Challenge
Today, all user fields are global and always visible to any agent. There’s no way to make user fields conditional - like with ticket fields - and no way to map user fields to specific brands. Additionally, there isn't a distinction between what’s relevant for end-users vs. staff/agents.
Esp. in multibrand environments, this can create cluttered and confusing user profiles, as fields that are only relevant to one brand (or one department) appear for everyone, and regardless of the core user role (as in, licensed vs end-user).
Internal stakeholders (support agents, account managers, customer success, IT) have to scroll through irrelevant data, which increases cognitive load and risk of misusing or misinterpreting fields.
Who's affected
I'd say this affects everyone to some extent, every day.
- Agents and internal staff who interact with user profiles daily
- Admins who need to maintain clean, usable data models
- End-users (indirectly), since a cluttered profile means agents could miss/mishandle important context
Example solutions
Just examples, obviously, any of these would add significant value!
1. User fields per Brand
No conditionality but at least Admins could map user fields to a specific brand.
2. Conditional User Fields
Mirror the conditional ticket fields feature for users (e.g. only show a user Field B if Field A = XYZ).
3. Conditional User Fields per Brand
A combo of 1 and 2, for example:
- If Brand is ABC, then show “Field Set 1”
- Within Field Set 1, configure user field dependencies (like we already do for ticket fields in each form)
Could also be CUF per Role..? :-)
Additionally, profile segmentation
Nowadays, if we add a custom field to users, this field will also appear in Agent profiles. We could let Admins configure which fields appear on end-user profiles vs. staff profiles, as these are fundamentally different personas.
Functionality like the Profiles API already lets us enrich users (esp. with external data), but Zendesk’s native user profiles can’t be made brand-aware or role-aware. In multibrand setups this creates clutter and, to some extent, inefficiency, since every field shows for every user regardless of relevance.
Adding conditional user fields, brand-scoped fields, and/or at least segmented profiles for end-users vs team members would definitely make profiles easier to interact with.
