Most Zendesk customers immediately add a custom Category field to their instance in an attempt to track what incoming tickets are about.
Multi select fields may seem to be more convenient than single select field at first glance but there are several reasons you should utilize Single Select fields instead.
Multi Select Fields are not available for use in Zendesk Views.
- This means it is very hard to see at a glance within Zendesk native what ticket types your teams are working on. You want to be able to make views that track which types of tickets are taking the longest, which tickets are fastest, what kinds of tickets are in the Agents’ working queues, etc.
Multi Select Fields cannot be used with conditional fields.
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- When you have, for example, a ticket marked Feature Request and want to then surface another field to capture additional information about that Feature Request, you are only able to do this with Single Select fields.
Multi Select Fields cause double-counting in reporting
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- Whether you’re using Zendesk Explore native or your own reporting tool, when you have multiple selections in a field, you end up with a given ticket being counted twice or more. In other words, your reporting is limited in that pulling all “troubleshooting” tickets may also show in other reports if the agent selected “question” in a multiselect field on the same ticket(s).
- In order to make decisions on the data of your tickets, move to single select fields that you can use in conjunction with each other to capture high level and drill-down.
- For example, a Category single select "troubleshooting" ticket with an additional field about what the troubleshooting was for (invoicing, timesheets, etc) will help you determine which features are harder for your customers to use than others. If you have “troubleshooting” AND “timesheets” on a multi select field, incorrect conclusions could be made.
If you decide to use the web widget, multi select fields are not supported.
- If you want to ask your customer what their question is about, Zendesk only offers a single select option for the customer to select one option.
Integrations are easier with Single Select fields.
- If you want to integrate Zendesk with another tool, you are limited to using tags and it will behave inconsistently. For example, integrating multiselect fields with Jira is not supported.
Simple is always better.
- Each field should only have one definition. A field should not have more than one reason for existing. For example, a Category field with options like Customer Success and Legal don’t add context if you're already using Groups to define who's handling the ticket.
- Separate out your Product options to separate single select fields. A category field is meant to just concentrate on the high level question: What was this ticket about?