Internal Note vs. Public Reply

In Zendesk, Internal Note and Public Reply are two different types of ticket comments that serve different purposes:

Internal Note

• Visible to: Only agents and admins.
• Purpose: Used for internal communication or documentation that should not be seen by the customer.
• Notification: Does not notify the customer but can notify followers or other agents (if set up).
• Examples:
  • Escalated to <agent/group> for further review.
  • Customer mentioned a similar issue last month—see ticket #12345.

Public Reply

• Visible to: End-users (customers/requesters).
• Purpose: Used when you want to communicate directly with the customer.
• Notification: Sends an email (or other configured notification) to the requester.
• Examples:
  • “Thanks for reaching out. We’re looking into this for you.”
  • “This issue is now resolved. Please let us know if you need anything else.”
• Note: When writing a public reply, it’s important to make sure everything is correct before you send your reply to a customer. You can compose your public replies as drafts first, before you send the update. Select the Draft Mode button at the bottom of the Public Reply in the formatting toolbar. 
  

Use Case Summary

  Tip: You can toggle between the two in the ticket reply area. Public replies are in blue, and internal notes are in yellow to visually differentiate them.   

For additional information on internal notes and public replies, please review the following Zendesk Help support articles:

• Lesson 1: From support requests to tickets: see the Ticket subject and comments section.
• Understanding when email replies become public or private comments
• Writing drafts of public replies in tickets
• Managing messaging transcript visibility