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 a Facebook, Google or Microsoft account they already have.
- Your own system, through JWT, SAML or OIDC.
Where you set it, and the choice that shapes the rest
Under Admin Center, then Account, then Security, then End user authentication. Alongside which methods are active sits the decision that shapes the experience:
- Let them choose lets a customer sign in with any method you have switched on.
- Redirect to SSO sends everybody to your primary single sign-on and nowhere else.
The second is right where your customers all come through one system and wrong where some of them do not, because there is then no other way in.
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. Admin Center has Verify anonymous requests for exactly this: it holds an anonymous ticket until the address is verified. Zendesk advises against switching it off, because an account without it can be used in an email spam attack.
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 meets, and it is frequently more than anybody intended.
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