Can I change my own role

No. An admin has to change it for you, and the same applies to an agent whose custom role lets them manage roles.

No. An admin has to change it for you, and the same holds for an agent whose custom role lets them manage roles: they cannot modify their own role assignment or permissions either. Zendesk states the rule without giving a reason in Support; in Workforce Management, where the same restriction applies, it explains the point as preventing the accidental loss of admin privileges.

Who can give me the role I need?

Ask another admin. In a healthy account there are two or three, precisely so that this is never a blocker.

If you are the only admin, that is the actual finding here. One admin means no cover for holidays, no second pair of eyes on a configuration change, and exactly this situation whenever something needs adjusting. Make a second one now, while it is a five-minute job rather than an urgent one.

Reducing your own role is unavailable for the same reason, so stepping back from admin also goes through a colleague.

The account owner is a separate question

Ownership is not a role in this sense. The account owner has every permission an administrator has, plus three things no admin can do: subscription changes, billing and payment management, and account changes such as renaming the subdomain or cancelling the account.

Ownership can be moved to a current administrator, which is a different action from changing somebody's role and worth keeping separate in your head. The owner's own role still needs another admin, like everybody else's.

See also

• Changing an agent's role
• What the standard roles can do
• Finding and changing the account owner