The Evolution of Ticket Access Control in Zendesk: From Brands to Department Spaces
Zendesk introduces Department Spaces, shifting ticket access from groups to brands. This simplifies multi-brand and internal service setups, improves privacy, and streamlines routing with queues—strengthening Zendesk as a platform for both customer and employee support.
Most companies use Zendesk to support their products or services. They combine Help Center articles, email, and social channels into a unified inbox that creates tickets across all touch points—making omnichannel support easy to manage.
This article explores how Department Spaces simplify access control and modernize Zendesk environments for multi-brand and internal support teams.
A quick way to gauge Zendesk proficiency is by looking at email and domain setup. Basic setups stick with company.zendesk.com URLs and default email addresses like support@company.zendesk.com, but most teams upgrade quickly.
A mature setup uses a custom domain—like support.company.com—and a branded email address. This hides Zendesk in the background and builds trust. Customers see familiar domains, get emails from known senders, and your team benefits from verified communication via SSL, DKIM, and DMARC.
Beyond security, custom domains help your Zendesk reflect your brand. Add a branded Help Center theme, a web widget in your company colors, a custom email template, and an AI Agent with a friendly avatar—and your support setup starts to feel truly yours.
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Some companies support multiple brands within one Zendesk instance. Coca-Cola, for example, might offer support for Coke, Fanta, Sprite, and other products from the same environment. Or a business may split support between B2B and B2C teams to serve different audiences.
Not only do these brands require different colors and logos, their Help Center content and support flows might also differ widely across brands. To handle this use case Zendesk supports the concept of multiple brands, or multi-brand in short, in a single instance.
All tickets still land in one Zendesk environment, enabling shared reporting and cross-brand workflows for agents. Escalations to finance, logistics, or IT stay unified behind the scenes—while customers see only their brand’s Help Center, AI Agent, and support email.
As Zendesk evolved to support internal service teams—like HR, IT, and Facilities—brands shifted from being customer-facing labels to representing internal departments.
Many companies already use brands to separate internal teams. One “brand” handles customer support, another covers employee services like HR or IT. While this approach works, it often feels like a workaround—more a creative repurposing than an intended design.
Zendesk recognized these emerging use cases—and is now repositioning brands as department spaces to better support them.
