What's my plan?
Add-on AI agents - Advanced
Conversation flows for email is currently available in an early access program (EAP). If you've integrated your advanced AI agent with Zendesk Support, you can contact Zendesk Customer Support to turn on this feature.

Conversation flows allow for multiple interactions between the AI agent and the customer, offering greater automation potential. For example, let's say a customer emails a query, but leaves out key details, such as order ID. The AI agent can request the missing information before going any further.

Conversation flows for email notifies the AI agent when there is a new customer reply, and recognizes when a live agent is needed. Using these data points, you can track reopen rates and measure automation performance for the AI agent.

This article covers the following topics:

  • About new ticket block types in conversation design for the EAP
  • Understanding conversation flows for email scenarios
  • Limitations for the conversation flows for email EAP
  • Allowing advanced AI agents to send multiple replies

About new ticket block types in conversation design for the EAP

The early access program includes new block types for email AI agents in the dialogue builder. This allows you to build dialogues with multiple AI agent replies, including additional replies from your customer and decision points for escalating to a human agent.

The following new block types are in the dialogue builder for email AI agents:

  • Customer message, with the following children block configurations:
    • Intent predicted: Use if you want to allow the customer to trigger another intent, following it with a link to block.
    • Entity recognized: Use when expecting an entity in the response.
    • Free text written: Use as a fallback or follow with a conditional block to analyze the content of the reply.
  • Link to
  • Multiple ticket replies

Understanding conversation flows for email scenarios

Conversation flows for email supports automating the first triggered intent in every conversation. When the dialogue of the triggered intent is complete, and the ticket will not receive more responses from the advanced AI agent, the tag escalated_by_ultimate is added to the ticket to indicate that the automation is complete.

The escalated_by_ultimate tag is applied in the following scenarios:
  • Single-reply dialogues
  • Link to
  • Multiple-reply dialogues
  • Escalating from a multiple-reply dialogue

Using single-reply dialogues

Single-reply dialogues with conversation flows work the same way as without conversation flows. If nothing follows a ticket reply block in the dialogue builder, the automation is considered complete.

Using link to

While conversation flows for email is limited to one intent per conversation, linking allows you to continue the conversation in another dialogue, so the link to block is not considered the end of the conversation. Even though it's the final block in the dialogue, you can link to other single- or multi-reply dialogues.

Using multiple-reply dialogues

Multiple-reply dialogues can use the additional block options available for conversation flows for email, including customer messages, link to blocks, and multiple ticket replies.

These dialogues allow the AI agent to send follow-up questions to confirm customer intent or request missing information. Additional messages from the customer can be processed and used during the automation.

The number of blocks is not limited, but it's a good idea to use no more than three messages to gather the required information to automate a case.

There following events are supported for advanced AI agents for email, and can be triggered in multiple-reply scenarios:

  • Ticket received by AI agents - Advanced: This event is triggered only once per conversation, when the first customer message is received.
  • Ticket processed by AI agents - Advanced: This event and the related actions are triggered with each ticket reply.
  • Ticket reply delay events: The delay events are triggered for each reply. When using delays with conversation flows for email, don't set long reply delays, but consider reply delays of 10-30 minutes.

Escalating from a multiple-reply dialogue

When escalation is needed in a multiple-reply scenario, following the customer message or conditional block, you can add an empty ticket reply block. The empty reply adds the escalation tag to the ticket, can trigger additional actions, and does not send a reply to your customer so a live agent can take over.

Limitations for the conversation flows for email EAP

The conversation flows for email has the following limitations:

  • Automation is limited to one intent per conversation
  • No rule-based escalations
  • No AI agent replies to tickets older than three days
  • New analytics metrics are not yet available
  • Email conversations don't support tickets created through the Zendesk API

Allowing advanced AI agents to send multiple replies

After Zendesk has turned on email conversation flows for you, your advanced AI agents add the escalated_by_ultimate tag to all tickets processed by the AI agent. Advanced AI agents rely on that ticket tag to know when to provide a response.

To set up your advanced AI agent to send multiple replies, you need to:

  1. Activate or update the email conversation automation trigger. See the section below.
  2. Turn the automation engine on. See Turning the automation engine on or off for advanced AI agents.
  3. Build a dialogue with multiple ticket reply blocks. See Using multiple-reply dialogues and Using the dialogue builder to create conversation flows for advanced email AI agents.

Activate or update the email conversation automation trigger

If you’re new to email conversation flows, you can activate the default automation trigger to turn on multiple reply functionality.

If you’re already using email conversation flows and have customized the automation trigger, you might find it easier to update your existing trigger so that you don’t lose any customizations.

To activate the default email conversation automation trigger

  1. In AI agents - Advanced, in the top-right corner, use the AI agent drop-down field to select the AI agent you want to activate the trigger for.
  2. In the left sidebar, click Settings > CRM integrations.
  3. Click the Integration tab.
  4. Click Activate automation trigger.
To update your existing email conversation automation trigger
  1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Triggers.
  2. Open the Ultimate.ai Multitouch Ticket Automation: <AI agent ID> trigger for editing.
  3. In Conditions, remove the Ticket > Ticket is Created condition.
  4. Add the following conditions:
    • Ticket > Comment is Public: This ensures that the AI agent is notified of each customer, agent, or AI agent reply.
    • Ticket details > Current user is not YOUR AI AGENT: This avoids loops. Because the AI agent now listens to all replies, you need to exclude the AI agent's replies so it doesn't reply to itself.

  5. In Actions, update the object’s properties by replacing the JSON placeholder with the following code:
    {
  "botId": "YOUR_BOT_ID",
  "message": "**{{ticket.title}}** \n\n  {{ticket.latest_comment_rich}}",
  "conversationId": "{{ticket.id}}",
  "type": "message_multitouch",
  "tags": "{{ticket.tags}}", 
  "requester": "{{ticket.requester.id}}",
  "currentUser": "{{current_user.id}}", 
  "createdAt": "{{ticket.created_at_with_timestamp}}"
}

    Changes to the JSON body include the new requester, currentUser, and createdAt properties. These changes allow the advanced AI agent to differentiate between agent and customer replies and to not reply to tickets older than three days. The type is also changed for analytical purposes.

  6. Click Save.
Powered by Zendesk