Every quarter, your Zendesk agent list drifts further from reality. People leave, switch roles, or simply stop using the tool. The seats stay active. The bill stays the same.
A quarterly cleanup catches this drift before it compounds into thousands of dollars of annual waste. Here's how to do it in about 30 minutes.
Step 1: pull your agent list (5 minutes)
Go to your Zendesk Admin Center and export your team member list. The Admin Center won't show you last login dates in the UI, which is annoying. If you want login data, you need to hit the API:
GET /api/v2/users.json?role[]=agent&role[]=adminEach user record has a last_login_at field. Export everything into a spreadsheet, or use LicenseTrim to skip this step entirely and get the data in a ready-to-read format.
Step 2: flag inactive agents (5 minutes)
Sort by last login date. Flag three categories:
- Never logged in (
last_login_atis null): these are seats that have literally never been used - 90+ days inactive: almost certainly safe to remove
- 30-90 days inactive: worth investigating. Could be someone on leave, or could be waste
Don't overthink the 30-90 day bucket. A quick Slack message to the agent's manager usually resolves it in a few minutes. "Hey, does Sarah still need her Zendesk access? She hasn't logged in since April."
Step 3: check for light agent candidates (10 minutes)
Look at agents who do log in but rarely interact with tickets. Managers who review tickets without replying. Engineers who check on bug reports. Product people monitoring support trends. These people need read access, not a full agent seat.
Zendesk light agents can view tickets and leave internal notes but can't reply to customers. They're free. Converting a full agent to a light agent saves $55-169/month depending on your plan.
For a deeper guide on this, check our user access review walkthrough.
Step 4: downgrade, don't suspend (5 minutes)
This is where most admins make a mistake. Suspending an agent in Zendesk does not free their seat. You still pay for suspended agents. To stop paying, you have to change their role to End User.
In Admin Center: go to the agent's profile, change role to End User, save. Their ticket history stays intact, and if they ever need agent access again you can upgrade them back.
Step 5: document and repeat (5 minutes)
Write down what you found: how many agents downgraded, how many converted to light agents, the total monthly savings. This serves two purposes: it justifies the time spent, and it gives you comparison data for your license compliance process next quarter.
Set a calendar reminder for 90 days from now. The cleanup only works if you do it regularly, because new waste accumulates every month.
Or automate it
LicenseTrim does steps 1-3 automatically. Connect your Zendesk, get the full breakdown of active vs. inactive agents with cost calculations, and set up monthly reports so you catch waste as it happens instead of once a quarter. The free scan takes about two minutes.