Zendesk AI is the intelligence layer of the Zendesk platform. Built on billions of points of customer-service data, Zendesk AI enhances every part of your service experience, from smarter conversations and AI agents, to productivity tools for agents, to new insights and instant actions for admins.
This article introduces you to all the AI-powered features Zendesk has to offer. It also shows you how to leverage these features to achieve your business goals. It walks through the key items you need to set up and gives you guidelines on where to find more information.
Some AI features are included in the suite, and some require the Advanced AI add-on. To show or hide information about the Advanced AI features throughout this article, use the buttons below.
This article contains the following topics:
- Zendesk AI and Advanced AI at a glance
- Using AI to empower agents and improve efficiency
- Using AI to route tickets and provide faster service
- Using AI to strengthen your knowledge base and deliver answers
- Using AI to provide 24/7 service and build smarter AI agents
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Zendesk AI and Advanced AI at a glance
Zendesk offers two levels of AI functionality to meet your business needs:
- Zendesk AI, included with standalone product and Suite plans, with specific features varying by plan level
- Zendesk Advanced AI, available as an add-on for Suite and Support Professional and above plans
The table below summarizes the features included in each level.
| Automate customer interactions with AI agents | Assist agents to solve issues faster | Optimize your service workflows | |
|
Zendesk AI Included with Suite plans, with specific features varying by plan level |
Suggested intents when creating answers Intent suggestions for unanswered questions |
Suggested macros for agents |
Content Cues for content managers Semantic search in the help center |
|
Zendesk Advanced AI Available as an add-on for Suite and Support Professional and above |
Autoreplies with intelligent triage
|
Macro suggestions for admins Autoreplies and Internal note trigger actions |
Using AI to empower agents and improve efficiency
Your agents have a lot on their plates these days. Give them the tools they need to succeed right out of the gate with a roundup of AI-derived intelligence, such as a ticket summary and user sentiment, in an easily accessible side panel.
Connect them with your help center to give them the answers they need to answer customer questions without having to leave their workspace. And give them the right words to use when answering customer questions, helping your customers enjoy a consistent experience no matter which agent they’re connected with.
You can save them time in other ways, too. Proactively suggest tickets they can merge together to solve multiple customer requests at once. Or for agents who take calls, give them tools that automatically transcribe and summarize the content of the call they just finished, saving them precious wrap-up time.
Auto assist is an AI-powered assistant that helps agents solve tickets faster. Auto assist uses a large language model (LLM) to understand the contents of submitted tickets and make suggestions to your agents on how to solve them.
Benefits
- Spend less time on repetitive tickets by following automatically generated guidance from auto assist.
- Solve tickets in a more consistent way based on admin-configured procedures.
- Take actions on behalf of the agent after the agent has reviewed and approved them.
Prerequisites
- You must have the Advanced AI add-on and have configured procedures and (optionally) actions.
Show me how
- Using auto assist to help agents solve tickets
- Turning on and configuring auto assist
- Creating and managing procedures for auto assist
- Creating and managing actions for auto assist
- Workflow recipe: Canceling and refunding a Shopify order with auto assist
- Explore recipe: Reporting on the auto assist feature of agent copilot
Suggested first replies use generative AI to suggest a first response for agents in tickets based on existing macros and help center articles. Using AI-generated suggestions to respond to tickets helps agents save time and increase productivity.
Benefits
- Increase first response times by giving agents the right words to get the conversation started, ultimately helping them resolve customer requests more quickly.
Prerequisites
- You must have the Advanced AI add-on and be using Agent Workspace.
Show me how
Ticket summaries, intelligent triage predictions, and enhanced suggested macros work together to give agents AI-powered insights and suggestions to help solve the customer’s issue faster.
Benefits
- Get agents up to speed quickly with a ticket by using the summarize feature to recap all the public comments that have been added to the ticket so far.
- Give agents access to insights on customer intent, sentiment, and language to find the best resolution quickly.
- Suggest the most relevant macros to apply so agents can respond and solve issues faster.
Prerequisites
- You must have the Advanced AI add-on and be using Agent Workspace, intelligent triage, and (optionally) suggested macros.
Show me how
Agents can use the expand feature in the composer to save time while responding to a customer. Additionally, agents can change the tone of their comment to make it either more conversational or more professional, depending on the tone dictated by your company’s brand.
Benefits
- Decrease the time agents need to craft a response to a customer request.
- Turn brief bullet points into a comprehensive response that addresses a customer need.
- Enhance the tone of agent responses to maintain brand consistency across your support team.
Prerequisites
- You must have the Advanced AI add-on and be using Agent Workspace.
Show me how
Knowledge in the context panel lets agents access suggested content from your knowledge base and community forums, search for external content, and take actions related to content while working on tickets without leaving the ticket interface.
Benefits
- Guide agents to solve more complex customer issues faster based on content from your help center.
Prerequisites
- You must be using Agent Workspace.
Show me how
Suggested macros help agents find existing macros to apply to a ticket based on the content of that specific ticket.
Benefits
- Give agents the right macros to quickly find resolutions for customers, all from their centralized workspace.
Prerequisites
- Your account must have enough macro usage data.
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More information
Quick answers for Agent Workspace provide AI-generated answers to searches within the Knowledge section of the context panel. Agents can then copy the answer directly into the ticket or click the link to the source article that contains the generated answer.
Benefits
- Automatically generate answers to questions that agents search for in the Knowledge section of the context panel, saving them valuable time.
- Quickly share generated answers with customers with just a few clicks, increasing resolution times and satisfaction ratings.
Prerequisites
- You must have the Advanced AI add-on and an active help center.
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Merging suggestions identify tickets that can be merged with the ticket the agent is currently working on. These suggestions appear in the context panel within a ticket.
Benefits
- Proactively identify tickets to be merged into the ticket an agent is currently working on, helping them solve multiple customer requests at once.
Prerequisites
- You must have the Advanced AI add-on.
Show me how
Generative AI for voice allows you to transcribe and summarize voice call recordings in Zendesk Talk using generative AI. This frees up agents from having to manually write call notes during and after a call. Instead, they can focus directly on solving customer problems and move efficiently from call to call.
Benefits
- Automatically convert call recordings to text and save the transcript to the ticket conversation log for added context after a call ends.
- Create a concise, AI-generated summary of the call transcript and save the summary to the ticket conversation log.
Prerequisites
- You must have the Advanced AI add-on.
Show me how
Using AI to route tickets and provide faster service
Generally speaking, the faster service you provide, the happier your customers will be. Use Zendesk’s AI features to quickly route tickets to the right agents the first time, saving an average of 45 seconds per ticket compared to manual triage. Even better, deflect easily answered tickets altogether, giving your agents time to focus on more complex customer interactions.
Plus, supply agents with the right words to address commonly asked customer questions quickly. You can even give them a helping hand with just-in-time internal guidance about how to handle tricky tickets.
Using intelligent triage, you can automatically route Support and messaging tickets to the right teams based on what the ticket is about (its intent), the language it's written in, whether the customer's message is positive or negative (its sentiment), or a combination of all three.
Benefits
- Eliminate manual triage by automatically categorizing incoming requests with the customer’s intent, language, and sentiment, saving 30-60 seconds on each request.
- Power automated routing workflows that send incoming requests to the appropriate agent the first time.
- Automate responses to customers, allowing them to self-serve and solve their own requests.
- Proactively request missing information so agents can save time and manual effort.
- Get deeper reporting insights to better understand your customers and optimize your operations.
Prerequisites
- You must have the Advanced AI add-on.
Show me how
- Automatically detecting customer intent, language, and sentiment
- Choosing a routing method for automatically triaged tickets
Examples
Best practices
More information
Autoreplies with intelligent triage let you create custom responses to customer email requests based on AI predictions about intent, language, and sentiment. You build autoreplies with intelligent triage using the Autoreply trigger action.
Benefits
- Automatically deflect a greater share of customer queries, freeing agents up to work on more complex customer requests.
Prerequisites
- You must have the Advanced AI add-on and be using intelligent triage.
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More information
Macro suggestions for admins makes it easier to determine which macros will be most useful for your agents and end users. This feature suggests new macros that admins might want to create based on repeated content from all agent replies in your account.
Benefits
- Receive suggestions to create shared macros to help agents respond faster and more consistently.
- Identify knowledge gaps in macros and optimize them to provide the most relevant response.
- Reduce the time spent on analysis and promote seamless collaboration between teams.
Prerequisites
- You must have the Advanced AI add-on.
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More information
You can create a trigger that automatically adds an internal note to a submitted ticket that meets certain conditions. For example, you could configure a trigger to look for tickets with a negative sentiment and add an internal note that gives the agent information about handling or escalating delicate customer service situations.
Benefits
- Provide agents with helpful process reminders or other information, speeding up agent onboarding and supporting ongoing training.
Prerequisites
- You must have the Advanced AI add-on and (optionally) be using intelligent triage.
Show me how
Using AI to strengthen your knowledge base and deliver answers
Up-to-date knowledge is key to any successful customer service experience. Help your agents deliver the right answers based on content you’ve already created in your help center.
Create new content quickly and easily with AI tools that help you expand on points, choose the right tone, and simplify word choice. Then build on that content by identifying gaps and other opportunities for improvement that help you provide a better experience for your self-serve customers.
Finally, help customers and agents find the content they need with semantic search that intuitively understands what they’re looking for.
Standard autoreplies, also called autoreplies with articles, are automated responses to customer requests sent through an email or web form. The responses include suggested help center articles to help customers resolve their issues.
Benefits
- Automatically deflect customer queries that can be answered by your help center content, freeing agents up to work on more complex customer requests.
Prerequisites
- You must have activated your help center.
Show me how
Best practices
More information
In the help center, the expand feature helps you quickly and efficiently create expanded content for articles and content blocks. You can change the tone of the content you’re writing to make it either more conversational or more professional, depending on your company’s brand. You can also simplify your content to make it easier to read.
Benefits
- Create articles from short notes or bullet points to speed up content creation.
- Apply a consistent brand voice across your help center content.
- Simplify your articles by removing unnecessary words that slow down reader comprehension.
Prerequisites
- You must have the Advanced AI add-on.
Show me how
Content cues use machine learning technology and Guide article usage data to help you discover opportunities and tasks that will improve your knowledge base health.
Benefits
- Improve your knowledge base by reviewing suggestions for articles that might need to be created or updated based on common customer requests.
Prerequisites
- See the Content Cues account requirements.
Show me how
Semantic search generates the most accurate search results possible by capturing the meaning of search queries, helping users locate content without prior knowledge of the exact keywords to use.
Benefits
- End users can find the information they’re looking for more easily, increasing the deflection power of your help center.
- Agents can be more efficient as they can find answers more quickly.
Prerequisites
- You must have activated your help center.
- Zendesk must have rolled out semantic search to your help center. See How to check if your help center is enabled for semantic search.
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Using AI to provide 24/7 service and build smarter AI agents
When your customers span the globe, every hour of the day is an opportunity to provide great customer service. Zendesk AI agents let you do just that. Provide 24/7 service with conversation bots that guide your customers to the right solutions without agent intervention.
Go further with AI agents that help you personalize the service experience and understand your customers’ needs at a deeper level, helping you provide service without needing to increase your agent headcount. Plus, build these bots quickly and fill knowledge gaps with AI-powered intents that help take the guesswork out of bot building.
Conversation bots work with Zendesk’s messaging channels to deliver automated conversational support to your customers. They are highly customizable and easy to build using the drag-and-drop bot builder to guide customers to a resolution.
Benefits
- Manage higher volumes without adding staff by letting the bot solve common issues without an agent getting involved, or by facilitating handoffs to agents by gathering key information from customers first.
- Provide an always-available resource to give customers instant answers and resolve issues faster.
Show me how
- Creating a conversation bot for your web and mobile channels
- Building a conversation bot using answers
More information
Generative replies can immediately begin to respond to questions from your end users. These responses use generative AI to evaluate articles in your help center, then use that knowledge to provide concise answers within the ongoing conversation. End users get the information they need without leaving the conversation channel to read an article.
Benefits
- Automatically resolve customer inquiries using your existing help center content, without the need for manually configuring answers upfront.
Prerequisites
- You must be using Agent Workspace and messaging.
- An active Zendesk knowledge base must be connected to the bot's assigned brand.
Show me how
Bot personas let you select and apply a personality to a conversation bot’s AI-generated responses. You can choose from a number of personas, including:
- Professional, a polite, direct voice.
- Friendly, a casual, approachable voice.
- Playful, a lighthearted, charming voice.
Benefits
- Provide a more natural and engaging customer experience on bot-deployed messaging channels.
Prerequisites
- You must be using Agent Workspace and messaging.
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Suggested intents help your bot accurately understand your customers’ needs by suggesting intents when you’re creating an answer for a conversation bot. These suggested, or pre-trained, intents can be used in place of training phrases to help your conversation bot match and deliver the most relevant answer for a customer's question.
Benefits
- Save admins manual setup time because the bots come pre-trained with intents for smarter service conversations in your industry. That means they’re available out of the box without months of manual setup to help you scale exceptional service with ease.
- Automatically detect and classify requests based on the customer’s intent to deliver the most accurate answer, resulting in a better customer experience and higher deflection rate for your business.
Prerequisites
- You must have the Advanced AI add-on and be using intelligent triage to use intents in more than three answers per bot.
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Intent suggestions identify the questions your customers ask most often during bot conversations that don’t match an existing bot answer. This helps you uncover gaps in the information provided by your bot so you can create new answers (or improve existing ones).
Benefits
- Identify knowledge gaps in conversation bots and suggest unused intents that can improve ticket deflection.
- Give your customers a better support experience by avoiding the “Sorry, I didn’t get that” fallback message.
Prerequisites
- You must have the Advanced AI add-on, be using intelligent triage, and be using a bot in a supported language.
Show me how