right agents faster.

If you're going the Zendesk route, start simple. Create 3-5 core skill types that cover your highest-volume routing scenarios. Set up triggers to apply multiple skills automatically. Assign skills to agents based on their actual qualifications. Test everything thoroughly before going live.

Remember that skills-based routing requires ongoing maintenance. As your team evolves, you'll need to update skill assignments, refine trigger conditions, and watch for coverage gaps.

If the setup complexity is holding you back, or if you're on a lower-tier Zendesk plan, try eesel AI for intelligent routing that learns from your existing tickets. It works with any Zendesk plan and gets you up and running in minutes instead of days.

Either way, the goal is the same: getting every ticket to the agent best equipped to resolve it. That's better for your customers, your agents, and your metrics.