Seeking Advice: Differentiating Customer Types in Our Support Platform

Hi Gabi, 

My team have done something similar in response to a need to highlight segmentation of customers. Its not as striking as color coding though, but still solves most of the problem for us:

1. We have Organisations mapped & synced to our Zendesk via a separate sales CRM that our Sales team uses. Part of that integration allows other fields to map across, so we map the segmentation profile field. We created a Zendesk custom field to map that into, so when on a ticket, it is visible to the staff user. To the staff user, they can look at that field easily and understand which segment the customer is in. We also add automatic tags for certain customers based on this, which is used for routing the work and reporting.

2. In addition, We have a Zendesk app from the sales CRM vendor, that displays further CRM account fields in the zendesk sidebar, that we may or may not need to be mapped into Zendesk fields. Its like a quick view of the account. Our use case for that is if a customer is trading with us for product a, but not product b, its good for our service teams to know and adjust their service accordingly

3. We also have a custom Zendesk app, which shows ‘campaign’ data that is more event or project specific i.e. this group of customers need this type of treatment/service offering during this period. That app works using  Zendesk Custom Objects, to surface what a customer is entitled to. I mention that in case you dont use a separate sales CRM for accounts, Zendesk Custom Object may be something to explore the use of custom objects i.e. a table can store a list of customers, and stored as a custom object in Zendesk so that it can be surfaced to the staff user under specified conditions

A few more options to add into the suggestion box: 

Custom User Fields

Create custom user fields that can be filled with information specific to each group. Although these fields are not inherently visual, you can use them in conjunction with a custom app to display specific icons or color codes in the ticket view.

Profile Pictures and Icons

If feasible, assign different profile pictures or icons to each group. This method can be manual but very effective visually. You can set up a convention where profiles from each group have a specific icon next to their name.

Zendesk Views

Configure different Zendesk Views for tickets coming from each group. Each view can include a specific naming convention or prefix that indicates the group. While this doesn’t change the ticket interface itself, it helps in organizing and routing tickets efficiently.

Hope this helps!