Zendesk using side conversation child tickets: A complete guide

Let's be honest, solving a customer ticket is rarely a solo mission. More often than not, it’s a team sport, pulling in people from finance, engineering, or logistics. The real trick is keeping all those conversations organized without losing track of things. Zendesk, as a mature and reliable platform, provides powerful ways to handle these internal workflows.

Zendesk’s solution for this is a feature called side conversation child tickets. It’s a robust way to create and manage internal requests right inside the original ticket, which helps keep related tasks organized and centralized.

This guide will walk you through exactly how to set this feature up and start using it, step by step. We'll also cover some of the best practices for using the feature and look at how complementary AI-driven tools can work alongside Zendesk to help you get answers to customers even faster.

What you'll need to get started

Before jumping in, let’s quickly check if you have everything you need. Setting up child tickets is straightforward, but you do need a few things in place first.

• Your Zendesk plan: You’ll need to be on a Zendesk Suite Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus plan. If you're using a Zendesk Support plan, you'll also need the Collaboration add-on.

• Admin permissions: To turn on and tailor the feature for your team, you'll need to have administrator rights in your Zendesk account.

• Defined groups: It's a great idea to have your internal teams (like 'Finance', 'Engineering-Tier2', or 'Warehouse') already set up as groups in Zendesk. Child tickets get assigned to these groups, making the whole process smooth and efficient.

How to start using Zendesk side conversation child tickets: A step-by-step guide

The idea behind the feature is clever: when an agent needs a hand from another department, they can create a new, linked ticket (the "child") from within the original ticket (the "parent"). This keeps the request securely inside the Zendesk ecosystem, making it easy to track and keeping the conversation history organized. Here’s how you get it running.

Step 1: Enable side conversation child tickets in your admin settings

First things first, a Zendesk admin can activate this feature in just a few clicks.

Head over to the Admin Center, then make your way to Workspaces > Agent tools > Side conversations. On this page, you'll see options for different side conversation channels like Email and Slack. Look for the one labeled Turn on child tickets and check the box. Make sure to save your changes.

Step 2: Configure how your child tickets will behave

Once it's enabled, you have several settings to choose from to decide how you want your child tickets to work. These give you great control over the workflow and what information gets carried over.

• Comment type: You can choose what happens with replies on the child ticket. 'Public' means comments are public by default, 'Internal' keeps them as private notes, and 'Match ticket privacy' starts them as internal notes but lets an agent make them public if they need to. Many teams stick with 'Internal' for seamless internal collaboration.

• Copying ticket fields: This is a fantastic timesaver. You can set up Zendesk to automatically copy fields like 'Tags', 'Followers', and even the 'Ticket form' from the parent to the child ticket. This ensures the receiving team has all the context they need from the start.

Step 3: Create your first side conversation child ticket

Alright, now for the agent workflow. When an agent is working on a ticket and realizes they need to loop in another team, the process is very intuitive.

From inside the parent ticket, they'll open the context panel on the right, click the Side conversations icon, and then hit the plus sign (+). A menu will pop up with the channels you’ve turned on. They just need to select Ticket to start creating a child ticket.

A composer window will open. In the 'To' field, the agent can pick the group they need help from (for example, 'Finance'). Then, they can write a clear subject line and a message. Clicking 'Send' creates a brand new, trackable ticket that's now linked back to the original conversation.

Step 4: Manage the conversation and track progress

Once the child ticket is created, the two tickets are officially connected. Any public comments added to the child ticket will automatically show up in the side conversation thread of the parent ticket, which keeps the original agent informed.

The status and assignee of the child ticket are also accessible from the parent ticket, ensuring that the primary agent can always check in on the progress of their internal request.

Considerations when using Zendesk side conversation child tickets

While this feature is a significant upgrade for managing internal work, there are a few points to keep in mind to ensure your team uses it as effectively as possible.

Manual creation and structured sync

Currently, creating a child ticket is a manual process. This is designed to ensure that agents are intentional about when to escalate a task and what specific information they share with other teams.

Additionally, the data sync between parent and child tickets happens at the moment of creation. If a team member updates a custom field on the child ticket later, that specific piece of data doesn't automatically flow back to the parent. This helps maintain the parent ticket as the primary source of truth for the customer interaction while allowing the child ticket to function as an independent internal task.

Accountability and agent roles

Zendesk is built for professional support teams, and as such, side conversation child tickets are primarily designed for use by full agents.

This design ensures that everyone involved in the core ticketing process has the necessary permissions and tools to resolve issues. If you have team members in other departments who don't have full agent seats, Zendesk offers excellent marketplace integrations and the ability to use side conversations via Email or Slack to keep everyone in the loop.

Customizing your reporting

Because Zendesk is such a flexible platform, you can customize how you track these tickets. While there isn't a single "child ticket" report out of the box, it is easy to track these tickets using tags. By setting up a simple trigger to add a "child_ticket" tag upon creation, you can build powerful, custom reports in Zendesk Explore to see exactly how these tickets are performing.

A smarter way to collaborate: Using AI to complement your Zendesk workflow

Zendesk is an industry leader for a reason-its ecosystem is unmatched. To make your Zendesk setup even more powerful, you can consider complementary AI options. The goal is to resolve the original ticket even faster by empowering your agents with instant information. This is where an AI agent can complement your approach, acting as a knowledge hub.

Centralize knowledge to support your agents

Instead of always needing to create a child ticket to ask another team for information, what if your support agent could find the answer instantly?

This is where a platform like eesel AI can be a great addition to your Zendesk setup. It connects to all of your company’s knowledge, including Confluence, Google Docs, and past tickets, to build a single source of truth. This allows your team to get instant answers from across the company, often providing the information needed to resolve a ticket without needing to create a child ticket at all.

Automate routine actions

Sometimes, a child ticket is created to handle a routine task like checking inventory or processing a refund.

The eesel AI Agent can work alongside Zendesk to handle these tasks automatically. By connecting to your other systems like Shopify via API, the AI can look up information and update ticket fields instantly. This enhances your Zendesk workflow by handling the routine steps so your agents can focus on more complex tasks.

Here’s a quick look at how these workflows can work together:

Workflow Step	Zendesk Side Conversation Child Ticket	eesel AI Complementary Workflow
1. Initial Request	Customer asks for an order update.	Customer asks for an order update.
2. Action	Agent creates a child ticket for the 'Logistics' group to get context.	eesel AI provides the agent with instant order status from your database.
3. Resolution	The logistics team updates the child ticket, and the agent resolves the parent ticket.	The agent resolves the ticket immediately with the information provided by the AI.
4. Time to Resolution	Efficient and organized.	Even faster.

Getting started with an AI-powered workflow in minutes

One of the best things about the Zendesk ecosystem is how easy it is to add complementary tools.

• One-click integration: Connecting eesel AI to Zendesk is a simple, self-serve process that fits perfectly into your existing setup.

• Confident simulation: You can test how the AI handles your past tickets in a simulation mode. This gives you a clear picture of how it will support your team before you ever go live.

• Flexible rollout: You have full control. You can start by automating just a few ticket types and keep the rest of your Zendesk workflows exactly as they are.

Enhancing your resolution process

Zendesk's side conversation child tickets are a mature, capable tool for managing internal collaboration. They keep your team's work organized within a single, trustworthy platform. By understanding how to best use this feature and exploring how complementary tools like eesel AI can automate routine tasks, you can create a truly world-class support operation.

Ready to see how an AI agent can complement your team's collaboration and enhance your Zendesk workflows? Start your free trial of eesel AI today.

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