AI agents with agentic AI are designed to solve complex user requests with limited direct human supervision, and without requiring scripted conversation flows. These AI agents increase your automation rates and reduce the load on human agents and admins, while still providing the level of service your customers expect.
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Signing up for the EAP
AI agents with agentic AI are currently available only as part of an early access program (EAP). Current customers with the AI agents - Advanced add-on can sign up for the EAP by filling out this form. Zendesk will carefully review each submission to ensure the best fit for the program.
Zendesk customers who don’t yet have AI agents - Advanced are encouraged to reach out to their account manager to explore options and potential participation in the EAP.
If you’re accepted into the EAP, Zendesk will create an AI agent for you and get back to you as soon as possible. After the AI agent is created for you, you can get started by performing the tasks below.
Getting started with your AI agent
After your AI agent with agentic AI is created for you, there are several mandatory and optional setup tasks:
Configure an AI agent persona
The first step in your AI agent setup is configuring an AI agent persona that controls the identity of the AI agent and how it presents itself to your customers. A persona gives the AI agent the context of who it’s working for, what your company does, what your products are, and so on. If you don’t configure an AI agent persona, a technical error will appear for every message the AI agent receives.
For instructions, see Customizing the persona and tone of voice for your advanced AI agent.
Import a knowledge source
Create use cases
Next, create use cases that allow the AI agent to understand customer requests and follow the correct generative procedures or dialogues. If you don’t create any use cases, the AI agent forms responses using only the content of your imported knowledge source, not procedures or dialogues (see the next section).
For instructions, see Creating use cases for advanced AI agents.
Create generative procedures or dialogues
The most powerful step in AI agent setup is to create generative procedures. These procedures should reflect your business policies so that the AI agent can resolve customer requests in line with your policies.
For instructions, see Creating generative procedures for AI agents with agentic AI (EAP).
In addition to generative procedures, you can also create dialogues that allow the AI agent to respond to customer requests according to scripted conversation flows.
For instructions on creating dialogues, see Using the dialogue builder to create conversation flows for advanced AI agents.
AI agents that use both generative procedures and dialogues are sometimes referred to as hybrid AI agents. You can decide which use cases should use the more flexible generative procedures, and which should use more prescriptive dialogues.
For instructions on choosing between dialogues and procedures, see Configure whether a use case uses a dialogue or generative procedure (EAP).
Create actions, entities, and API integrations (Optional)
To leverage helpful details in either generative procedures or dialogues, you can create:
- Actions that allow the AI agent to perform actions based on the details of the session or your customer relationship management (CRM) system. For instructions, see Creating and adding actions for advanced AI agents.
- Entities that hold pieces of information in customer messages that have specific meaning, such as the user’s email address. For instructions, see Creating entities in conversation flows for advanced AI agents.
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API integrations that leverage information from other backend systems
you use during your workflows. For more information on using the integration
builder to create API integrations, see About the integration builder for
advanced AI agents.Note: For APIs to be used by an AI agent at the right time and in the right context, it’s extremely important to add a clear description to your APIs while building them in the integration builder.
If your AI agent was converted from zero-training to agentic AI, and you already had existing actions, entities, or API integrations for that AI agent, you can use those in generative procedures or dialogues without recreating them.
Continue configuring the AI agent settings (Optional)
At any point, you can always continue configuring the AI agent’s settings. For details, see Accessing and viewing settings for advanced AI agents.