After you review your customer data schema, you are ready to create, edit, and delete contacts and companies.


This article contains:

Before you begin

This article is the second in a series about Managing your Customers.

  1. Manage your Customer Data Schema—understand contacts, companies, and their respective fields.
  2. Manage Customer Data in Freshdesk—understand how to create, edit, delete, and manage contacts and companies.
  3. Personalize support using Customer Segments—filter and group customers and create automations and self service for them.

About creating contacts and companies

Contacts are created in Freshdesk in 3 ways:

  1. Customers submitting tickets are automatically added as contacts.
  2. Agents can click the New button from the top bar and select New contact or New company.
  3. Admins can bulk import contacts and companies. See Import and Export Data in Freshdesk.

Create a new contact or company

To create a contact:

  1. In the top bar, click New > New contact.
  2. In the New contact panel, fill in at least 1 mandatory field out of a choice of 5 fields.
    • Email
    • Work phone
    • Mobile phone
    • Twitter (The contact's X handle)
    • Unique external ID (Learn more)
  3. Optionally, fill in any of the other fields.
    • Upload a photo
    • Full name
    • Title (such as a position or role)
    • Other phone numbers
    • Address
    • Tags (Learn more)
    • About (custom text)
  4. Optionally, associate the contact with an existing Company. You can also toggle the permission to let this contact view all tickets from the associated company.
    Associating a company and allowing the contact to view company tickets.
  5. If you're on paid plans, you can also associate a custom Language and Time zone. Otherwise, these values will default to the language and time zone of your helpdesk.
  6. Optionally, provide additional contact points.
    • If you filled the Email field, click "Add another email" to provide another.
    • If you filled the Other phone numbers field, click "Add another phone number" to provide another.
    • If you filled the Company field, click "Associate another company" to provide another.
  7. Review your information and click Create.

If you've enabled user activation emails, they'll receive an email to set up their account and create a password. See About activation emails below.


The new contact panel as described in the surrounding text.

To create a company:

  1. In the top bar, click New > New company.
  2. In the New company panel, fill in the details.
    1. (Mandatory) Provide the Company Name.
    2. Use the Description and Notes fields to hold general and additional details about the company.
    3. Use the Domains for this company field to associate email domains. Contacts with the chosen domains will be automatically mapped to this company.
  3. If you're on the Growth plan or above, optionally fill in 4 additional fields.
    1. Health Score: Assign a value that represents the ongoing relationship with the company. Default choices: Happy, Doing okay, At risk.
    2. Account Tier: Assign a value that represents the customer's tier in your business. Default choices: Basic, Premium, Enterprise.
    3. Renewal Date: a date field to contain the contract renewal date for the company. 
    4. Industry: Choose from standard industry choices to associate with the company.
  4. Review your information and click Create.

About activation emails

By default, new contacts receive a user activation email with a link to verify their contact and login to your customer portal. To control this, go to Admin > Workflows > Email Notifications. Go to the Requester Notifications tab and toggle User Activation Email or click Edit to change the email content.

Using the Contacts and Companies pages

Your customer data is split across 2 pages - Contacts and Companies.

Contacts and Companies navigation


When you go to either page, you see a list with 30 entries on a page.

The contacts list page.


From this page, you can:

  • Use the search bar to quickly find a contact.
  • Click the overflow menu on a contact or company and select Edit or Delete.
  • Click the checkmark next to contacts or companies and click Delete to bulk delete them. See About deleting contacts.
  • Click the Views button in the top-left to see filters.
    • Blocked contacts—These are contacts blocked from submitting tickets to your portal.
    • Deleted contacts—These are soft-deleted contacts. See About deleting contacts.
    • Unverified contacts—These contacts haven't logged into Freshdesk or activated their email address. You can select these contacts and Send activation email in bulk.
    • Verified contacts—These are contacts that have activated their account and logged into Freshdesk.
      A list of Contact views.


When you click on a contact, you view their details page. There are a lot of actions you can take from this page.


The options on the page are:

  1. The Actions bar—contains several buttons to take common actions on contacts.
    1. Edit: Click this button to bring up the contact panel and modify any fields.
    2. Delete: Click this button to soft-delete the contact. See About deleting contacts.
    3. Merge: See Merge contacts below.
    4. Assume identity: (Pro plans onwards) View the customer portal from the contact's point of view. See Assuming identities.
    5. Convert to agent: Convert this contact into a support agent—Full time, Occasional, or Collaborator.
      Convert to agent dialog.
    6. Send activation email: If the contact is unverified, send an activation email.
    7. Change password: Change the contact's password so they can login to your customer portal.
  2. Contact tabs—These pages organize additional information about the contact.
    1. Timeline: This tab collects the journey of the customer in reverse chronological order, showing interactions from all channels, tickets, and forum posts.
    2. Tickets: This tab shows the tickets of the customer.
    3. Notes: (Pro plan onwards) See Customer notes and testimonials below.
    4. Forums: This tab shows the forum posts and replies from the customer.
  3. Contact details widget—displays additional fields available for the contact.
  4. To-do widget—track actions and tasks for the contact or company. See Customer To-do lists below.


The details page for a company is similar, with fewer actions but with the addition of:

  • A list of contacts associated with the company
  • SLA policies dedicated to the company

Details page for a company.

About deleting contacts

Freshdesk has 2 deletion states for contacts— a "soft delete" (Delete button) and a "hard delete" (Delete forever button).


Soft delete (Delete button)Hard delete (Delete forever button)
Retains contact information in the Deleted contacts view.Removes contact information from your helpdesk.
Existing tickets from the contact are not affected.All tickets, notes, to-dos, forum topics etc. are removed from your helpdesk.
Future communication from the contact is automatically marked as Spam.Future communication creates a new contact.
You can bulk delete contacts from the contact list view.You cannot delete contacts forever in bulk.
Trying to sign up or add the contact with the same information will throw an error.Trying to sign up or add the contact with the same information will create the contact anew.


You can soft delete a contact by:

  • Going to their details page and clicking the Delete button.
  • Going to the list page, clicking the overflow menu (triple dot menu) next to their entry, and clicking Delete.
  • Going to the list page, selecting multiple contacts and clicking the Delete button.


To hard delete contacts:

  1. From the contact list page, click the Views button in the top-left corner and select Deleted contacts.
  2. Click a contact from the list to see their details.
  3. Click Delete forever to permanently delete the contact. This takes a few moments.
  4. Alternatively, click Restore to reverse the soft delete of the contact.
    The Restore and Delete forever buttons on a deleted contact.

Merge contacts

A customer might reach out from multiple contact points, such as via an email and via your Facebook page. In such cases, they might be recorded twice within Freshdesk. You can merge such contacts and get a more accurate picture of their relationship with you.


When you merge contacts, you designate one as the primary contact. That primary contact receives all the tickets, notes, and contact information from the selected secondary contacts. After that, the secondary contacts are deleted and cannot be restored.


Important: You can have a maximum of 10 emails, 20 companies, 1 work phone, and 1 mobile phone saved to a contact. In case of overlapping data between contacts, you choose which information to retain during the merge process.


To merge contacts:

  1. From the Contacts page, open one of the contacts and click Merge.
    The merge button in a contact.
  2. In the Merge contacts panel, search for the other contacts to merge and click the Plus icon.
    Searching for a contact to merge.
  3. The first contact is marked Primary by default, but you can click the stamp next to a selected contact to mark them as Primary instead.
    Marking a contact as Primary.
  4. Review the contacts and click Continue.
  5. In the Review and confirm merge panel, review the contact information, select which overlapping data to retain, and click Confirm. Your primary contact receives the selected information and your secondary contacts are deleted. This is irreversible.
    The review and confirm merge panel.

Associate one contact with multiple companies

In some cases, you may want to associate a single contact with multiple companies. For example:

  • A reseller wants to raise tickets on behalf of customers that buy your product from them.
  • A contractor you hired wants to create tickets on behalf of your clients.
  • An account manager wants to raise issues for customers they're handling.

Customers cannot do this themselves. This can be done by Admins and agents with the "Create or edit contact or company" permission. To associate a contact with multiple companies:

  1. In the Contacts page, click the contact and click Edit.
  2. In the Edit contact panel, scroll down to the Company field and add a company if there isn't one.
  3. Click Associate another company to add another field. Search for and add another company. Repeat for each company you want to add.
    • For each company, click the Ticket icon to allow that contact to view all tickets from the company.
      The ticket icon lets you toggle whether the contact can view the company's tickets.
    • From the companies you've added, use the radio button on the left to select the Primary company. If a ticket is opened without specifying a company, it is associated with the primary company of the requester. We recommend keeping the contact's actual workplace as their primary company.
      Multiple companies with one selected as Primary.
    • To remove a company, click the Trash icon.
  4. Review the companies you've added and click Save.

In your support flow, Companies are seen as part of tickets rather than contacts. When a contact is associated with multiple companies, a Company field is added to your ticket fields. This means:

  • You can go to Admin > Workflows > Ticket Fields and modify the Company field. See Modify a Ticket field.
  • Tickets created by these contacts have the Company field in the properties widget.
  • The New ticket form on both the customer portal (frontend) and agent portal (backend) will have the Company field when the requester is set to such a contact.

The feature to associate a contact with multiple companies is enabled by default. If you disable this feature, tickets will not be affected, but any secondary companies will be deleted from all existing contacts. To disable this feature:

  1. Go to Admin > Support Operations > Customer Fields and select the Contacts tab.
  2. Scroll down to the Company field and click Change.
    Described above.
  3. Toggle off the Associate one contact with multiple companies button and click Done.
    Described above.

Customer notes and testimonials

The Notes tab for contacts and companies is available from the Pro Plan onwards.


Sometimes, you may need to capture details about your customers that you're tracking via documents, spreadsheets, or other tools. Rather than switch between tools, use the Notes tab in a Contact or Company to capture detailed information such as:

  • Implementation or installation details
  • Subscription information and contract documents
  • Feature requests
  • Testimonials, and more.

Information added to the Notes tab is only visible to agents visiting the profile and seeing the Notes tab. It is not replicated anywhere else.

A sample of notes added to a company's Notes tab.

To add a note to a contact or company, go to the Contact or Company details page and click the Notes tab:

  1. Click the Add notes field to expand it, and fill it out.
  2. Provide a title and description using the available formatting options.
  3. Optionally, attach files up to 20MB in size.
  4. If writing a note for a Company, select whether the note is General or Testimonial.
  5. Review your note and click Add note.
    Described in the surrounding text.

The latest note added is displayed first by default. Hover over a note to see the Edit and Delete icons. You can edit notes at any time. If you delete a note, it cannot be recovered.

Customer To-do lists

Every customer has a To-do widget on their details page to track multiple tasks or notes. You can use the To-do widget in the following ways:

  • To add a task to the widget, type it in the text field and press Enter.
    To-do widget in a contact or company works similarly to the to-do widget in tickets.
  • Once the task is added to the ticket, it is viewable by anyone with access to the contact. The task also appears on your Dashboard.
    Dashboard to-do collates all to-dos across contacts, companies, and tickets.
  • Hover over the task to see the Edit and Delete buttons for it.
  • To mark an item as done, click the checkbox next to it. You can uncheck marked items at any time.

For more support, contact [email protected].