Zendesk End Users

A Zendesk end user is a customer with a record. Free, unlimited, and permanently confined to their own tickets unless you deliberately widen the door.

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Zendesk end user versus agent

The split is about which side of the conversation you are on, not about seniority.

End users submit requests. They have no access to the agent interface, no visibility of internal notes, and no ability to see anybody else's tickets. They cost nothing and there is no cap on how many you have.

Agents work tickets in the agent interface. Every agent consumes a paid seat.

Light agents, on the plans that include them, sit between the two: full read access and internal notes, no public replies, usually free. See light agents.

One person can only hold one role per Zendesk instance. This trips up internal support teams, because your own colleague cannot be an agent on the customer helpdesk and an end user on the IT one within the same account. Plan the roles before you plan the workflows.

How end users get created

Mostly by accident, which is fine.

The first time somebody emails your support address, Zendesk creates an end user record from that address. No sign-up, no password, no consent flow. They exist now, and they didn't have to do anything.

The others arrive through help centre registration, a bulk import, the API, or a sync from your CRM or billing system. However they were made, the record is the same: name, one or more email addresses, phone, organization membership, tags, and any user fields you have defined.

Email verification matters more than people expect. An unverified address can still raise tickets by email, but it cannot sign in, and end users routinely end up with a second record because they wrote in from a personal address once. Merging user profiles is a separate job from merging tickets, and worth doing before you trust any per-customer report.

What an end user can actually see

Assume the answer is "their own tickets and nothing else", then add exceptions.

Public comments on their own tickets. Never internal notes, never the assignee changes, never the tags.

Their request list, if you have enabled that part of the help centre and they sign in. Otherwise their whole experience is email.

Tickets they are CCd on, or follow, depending on which comment and CC configuration your account uses.

Their organization's tickets, but only if you tick that option on the organization and mark the user as able to view them. This is the one worth understanding properly, because it is how a customer admin sees what their whole team has raised, and it is also how you accidentally show one colleague another colleague's complaint.

Any help centre content you have not restricted to signed-in users or specific segments.

Managing profiles without creating work

Agents can edit end user details from the ticket sidebar, which is where 90% of profile maintenance genuinely happens: fixing a name, adding the second email address, attaching the user to the right organization.

A few things to settle early. Decide whether end users may edit their own profile in the help centre. Decide which user fields you need, and keep the list short, because every field is something an agent has to maintain or ignore. Decide what happens to a user record when somebody leaves a customer company, since the tickets stay and the person should not keep portal access.

Suspended users are the other half of this. Suspending an end user does not delete them, it quietly routes their mail to the suspended tickets queue. Useful for a spam sender, painful when somebody suspends a real customer and nobody checks that queue for a month.

The portal question

Plenty of teams never turn on the end-user portal at all and run entirely by email. That's a legitimate choice, and for a small B2C team it's often the right one.

The portal earns its place when customers raise enough tickets to want a history, when you need forms that capture structured data before an agent touches the ticket, or when organization-level visibility is part of what you sell. Otherwise you're maintaining a login screen so that people can read emails they already have. More in the customer portal guide.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Where does the end user fit in Zendesk user roles?

At the bottom, deliberately. Zendesk user roles run end user, light agent, agent, admin, and the Zendesk customer profile behind an end user is what they see in the Zendesk end user portal: their own tickets and nothing else.

Can an end user see internal notes?

No, under any configuration. Internal notes are the one thing Zendesk keeps firmly on the agent side.

Does a Zendesk end user cost money?

No. They are unlimited and free. You pay per agent seat, which is why light agents matter for internal stakeholders.

Can one person be an agent and an end user?

Not in the same Zendesk instance. One role per account, so internal helpdesks usually need a second instance or a different structure.

How do I let a customer see their whole company's tickets?

Enable shared organization tickets on the organization, then grant the specific user that access on their profile. Check who else is in that organization first.