Plan requirement
| Subscription | Any plan |
| Access | Admin |
How customers get into your help centre. Every requirement you add costs you some of them, so start from what genuinely has to be restricted.
The options
- No sign-in. Anybody can read and submit.
- Zendesk accounts, with a password they create.
- Social sign-in, using an account they already have.
- Your own system, through JWT or an identity provider.
Start from what must be restricted
Most help centre content does not need to be. Instructions, explanations and answers are usually better read than gated.
Restrict what is genuinely private: their tickets, their account details, anything customer-specific.
Requiring registration to read is expensive
People who wanted an answer leave instead, and then they contact you, which is exactly the volume the help centre was meant to reduce.
If registration is required to read documentation, that is worth revisiting.
Requiring sign-in to submit
Defensible: it removes most spam and gives you a real identity on the ticket. It also loses the customer who cannot remember their password at the moment they need help.
Where you allow anonymous submission, expect more spam and plan for it.
If your product has accounts, use them
A customer already signed in to your product should not meet a second sign-in. That is what JWT is for, and it removes the barrier entirely.
Test as a customer who is not signed in
In a private window. It is the only way to see what a first-time visitor actually meets, and it is frequently more than anybody intended.
Comments
0 comments
Article is closed for comments.