Answer Bot functionality is available in a number of Zendesk products and integrations. This article is a guide to all the ways you can use Answer Bot, and where to find more information on adding it to your toolbox.
This article includes the following topics:
Answer Bot in Support emails
The most basic Answer Bot functionality is the automated email response. When an end user submits a support request via email, they receive an auto-response acknowledging their request. When Answer Bot is enabled, that email includes a list of articles from your Help Center that can help the requester solve their own issue:
If a suggested article answers their question, the end user can close their support request; if no article addresses the problem, the support request remains in the ticket queue to be answered by an agent.
More information:
Answer Bot in web forms
You can add Answer Bot to your web-based ticket forms as well. When enabled, if an end user submits a support request through your Help Center’s submission form, a pop-up modal offers them suggestions for articles that they may find useful:
As with the emailed suggestions, if any article in the modal answers the end user’s question, they can close the support request with no input from an agent; if it doesn’t, their request remains in the ticket queue.
More information:
Answer Bot in Zendesk messaging
When Answer Bot is deployed through Zendesk messaging, its functionality expands beyond article suggestion to become a customized, automated conversation bot, which offers a number of interaction options, including:
- Quick replies. With these, you can offer reply options your customers can choose from to keep the conversation moving.
- Automated direct replies. These are predefined responses from Answer Bot, based on end user free-text messages and quick reply selections.
- Conversational shortcuts. Answer Bot uses AI to assess any free-text message entered into the conversation by a customer and automatically jump to the relevant part of a flow or to an agent escalation, or suggest articles based on the entered text.
- Agent transfer. When automated responses aren't enough, Answer Bot brings an agent into the conversation.
- Article recommendations. Answer Bot will respond to quick reply selections with up to six pre-selected articles from your Help Center, and will respond to free-text input with keyword-based article suggestions.
A fully-functional default conversation bot is available as soon as messaging is enabled, and you can configure a custom bot using the Flow Builder.
More information:
Answer Bot in the Knowledge Capture app
There are two features in the Knowledge Capture app that give your agents more access to Answer Bot functionality:
- Answer bot for agents. When a requester adds a comment to a ticket, Answer Bot looks for relevant articles, and suggests them within the app, allowing agents to view them. Agents can then decide to insert them into their response to the requester, or use the linked articles to help them craft their reply.
- Rapid Resolve. When an agent sends a link to an end user directly from the Knowledge Capture app (using Answer Bot for agents), end users can then self-solve their tickets directly from the article they’re viewing.
You can disable the self-solving option in the Knowledge Capture app, if needed. This prevents end users from closing their own requests based on articles offered by an agent, or by Answer Bot.
More information:
Answer Bot for Slack
Answer Bot is enabled in the Slack for Zendesk Support integration, which allows Answer Bot to "listen in" on questions posed in any Slack channel configured to use the Support integration, and offer relevant article suggestions:
Users can indicate whether the offered article is useful to them by clicking the Yes or No buttons and, if more than one article is found, they can click the More suggestions button to view additional articles.
If their question is not answered by any of the articles offered, they can submit a Support ticket:
More information:
Answer Bot in the Web Widget
If you have the Web Widget installed on your Help Center or web site, your customers can engage with Answer Bot whenever they need help across your site, in a conversational way.
Escalation options to a human agent can always be made available, such as requesting a callback, live chat or leaving a message.
More information:
Answer Bot in the mobile SDKs
Answer Bot can be a part of your mobile support offering. Our mobile SDKs make it easy to integrate into any mobile app, answering customer questions in-context without them ever having to leave the app or disrupt their experience. Users can mark the articles as "solving" their issues, or indicate they still need help - and escalate their issue to a Support ticket.
More information:
Answer Bot APIs
The Answer Bot API enables businesses to extend AI-powered self-service help to any channel. Developers can build their own own self-service automation experiences wherever they’d like. When implemented correctly users can quickly and easily mark their questions as resolved / not-resolved giving you more data for reporting, and improving the Answer Bot model over time.
More information:
11 Comments
Explore should be mentioned too, no?
https://explore.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001964967-Overview-of-the-Zendesk-Guide-dashboard#topic_u5x_dqq_2fb
Hi,
How about activating Answer Bot also for Facebook or IG? Is it possible?
Hi Donald,
Answer Bot is not currently available on third-party platforms; it can only be activated within the Zendesk ecosystem at this time.
Hello @Nicole,
Thanks for answering.
That is well noted but looking forward for this kind of update in the future.
Hi Donald -
That would be a great suggestion to make to the product managers by posting it in the Feedback on Guide topic in the community. If you haven't created a new feature request before, here's information on how to write an effective feedback post and our product feedback guidelines.
Can AnswerBot be used in the Community forums in Zendesk?
Hello Denielle Barcelona,
You can access Answer Bot while in the Zendesk Community, but at this time, Answer Bot doesn't pull up community posts into the advice it shares when asked a question.
Best regards.
Thanks, Devan! So just to clarify, Answer Bot is visible in Gather (I'm assuming via Web Widget), but it will only pull up results from the Help Center and not from the forum posts. What if Federated Search was enabled in our account (via EAP)? Would that be possible to have our Guide account index data from Gather for search? And would that be captured by Answer Bot?
Hi Denielle,
There's not currently any way to get Answer Bot to index Gather. There is, however, an open feature request that you can up vote and add your use case to here: Include Community Discussion Content in the Bot
In this article it mentions that customers can request a callback through answerbot: "Escalation options to a human agent can always be made available, such as requesting a callback, live chat or leaving a message". How does this work? I do not see this option in the flow builder.
Hi Jon Simone, it is a bit confusing, I'm sorry. So those options are available if you are using the Web Widget, but they are not available in Flow Builder, which works with messaging and the Web SDK (as opposed to the Web Widget). Hope that helps!
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