Zendesk measures your usage of AI agents by calculating the number of automated resolutions your account consumes each billing period. All Zendesk Suite and Support plans include a baseline number of automated resolutions based on your plan type. You can purchase additional resolutions, configure your account to pause AI agent features when you reach your resolution limit, or pay overage charges to keep AI agent working.
This article describes how to monitor your automated resolution usage, manage your account’s available automated resolutions, and what happens when you reach or exceed the number of automated resolutions available on your account.
This article includes the following sections:
Related articles:
- Overview of AI agents
- About automated resolutions for AI agents
- Moving to automated resolutions from existing bot pricing plans
- Turning off automated resolution features
- On-demand: Learn how to use AI agents (Free training course on AI-powered intents and autoreplies)
Monitoring your automated resolution usage
You can track your automated resolution usage, which can help you determine whether your plan-based automated resolution baseline meets your needs. When you are near you AR limit, you'll be alerted in Admin Center and your billing admin will be notified in email.
This section includes the following topics:
Viewing automated resolution usage in the dashboard
The Automated resolutions dashboard provides a look into how many automated resolutions you use. The dashboard can help you determine how well your AI agents deflect customer support requests and whether you should change your current configurations. This information can also help you forecast your future automated resolution needs.
To view the Automated resolutions usage dashboard
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In Admin Center, click Account in the sidebar, then select Usage > Automated resolutions.
The dashboard includes basic information about your automated resolution usage.
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Overview
- Allowance usage displays the percentage of automated resolutions used in the current billing period.
- Automated resolutions displays the number of automated resolutions used in the current billing period.
- Usage details displays a chart tracking the number of automated resolutions used per day for the selected time period. Use the drop-down menus to change the time span covered in the breakdown, as defined in Understanding how automated resolutions are measured, and to display usage by type of automated resolution used, or to group types together.
- Show cumulative dtoggles on or off the aggregate of usage for the subscription term.
The dashboard only displays data on confirmed automated resolutions.
From the dashboard, you can access the page to add automated resolutions to your account.
Viewing automated resolution usage notifications
In Admin Center, overage warning banners notify you when you’ve used 80% of your automated resolutions, and will be updated when you’ve used 100%. Banners will include basic information about what happens when you reach your limit based on your automated resolution overage setting.
You can't dismiss these banners and they will remain visible in Admin Center until automated resolutions are again available for your account when your billing cycle resets or you purchase additional automated resolutions.
Overage warning banners appear on relevant Admin Center pages, including:
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The AI agents page, as well as the Conversation bots and Autoreplies child pages
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The Web Widget (Classic) page
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The Automated resolution dashboard
If you choose to pause AI agents when you reach your automated resolution limit, notifications will appear on the admin pages for each of the paused capabilities.
Additionally, your account billing admin will be notified directly when your account nears its automated resolution limit, and again when it reaches that limit.
Avoiding automated resolution overage
You can configure your account to avoid automated resolution overage by increasing the number of automated resolutions available or updating your automated resolution usage settings to pause all AI agent capabilities when your automated resolution limit is reached.
If you want to ensure your account isn't consuming any automated resolutions, you can remove all capabilities related to AI agents. See Turning off automated resolution features.This section includes the following topics:
Maintaining or pausing functionality when you reach your automated resolution limit
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Maintain functionality and allow overage (default setting), which lets AI agents continue to serve customers after you exceed your account’s baseline or purchased automated resolutions. When you select this option, your account will be charged for pay-as-you-go automated resolutions.
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Pause functionality and don’t allow overage, which pauses AI agent functionality, preventing overage charges. When you select this option, any capabilities that require automated resolutions will no longer function, and more support requests will be routed to live agents.
To update your automated resolution overage setting
- In Admin Center, click Account in the sidebar, then select Usage > Overage.
- Select your automated resolution overage option: Maintain functionality and allow overage or Pause functionality and don’t allow overage.
- Click Save.
Adding automated resolutions to your subscription
You can purchase additional automated resolutions for your account. Increasing your account's available automated resolutions extends your AI agent's functionality. You will still be subject to overage charges or capability interruption, based on your overage setting.
Purchasing additional automated resolutions adds a recurring order to your subscription. Automated resolutions do not roll over to the next billing period.
To add automated resolutions to your subscription
- In Admin Center, click Account in the sidebar, then select Billing > Subscription.
- Click the More products tab.
- Under Automated resolutions, use the slider to select the number of automated resolutions you want to add to your account and click Add to subscription.
- Confirm the order, then click Update subscription.
The automated resolutions are immediately available on your account. The order is added to your next billing invoice.
If you’ve purchased automated resolutions for your account and find you need more, you can increase the number of additional resolutions included in your recurring order.
To increase your additional automated resolutions
- In Admin Center, click Account in the sidebar, then select Billing > Subscription.
- Click the More products tab.
- Under Automated resolutions, use the slider to adjust the number of
automated resolutions on your account and click Update
subscription.
The additional automated resolutions are immediately available on your account. The increase is reflected on your next billing invoice.
Understanding what happens when you reach your automated resolution limit
You can determine how your account is impacted when you exhaust your available automated resolutions. You can choose to automatically pause features that require automated resolutions, or to pay for overages as you go.
This section includes the following topics:
Automatically pausing AI agent features
If you choose to pause AI agent functionality to avoid overage charges, any AI agent capabilities you have configured will automatically stop functioning when you reach your automated resolution limit. Your capability configurations are not altered when paused and will automatically resume functioning when automated resolutions are again available for your account.
Impacted capabilities (and channels) include:
Conversation bots (messaging channels)
Conversation bot capabilities, including the standard bot response, generative replies and bot personas, and answers created in bot builder, are paused on all web, mobile, and social messaging channels. Active bot conversations may be interrupted. Essentially, your bot will not be able to provide self-service support to your customers. You can, however, continue to create, edit, and save conversation bots for later use.
Proactive messaging (messaging channels)
All Proactive messages configured to respond with a bot are paused.
When automated resolutions are available for your account again, you’ll need to manually reactivate them on the Proactive messaging admin page.Autoreply with articles action (email and web forms)
Articles are not suggested in email and web form notifications.
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In emails, the autoreply with articles action will pause, but the rest of the actions within the trigger will continue to run.
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In web forms, articles will no longer be recommended after the customer has submitted the web form.
Autoreply based on intelligent triage (email)
Any triggers containing classifier conditions (intent, language, or sentiment) and the autoreply action will not fire. Skipped triggers will be noted in the Agent Workspace event history.
Article recommendations (Web Widget Classic)
Web Widget Classic will stop suggesting articles in response to customer messages. Customers can still access other features configured for the channel, such as submitting a form or initiating a voice chat.
AI agents (Ultimate)
For AI agents (Ultimate), all functionality is paused if you consume all automated resolutions and don’t allow AR overage billing. For details, see About automated resolutions for AI agents (Ultimate).
Accruing overage charges
If you do not pause AI agent capabilities, you may exceed your allotted number of automated resolutions (including both the default resolutions included with your plan and any additional purchased resolutions).
When this happens, your AI agent capabilities will continue functioning as designed, and you will be billed for each automated resolution consumed over your allotted amount.
For more information, see the AI agents section in the plan comparison table on the Zendesk pricing page.Finding more information
If you have feedback or questions related to AI agents, visit our community forum where we collect and manage customer product feedback. For general assistance with your Zendesk products, contact Zendesk Customer Support.