Plan requirement
| Subscription | Any plan |
| Access | Agent |
Six statuses, and each one is a statement about who has to act next. Using them consistently is what makes every report trustworthy.
The six
| Status | Means |
|---|---|
| New | Arrived, nobody has touched it. |
| Open | The ball is with you. |
| Pending | Waiting on the customer. A reply from them moves it back to Open on its own. |
| On-hold | Waiting on someone who is not the customer. Agents only; the customer sees Open. A reply from them still moves it back to Open. |
| Solved | Dealt with. Reopens if the customer replies. |
| Closed | Locked. Set by Zendesk, never by an agent. |
That is the everyday path, and it shows the thing the table cannot: at each step somebody is waiting, and the status says who. On-hold is not on it, because it is optional and because it is the one that breaks the rhythm: the wait is neither yours nor the customer's.
Pending and on-hold are not interchangeable
This is the distinction people get wrong most. Pending means the delay is the customer's. On-hold means the delay is yours or a third party's. Reports and SLAs treat those very differently, because time spent waiting on a customer is not time you are responsible for.
On-hold has to be switched on by an admin. Accounts that never enabled it end up putting everything on Pending, which quietly makes response times look better than they are.
Solved is not closed
Solved is a working state: the customer can still reply and reopen the conversation. Closed happens automatically four days after the ticket was solved, and after that a reply produces a follow-up ticket instead. Agents never set Closed themselves, and the automation that does it cannot be switched off.
Custom statuses
Beyond the six, you can add your own, such as Waiting on supplier or Scheduled. Each one sits underneath one of the standard categories, so reporting keeps working while your agents get language that fits how you operate.
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