When a customer needs help, they want it ASAP, but most organizations don’t have the support staff to be available 24/7. You can reduce, or even eliminate, the time your customers have to wait for assistance by providing automated support using chatbots.
Chatbots are conversational customer support UIs, fueled by artificial intelligence, to help automate simple tasks, create better experiences for your customers, and work alongside your agents to give them a helping hand.
You can incorporate chatbot functionality into your customer service experience with our own Zendesk bots, use Sunshine Conversations to build your own bot, or integrate a bot from a third party. All approaches allow you to customize bot performance and behavior.
In this article, we’ll provide you with an overview of each of these options, along with a framework to get you started with your chatbot of choice.
For a more detailed look at chatbots, see our Complete guide to AI chatbots.
This article discusses the following chatbot options:
Built-in solution: Zendesk bots
Zendesk bots are highly customizable, automated conversation bots that can be added to your Web Widget, mobile app, and social or third-party channels. It can help deflect tickets by guiding customers through a conversation to refine their support request, suggesting help center articles to self-solve issues, and gathering useful information from your customers before handing them off to a live agent, which gives your agents an opportunity to handle more support requests and reduce wait times for all customers. Zendesk's bot builder tool takes the complex coding out of building chatbots.
Zendesk bots use Native Language Processing (NLP) to interpret support requests and to learn from customer responses to deliver better service with each interaction.
Zendesk bots come with a simple out-of-the-box bot that can be published, with no further work on your part, as soon as you turn on bot-enhanced messaging.
This section discusses the following topics:
Zendesk bots are available to all accounts using Zendesk messaging. When you’re ready to build a conversation bot for your messaging channel, you can start by turning on bot-enhanced messaging and creating your first bot.
Designing bots with the bot builder
In Zendesk, conversation bots are sets of predefined, custom answers that tell the bot how to best respond to customer questions – by offering self-service options, requesting more information to clarify the customer’s needs, or handing off the customer to a live agent. Each answer addresses a single issue, or “intent,” and your bot can be trained to understand customer intent when phrased in different ways.
Bot builder, Zendesk’s click-to-configure visual design tool, lets you create answers that include any or all of the following actions:
- Send message: Displays a piece of text to the customer.
- Present options: Displays up to six preconfigured quick replies that the customer can interact with.
- Show help center articles: Presents up to six help center articles to the customer. (Only available with an active Guide help center).
- Add carousel: Displays up to 10 informational panels the customer can scroll through, each with a link to an external URL.
- Ask if question resolved: Asks your end users whether an answer resolves their support issue, and offers response options they can choose from.
- Ask for details: Displays a form to collect details about the customer.
- Transfer to agent: Escalates the conversation to a live agent.
- Add a business hours condition: uses your working hours schedule to divide a conversation into two branches, depending on whether your support team is available or not.
- Branch by condition: Adds conditional logic to an answer flow. You can use the logic to personalize a conversation based on an end user's data.
- Make an API call: Pushes conversation details out to your CRM, or pulls product information into your bot messages.
- Link to another answer: Lets you link from the last step in an answer branch to another answer in the same bot.
You can also configure your bot to:
- Match the look and feel of your business identity
- Offer customized greetings
- Manage multiple languages
- Authenticate visitors
- Route ticket notifications to specific agents
For detailed information, see the following articles:
Using Zendesk bots in your messaging channels
You can create bots to use in any channel that uses Zendesk messaging for connecting with customers, including:
- Web Widget: Embeds messaging functionality in your own website or Guide help center.
- Mobile apps: Delivers messaging capabilities via your customers’ mobile devices. Compatible with iOS, Android, and Unity SDKs.
- Third-party and social channels: Connect with and support customers wherever they are. Zendesk bots are available for Slack DM, Facebook Messenger, X Corp DM, WhatsApp, InstagramDM, WeChat, and more.
No matter which (or how many) channels you’re using to connect with your customers, your agents can manage their interactions via a single ticket interface: The Agent Workspace. There, agents can use the appropriate channels to address issues, without being restricted to the channel in which the customer originally made contact.
For detailed information, see the following articles:
More bot options
Zendesk bots also include autoreplies, a basic option you can use to automate support with your customers. Autoreplies work with a Zendesk Guide help center to suggest articles to your customers in the following ways:
- Email notifications when a ticket is filed
- Web-based ticket forms
- Web Widget (Classic) interactions
For detailed information, see the following articles:
Do-It-Yourself: Sunshine Conversations' Web Messenger
Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger channel allows you to design and embed a highly customizable, asynchronous chatbot on your own website. It can be accessed by your customers via desktop or mobile browsers, and can enable them to continue conversations over connected social or business channels.
This section includes high-level information on the following topics:
You can also use Sunshine Conversations to design and implement your own programmable conversations, connect to an existing chatbot, or integrate prebuilt third-party chatbots with your Zendesk account.
For detailed information, see the following articles:
Web Messenger capabilities
You can incorporate following capabilities – and more – into your Web Messenger as you like.
- Content types: Text, images, file attachments, and emojis.
- Structured Messages: Including scrollable and clickable options.
- Conversation Lists: Lets customers navigate among multiple ongoing conversations.
- Unread message identifiers: Allows customers and agents to see whether their last comment has been viewed.
- Forms: Capture user data to help agents better serve their customers.
- User authentication: Increased security in your conversations.
More customization options
Web Messenger includes built-in customization options you can use to refine the appearance and performance of the widget, including (but not limited to):
- Display Style: Present Web Messenger to customers as a button or a tab.
- Colors, Business profile, and Background Image: Reflect your company’s brand through the widget’s look and feel.
- Sound notification: Customize (or disable) audio notifications.
- Browser storage: Keep track of anonymous users in the browser.
Outside the box: Third-party bots
You can bring your Zendesk and third-party chatbots together into a single, continuous conversation you can share with every team in your business.
- Zendesk Marketplace has chatbot-related apps you can install and use with your Support, Chat, or Sell accounts.
- Sunshine Conversations Marketplace has chatbot options to choose from.
Each app has its own setup and configuration process, as well as its own features and functionality, determined by the third-party developer. This information can be accessed from an app’s marketplace entry.
The following resources can help you figure out which chatbot solution is right for you: