Intelligent triage leverages AI to automatically classify incoming tickets by intent, language and sentiment. The Zendesk Intent Model includes pre-trained intents across several industries, providing relevant intents and use cases tailored to each account's ticket data.
To give admins greater flexibility over the available intents, you can create custom intents that address issues specific to your business needs. This improves automation accuracy and helps build confidence in automated decisions.
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About custom intents
Previously, you could request a new intent, a process that required human evaluation for an intent to be added to your account. With this EAP, we're eliminating the wait time entirely. Custom intents can now be created instantly, added immediately to your list of intents, and made available right away to start detecting the intent of incoming customer requests.
As such, the request new intent feature is retired for any accounts enrolled in this EAP.
Custom intents are specific to each Zendesk account, meaning any intents you create are not available to other Zendesk accounts.
Custom intents are not intended to identify details of the ticket, such as specific product or service names, branch locations, subscription types, or similar details. Instead, see the entity detection feature to identify business-critical information in your incoming requests automatically.
Requirements
To create custom intents, you must:
- Have the Advanced AI add-on and have an intent model assigned.
- Sign up for the EAP.
- Have intents turned on.
Limitations
The following limitations apply to custom intents:
- You can create up to 50 custom intents. Deactivated intents don’t count towards this limit.
- English is the only supported language. Custom intent detections are made only for tickets with content in English.
- Custom intents aren't compared against existing Zendesk intents or other custom intents to check for duplicated, ambiguous, or conflicting intents. The quality of custom intents depends on the quality of the name, description, and ticket examples you provide when creating the intent.
- AI agents cannot detect custom intents.
Creating a custom intent
Admins can create custom intents in Admin Center. A custom intent should explain the main reason the end user is reaching out. It should cover a single reason.
Before creating a custom intent, check whether a similar intent already exists. Similar or overlapping intents can lead to low-confidence or wrong intent detection.
To create a custom intent
- In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Intelligent triage.
- Click Intent.
- Select the Intent list tab.
- Click the Actions drop-down and select Create custom intent.
The Create custom intent page opens. - Fill in the following required fields:
- Name: A short, descriptive name for the intent. The intent name is visible to agents, so make sure it’s clear and concise so they can quickly understand it.
- Description: An explanation of what the ticket is about. Clearly define what the intent should include and exclude. Write the description as if you’re explaining an issue to an agent on their first day. Consider including examples and common words that users might use.
- Category: The category and subcategory that the new intent applies to. Intents are organized hierarchically in three levels: category, subcategory, and intent. The category is the broad reason for an incoming request, the subcategory provides a more detailed breakdown of the reason, and the intent is a single, very specific reason.
-
Tickets with this intent: Example tickets that the new intent
applies to. You must list up to ten examples, and each ticket must:
- Have the full URL (for example, https://<yoursubdomain>.zendesk.com/agent/tickets/1)
- Come from the Email channel
- Be in English
- Have a subject and description
- Be unique (in other words, tickets can't be repeated) but must represent the same intent
- Click Create custom intent.
The new intent is added to the Intent list tab.
Examples of custom intents
Below are some examples of well-defined custom intents:
Product not working as expected
- Name: Product not working as expected
- Category: Order
- Sub-category: Product issue
- Description: The requester wants to report a product that is not functioning correctly, has developed a fault, or is not meeting quality expectations.
Cancel direct debit
- Name: Cancel direct debit
- Category: Billing
- Sub-category: Change payment method
- Description: The customer wants to stop or cancel an existing direct debit or automatic payment arrangement. They may cite reasons such as financial constraints, changes in circumstances, or dissatisfaction with the service.
Change booking arrival location
- Name: Change booking arrival location
- Category: Travel
- Sub-category: Booking update
- Description: The end user wants to modify the arrival location of their booking. This could include changing flight destinations, correcting errors in the booked location, or updating hotel addresses.
Deactivating a custom intent
You can deactivate custom intents that are no longer needed by your account. When you deactivate a custom intent, the intent will no longer be detected in new tickets. If you have any business rules, such as triggers, view or automations, that are based on the deactivated intent, they will stop working.
You can also activate inactive custom intents as needed. When you activate a custom intent, the intent is detected in new tickets and any business rules that are based on the intent work as they did previously.
Keep in mind that your account has a limit of 50 active custom intents. If you’ve reached that limit and try to activate an inactive custom intent, a message notifies you that the limit has been reached and the custom intent can’t be activated.
To activate or deactivate a custom intent
- In Admin Center, click
Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Business rules > Intelligent triage.
- Click Intent.
- Select the Intent list tab.
- Browse or search to find the custom intent you want to activate or deactivate.
- Hover your mouse over the intent, click the options (
) icon, and select Activate or Deactivate.
- Confirm your selection by clicking either Activate intent or
Deactivate intent.
The intent’s status is updated in the intent list. Deactivated intents are labeled “Inactive”. If you’ve activated an intent, the “Inactive” label is removed.
4 comments
Antoine STOENESCU
Hello! When will custom intent be available for the AI agent in the Messaging Chatbot ? Thanks.
0
Patricia David
Hello! This article mentions that English is the only supported language for custom intents, however, is it possible to edit only the intent names to Portuguese?
The intents created by Zendesk can have their names edited, as explained in the article linked here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/pt-br/articles/6298065502874-Visualiza%C3%A7%C3%A3o-e-gerenciamento-de-previs%C3%B5es-de-triagem-inteligente#topic_qbn_ln3_fzb
Thanks
0
Gaël U.
Hello, will it be possible for other language than English ?
0
Judith Ilagan
Hi, can we add the filter option “active”
0