Zendesk Generative AI EAP capabilities overview

Note: The features described in this article are currently available in an early access program (EAP). You can sign up for the EAP here. When the EAP ends, these features will be part of the Advanced AI add-on.

At Zendesk, we're strengthening our commitment to infuse intelligence into every part of the service experience. This latest innovation allows for more natural, human-like conversations, improved customer service, and exceptional communication.

At our Showcase New York customer event on October 4, we announced an early access program (EAP) that gives you access to generative AI capabilities that let you:

• Scale self-service with less effort and create more natural conversations
• Level up agents to resolve requests faster and more consistently

In this article, we'll introduce you to the EAP process, as well as the four capability areas covered by the Generative AI EAP. It includes the following sections:

• About the Generative AI EAP
• Generative AI for Agents
• Generative AI for Bots and Automations
• Generative AI for Knowledge Base
• Generative AI for Voice

About the Generative AI EAP

The Generative AI early access program harnesses the power of AI across your entire customer experience, allowing you to:

• Tame high volumes and busy periods with automatic answers that always hit the mark.
• Promote agents to expert problem solvers so they focus only on the most complex tasks.
• Unlock the full potential of every interaction to keep getting closer to your customers.

When you request access to the EAP, you can select which of the Generative AI capability areas you want to try out. Overviews of these capabilities are described in the sections below with links to more information.

Before joining the EAP, familiarize yourself with the current product limitations and participant requests described in this section. Additionally, get to know account prerequisites for using each capability in their sections below.

When you sign up for the EAP you can select the parts of the EAP you'd like to participate in. You can sign up for the Generative AI EAP and visit the community forum to leave feedback.

Product limitations

Because these are early versions of the features described in this article, there may be functionality limitations, including:

This functionality is powered by OpenAI. our overview of Open AI within Zendesk services for more information.

• Participation in the EAP is not covered under your Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with Zendesk, so you cannot pass Protected Health Information (PHI) through this feature.
• Summarization may not include every detail originally provided in the ticket.
• Expand or Tone Shift may omit or mischaracterize information written by the agent in composer. Each of those actions is initiated by the agent and is easily reversible.
• Bot persona may not have a significant impact on generative replies created by the bot.
• Bot persona and generative replies do not work for email.
• Generative replies does not work for restricted help center articles.
• Call summarization might not capture every detail from the call transcript and may overlook important information.
• Call transcript quality might be degraded in noisy environments, or in calls where participants speak very quickly and run words together.
• Features may work slower than expected.
• Features may be unavailable from time to time.
• Features may be discontinued or significantly changed during and after the EAP.

Participant requests

If admitted to the early access program, there are a few things we ask in return:

• Provide feedback on the feature, ease of use, and documentation in the Zendesk Community.
• Report any bugs you encounter.
• Be open to working very closely with us, initially and ongoing through this stage.
• Be willing to make mistakes, in order to make the features better.

Generative AI for Agents

Generative AI for Agent Productivity includes the following capabilities:

• Summarization in the Intelligence panel. Recaps the comments that have been added to a ticket so far.
• Expand in the text composer. Agents can use new tools to expand replies in the text composer.
• Tone shift in the text composer. Adjust the tone of agent replies to be friendlier or more formal in the text composer.

See Using AI to summarize and enhance ticket comments

To use these capabilities, your account must meet the following requirements:

• Agent workspace is in use.

Generative AI for Bots and Automations

Generative AI for Bots and Automations includes the following capabilities:

• Generative replies for bots. Create a conversation bot that automatically summarizes help center content and generates a response to your customers' queries. See Using AI to generate replies in a conversation bot (Generative AI EAP).
• Bot persona. Customize your bot's personality and tone of voice by automatically generating variations of select bot responses, such as welcome and fallback messages and generative replies. See Using bot personas to add personality to AI-generated responses (Generative AI EAP).

To use these capabilities, your account must meet the following requirements:

• Agent workspace is in use
• Messaging is activated
• A Zendesk knowledge base is connected to your account. If your help center requires users to sign in, it won't be available for generative replies.
• (Intent-related features only) Meets the requirements for using intents

Generative AI for Knowledge Base

Generative AI for Knowledge Base includes the following capabilities:

• Expand for knowledge base. Increase the length of your existing knowledge article by automatically expanding a single sentence into a full paragraph.
• Tone shift for knowledge base. Enhance the tone of your knowledge article to make it friendlier or more formal.

See Using generative AI to expand help center content (EAP).

To use these capabilities, your account must meet the following requirements:

• Has a connected Zendesk knowledge base

Generative AI for Voice

Generative AI for Voice includes the following capabilities:

• Call summary. Generate a summary of the call transcript within the agent experience after the call has ended.
• Call transcript. Automatically convert call recordings into written text and save it to the ticket for added context.

See Summarizing calls using generative AI (EAP) for more information

To use these capabilities, your account must meet the following requirements:

• Have Zendesk Voice included in your subscription
• Ensure call recording is activated