Question
My company is pursuing a chatbot solution. How can we do that using Zendesk?
Answer
Depending on the level of complexity you need and the resources available to you, there are multiple options.
Build your own
By using the Chat Conversations API you are able to create your own chatbot. Using this API essentially allows your application to act as an agent chatting with your customers.
This option can be developer-intensive. For more information, see this article: Getting started with the Chat Conversations API.
Answer Bot
Answer Bot is Zendesk's own chatbot product. At its most basic, Answer Bot uses machine learning to search your knowledge base to find articles that match your customer's question. For more information on Answer Bot, see the following articles:
- Understanding everywhere you can use Zendesk bots
- Enabling Article Recommendations in the Web Widget (Classic)
If you enable Zendesk Messaging on your account, you will have access to a much more customizable experience. Messaging bots can mimic real conversations and create a more natural support experience.
You can build these conversations in a tool called conversation bot. Using conversation bot, you start by creating a messaging bot to interact with your customers. You can create multiple unique bots for different brands, languages, locales, and departments. Once you have your bots built, you populate them with Answers. Each Answer addresses one particular customer question or issue, also known as an intent. Over time, you train your bot so it gets better at answering customer questions. If you don't have an Answer already configured, then Answer Bot simply falls back on the article recommendations search described above.
Sunshine Conversations
You can use Sunshine Conversation APIs to connect bots over messaging. See these articles for more information:
Third-party solution
You are also able to integrate third-party AI software with Zendesk for your chatbot needs. It is important to consider that Zendesk Customer Support is not able to directly assist with this implementation, as our ability to answer questions about third-party software is limited.
15 comments
Jegadeesan gurusamy
Hi,
This article says we can use "chat conversations API".
I subscribed for a suite enterprise account, and i don't have access to the chat conversations API.
When I raise this to support, they are saying that it's not available for the new accounts!
0
Gab Guinto
Yes, most of newly set up accounts are no longer able to access the Chat Conversations API. Similar to what's mentioned here, the recommended path going forward is through Sunshine Conversations.
But, we saw that you have an existing ticket with us about this; we have followed up on the status of your request, and we'll be reaching out to you with an update as soon as possible. Thank you, Jegadeesan!
0
Tuule
Hey! The last link in the article is broken (the one to https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408833631002-How-do-I-contact-my-Zendesk-account-representative- )
0
Devan La Spisa
Hello Tuule,
Appreciate you letting us know about the broken link. We've gone ahead and taken care of this.
Best regards.
0
Ashley
Do we have to use Zendesk knowledge base articles when building chatbot flows? Can we pull from different sources (ie. brand-owned website, blog, etc..)?
1
Viktor Osetrov
Yes, you can pull data to the chatbot from different sources (ie. brand-owned websites, blogs, etc..) using the API call step in Flow Builder.
Hope it helps,
0
Muhammad Saqib
Muhammad Saqib <muhammad.saqib@markaz.app>
https://support.zendesk.com/
0
Mohammad Fararishahbakhshi
Hi
0
Vhin
Hi Zendesk Team,
Good day,
I would like to ask is possible to use the Viber,WeChat, chatbot inside sandbox for Free without charge?
Thank you.
0
Hiedi Kysther
Hi Marvin,
If you are referring to Messaging bot, then yes! You should be able to use the messaging bot in your Sandbox account free of charge. Hope this helps!
0
Vhin
Hi Heidi,
Good day,
I would like to ask if possible to Export all the configuration from Live Suite Professional then Import configuration to Trial Suite Professional vice-versa?
Thank you.
0
Vhin
Hi Hiedi Kysther,
Good morning,
We would like to confirm if it is possible to backup all configuration especially Chat Builder Workflow from existing production account as Suite Professional subscription and restore to Suite Exterprise in case of need for upgrading there existing subscription?
Would you also provide if there is any guide or method for that.
Thank you so much.
0
Gabriel Manlapig
I'm afraid this feature is not yet available that would export all of the Admin Center configuration settings. But if you're looking to export content such as business rules, macros, views, etc., you should be able to hit those endpoints and get that information. Again, you'll just have to manually go through our API documentation and find which settings you need to export.
Also, we've searched our articles and documentation to see if there's a way to backup the Chat Builder workflow. At the moment, it has to be recreated manually from your live production instance to your new or trial account, unfortunately.
I would recommend you to leave Feedback in our Community. Our Teams are frequently looking through the posts in order to get ideas on future additions to the Software. The more a votes a post gets, the higher the chance that the feature will be added in the future. Thank you!
0
Lucas Smith
The above article states this about the conversation bot:
"Over time, you train your bot so it gets better at answering customer questions. If you don't have an Answer already configured, then Answer Bot simply falls back on the article recommendations search described above."
Why is this stated if the conversation bot does not have the ability to recommend articles (verified by a support agent)?
We want the ability to have the bot recommend articles when a specific intent is not triggered. For example, "tracking" is an intent we have built-in, but if someone asks about "shipping," something we have multiple articles about, those are not searched.
Is there an option to have article recommendations as a standard part of Messenger?
0
Zane Kanderāne
Hi,
We have observed a similar issue as mentioned above by Lucas. The help center fallback feature does not work reliably, even performing tests with the same query across various widget instances, the bot was not able to provide a response in some cases (although was able to find an answer in another instance to the same exact query). It is not entirely clear what the bot scans when looking for the relevant help center articles. I've heard it being labels and article titles, but even when making changes to these, it doesn't seem to help with the article search. We wanted to take advantage of the GenerativeAI feature which generates a nice summary response and links to the relevant article, but it appears that the core help center fallback feature is not working as intended in most cases. This also then further complicates tracking of the rejection and resolution rates for the conversation bot specifically. As a note, I understand that the bot will not be able to provide answers to all queries if we don't have content on it, but it has trouble finding content to questions which we definitely have covered in our help center.
Anyone else also experience this and knows a workaround or something? Thanks!
0