Devan La Spisa

1. Utilize Dashboard Restrictions: Start by implementing dashboard restrictions. This allows you to tailor a single dashboard to meet the needs of various user groups, ensuring that each audience sees the most relevant data.
2. Design Your Dashboard with Ease: Our user-friendly drag-and-drop interface makes it simple to design your dashboard. We recommend placing your most important Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) at the top to ensure they are easily accessible and visible.
3. Organize Data with Dashboard Tabs: If your dashboard contains a wealth of valuable data, but you're experiencing information overload, consider using dashboard tabs. This feature allows you to categorize data by business needs, such as segment, location, team, and more, making it easier for users to find the information they need.
4. Share with Key Stakeholders: Don't forget to share your dashboard with key stakeholders, whether it's for a one-time review or on a recurring basis. This ensures that everyone stays informed and aligned with the data presented.
5. Monitor Dashboard Usage: Finally, utilize dashboard views to gain insights into which dashboards are actively being used by your team. This information can help you refine your dashboards further and ensure they continue to meet user needs.

Currently, there are no strict limits in place; however, as we begin exploring custom objects, this may become a more relevant consideration.

Absolutely, as HR and IT buyers are the two key personas for this feature. Key use cases for Employee Service using Department Spaces are employee onboarding and lifecycle management (HR), secure routing of service requests (IT), and case management (Legal Ops).

This is still in discovery with no product timeline to share quite yet.

Upon activation, all agents are set to all departments. Once an agent is restricted to a department, tickets will then follow the normal flow. An agent can only access a ticket if it is within their department.

Yes, they will be allowed to change the agent department memberships!

• Currently, export limits are limited 14 active recurring exports and 7 one-time exports per month.
• In order to stay below the limit, you can always delete exports once you’re finished with them.
• In the future, we’ll increase the limits when we add more datasets.

Here are the following time periods you can export in the following ranges:

• • Last 24 hours
  • Last 7 days
  • Last 30 days
  • Last 3 months
  • Last 6 months
  • Last 12 months

Explore admins will have access. These permissions are set in the admin center, the user needs to have “manage access” permissions in order to have access to the data exporter. This is because, the users who have full access to explore have access to all data, so this translates to the ability to export entire datasets.

 A majority of our 'plug and play' integration similar to Workday can be found on our Marketplace.

Resources: Zendesk Marketplace

This is a good question. There is no API access to the dataset exports yet. However, this will be the next natural step we need to work on.

In several ways! Most of the decrease will be a result of eliminating the swivel-chair that might occur between Zendesk and Workday. Although the specific attributes pulled from Workday won't be available within Triggers, etc. initially, there is a lot of value in 'time savings' that agents might spend looking up requester details in Workday.

Currently we have have the ability to update the agent's department memberships via users API through create or update endpoint. Upon creation, agents will be assigned to all departments and that can be updated later. We are also in the discovery phase for allowing admins to chose whether or not agents should be assigned to all brands when they are created.

Some features require the advanced AI add-on. 

Resources

About Zendesk Advanced AI

SIP-IN is currently available!

Resources

Announcing SIP-IN protocol support for Talk

Depends on your use case of SIP. If you are leveraging a SIP line for an AI Agent for Voice, yes, there is additional cost. If you are leveraging SIP for BYOC, the cost will include SIP + your carrier costs, not standard Talk/voice charges 

Yes, transcript and summary appear in the internal note. Has the demo answered your question? Or are additional details needed?

Depends on the use case and AI Agent for Voice vendor that is selected. Both options are available presently via various voice bot partners.

Yes! There is an additional cost. 

Resources: 

Zendesk Talk call transcription and summarization FAQ

We are not replacing Talk product, these are new functionalities added on top of Talk. Your current setup should be safe

Yes! Via Zendesk AI!

Resources: 

Zendesk Talk call transcription and summarization FAQ

With Zendesk's native voice solution, we do offer conference calling with Suite Professional and above. 

With your enterprise plan, you can enhance your knowledge base using several AI-powered tools:

• Intent dashboard: Identify common customer issues to populate your knowledge base.
• Generative AI tools: Use features like ""Expand"" and ""Tone Shift"" to streamline article creation.
• Generative search: Improve information retrieval for agents and customers in your help center.
• AI agents: Leverage AI agents to assist with customer inquiries.

Resources: 5 strategies for building up your help center content for AI

Currently, Zendesk's generative AI responses utilize only text-based content. This includes information from articles, community posts, and federated sources when using our federated search.

For AI agents, responses are also based solely on text from articles and federated search sources.

We’re excited to share that support for embedded graphics, images, and text files (including PDFs) is on our roadmap and will be available later this year!

Yes, generative search results will eventually be available for anonymous users, meaning you won't need to sign in to access them. Initially, during the early access program, this feature will be limited to logged-in users. Once we officially release it to the public, all users will be able to enjoy generative search, including those who are not logged in.

While the organization of your knowledge base articles doesn’t directly affect how AI agents operate, it does play an important indirect role. A well-organized knowledge base allows you and your team to maintain accurate and up-to-date information, which ultimately benefits your AI agents.

When articles are organized effectively, it’s easier to identify gaps and ensure that your knowledge base remains healthy. Good organization is key to unlocking the full potential of AI in your support processes!

Resources: Best practices for creating a successful knowledge base

You can leverage your ticket data to strengthen your knowledge base and improve your AI capabilities. Here are some effective strategies:

• Identify common questions: Review frequent tickets to find recurring questions. If customers often ask the same thing, consider creating a helpful article to address it.
• Analyze categorized tickets: Look at categorized tickets to understand the main topics or issues your customers face. This will help ensure your knowledge base covers essential information.
• Utilize popular macros: If your team frequently uses the same responses, these can be turned into articles or refined for AI use.
• Transform agent responses: Take effective responses from your agents, copy them into an article, and use the generative AI expand feature to create a polished, comprehensive article.

Resources: 5 strategies for building up your help center content for AI

Currently, there is no direct replacement for the soon-to-be sunsetted content cues. While we don’t plan to create a separate feature for this, we are excited to introduce data insights and benchmarks within the product in a more contextual way.

Although we can’t specify what will replace content cues, we assure you that this year, new data points will be integrated closer to your workflow as an admin. This will help you take meaningful actions to enhance your knowledge base.

Resources: Announcing the removal of Guide Content Cues

When your knowledge base has gaps, it can significantly affect the performance of your AI. If important information is missing, AI-generated answers and AI agents may struggle to provide the assistance customers need.

This not only limits the effectiveness of your AI but also negatively impacts the overall customer experience. A strong knowledge base is essential for supporting both your agents and your customers, so it's important to keep it comprehensive and up to date.

Resources: Best practices for creating a successful knowledge base

AI agents locate information based on the content of your articles. Key factors include:

• Titles and initial sentences: The title and the first 75 words are essential. Use clear titles and language that matches how users search. If the article is long, include a summary at the top.
• Labels: Labels help organize content and can guide AI on what to include or exclude from search results.

By structuring your content effectively, you can enhance the AI's ability to suggest relevant articles and improve the customer experience.

Yes, AI agents consider both the title of the support article and the first 75 words when determining whether to pull information from it.

As a best practice, avoid duplicating the exact wording in the title and the initial sentences. Instead, use this opportunity to rephrase or incorporate synonyms that resonate with your audience. By doing so, you can ensure that you capture a wide range of customer-friendly terms in both the title and the opening of your articles.

Resources: Optimizing your help center content for AI agents

To enhance AI answers in your knowledge base, you can utilize three main sources: articles, posts, and external content accessed through the federated search API or crawlers.

It's important to note that no single source is prioritized over another, so you can't influence their usage rates. However, using search filters can impact the generated answers by providing different results for the AI to draw from. This means that applying the right filters can help tailor the information your AI provides to better meet user needs.

When deciding whether to combine information into a single article or break it into separate articles, consider the topic you're addressing:

• Single topics or FAQs: If you’re answering a specific question that frequently arises, it’s beneficial to create a standalone article. This makes it easier for users to find the information they need and can improve SEO.
• Complex processes: For topics that involve multiple steps or are more complex, it’s best to keep all related information together in one article. This helps prevent confusion, as AI agents rely solely on the context provided in the article.
• Use separate articles for clear FAQs and combine information for more complex topics to enhance the effectiveness of your AI responses and improve user experience.

Here are two effective tips for content writers to save time while ensuring accuracy with AI:

• Generative AI tools: Utilize generative AI tools to expand and enhance your article content. At Zendesk, agents can contribute to content creation by copying answers from ticket responses, pasting them into the article editor, and then using AI tools to optimize and structure the content for better presentation.
• Knowledge context panel and templates: Take advantage of the knowledge context panel, especially the templates feature. This helps streamline your published content and ensures consistency across articles.

By integrating these tools into your writing process, you can save time and improve the quality of your knowledge base!

Resources: 5 strategies for building up your help center content for AI

When creating a knowledge base for AI, attention to detail in content structure is crucial. Here are some important tips:

• Clear titles and subtitles: Be precise with your titles and subtitles. For example, if you have an article about FAQs, specify what the FAQs are about. This clarity helps AI better understand the content and provide more accurate answers.
• Use of lists: Incorporate bullet points and numbered lists effectively. Use numbered lists for sequences that customers need to follow (e.g., steps in a process), and bullet points for non-sequential information. This organization makes it easier for both users and AI to navigate the content.

To measure and improve your knowledge base, focus on these key performance indicators (KPIs):

• Self-service ratio: Track how often users find answers in your knowledge base compared to submitting support tickets. A higher ratio indicates better utilization.
• Content audits: Regularly review content related to high-ticket topics to identify gaps and optimize findability. This helps improve user experience and reduce ticket volume.
• Traffic and engagement: Monitor changes in traffic and engagement for updated content over time to assess the impact of your improvements.
• Customer feedback: Gather insights through surveys or interviews to identify areas for improvement and measure user sentiment.

Combining these quantitative and qualitative measures will help you enhance the effectiveness of your knowledge base.

Resources: Best practices: Measuring and optimizing your self-service channels

At Zendesk, we view our knowledge base as the foundation for enhancing all customer experiences, powering AI searches, AI agents, and the Copilot feature. Here are some key areas of focus for our roadmap:

• Improved searchability: We are working on enhancing the searchability and accuracy of knowledge retrieval for AI agents and users, ensuring they can easily access relevant information.
• Integration of additional sources: We aim to incorporate knowledge from other platforms, such as Slack and Confluence, alongside the articles in your knowledge base.
• Enhanced copilot support: We are developing features within the knowledge base to better guide Copilot in handling tickets, making it more robust and effective.
• Scalable management features: We are introducing features like article multi-placement to simplify managing large volumes of content. A new article editor will also be available soon, allowing for advanced components like drag-and-drop tabulation and accordions.
• Self-service dashboards: We will launch dashboards that track anonymous user activity, which has been highly requested.
• Attachment improvements: We continue to enhance the experience of adding attachments to articles and are working on features like search functionality within the media library.

These initiatives aim to create a more efficient and user-friendly knowledge base, ultimately improving the overall support experience.

Zendesk QA: In simple terms, Zendesk WFM and QA adjust exceptionally well with varying business sizes and customer service demands. Particularly with the QA component, the onboarding process is significantly expedited, which proves highly beneficial if your business experiences seasonal influxes. Moreover, it assists scaling businesses by ensuring seamless agent onboarding as your team grows. So both the WFM and QA elements of Zendesk are designed to adapt and grow with your business needs.

Zendesk WFM: Zendesk WFM is a tool that aids in planning, forecasting, and scheduling tasks by offering reliable data. A key feature is its automatic tracking of work hours, ensuring no work time is missed. This tool is beneficial for all team sizes, as it provides accurate data essential for team management. Zendesk WFM also leverages AI to anticipate future needs and discount irrelevant past events, facilitating effective staffing and schedule management. In a nutshell, Zendesk WFM helps make team management and planning simpler.

We consider customer satisfaction (CSAT) and our own performance metrics (KPIs) very important. CSAT helps to gauge customer happiness but it's not always reflective of an agent's performance.

So, we ensure that CSAT is aligned with quality scores, which helps distinguish between negative feedback caused by an agent's performance or due to other reasons such as product or process issues.

We measure agent quality scores in two ways: one is the 'Internal Quality Score' (IQS), giving a percentage score for each reviewed ticket and providing an aggregate score for each agent, team, or the whole department.

The second is the 'Auto QA Score' (AQS), which is assessed entirely by AI, providing a quick overview of all the tickets. This helps identify where human review is required.

In summary, we majorly focus on the IQS, AQS and CSAT to ensure quality and satisfaction in our services.

We recommend getting in touch with your account manager if you haven't done so already. We offer a 30-day trial so you can test it out and see the value it brings to your organization. Your account manager will be happy to assist you throughout this process. It's as simple as reaching out and giving it a try.

Resources: Getting started with Zendesk workforce management

We use two ways to fully automate your Quality Assurance (QA) process.

The first is Auto QA, where AI assesses your tickets based on standard categories like greeting, closure, spelling and grammar, empathy, and tone of the agent. This takes care of the 'soft skills' aspects, saving you the time of meticulously checking each ticket.

The second method involves manual focus on factors you particularly care about such as process adherence. We also use AI-powered spotlights, just like with VoiceQA, to identify tickets that might have sentiment extremes, churn risk, or display extraordinary agent performance.

Not only does Auto QA review your tickets automatically, it also helps you prioritize the tickets that need your manual review. This way, your time on ticket review becomes more efficient and impactful.

Getting teams involved requires a step-by-step approach:

1. Start with 'Performance Monitoring and Management'. Ask team members to log their tasks such as meetings or lunches. This minimal change helps collect useful activity data and familiarizes them with our productivity metrics.

2. Next, introduce 'Resource Planning' using Zendesk WFM. Here, team members will be able to view their schedules, request time-off, or even swap shifts directly from Zendesk Support. They'll also receive notifications about any schedule changes. For managers, this is the stage to create data-driven shift layouts and roll out weekly or monthly schedules.

By gradually adding elements ad helping teams familiarize themselves, we ensure smooth and engaging onboarding.

Yes. Manual QA is fully customisable. You can also choose which of our predefined Auto QA categories you would like to use, and some of these can be further tweaked as well - e.g. Spelling and Grammar, greetings, and closings.

Resources: Creating custom AutoQA categories

Yes. Our powerful AI filters help you find the important tickets to review, and then you can set these filters to be recurring review assignments that will randomly select tickets to review based on the criteria you set. 

For QA and WFM all of your information is drawn directly from Zendesk into the individual platforms. You'll be able to then report based on the specifics of QA and WFM in each respective platform. At this time you can not see this information in Zendesk Explore but we are looking forward to integrating more closely in the future.

Besides having a clear insight into AHT and work completed - Zendesk WFM enables you to have a better insight into when your agents are actively working on a ticket vs when they're idle. Also, thanks to our point-oriented metrics, you're able to have a more in-depth productivity reporting in place by measuring more than just - how many tickets ended up being solved at the end? You're having an insight into their productivity during an entire ticket life cycle which reflects through having Handled, Escalated, Attended, or Bounce Points attributed.

Resources: Tracking agent time spent outside of Zendesk (EAP) , About workforce management dashboards

Sendle: "Easier to check attendance, but also real-time adherence, at a glance. I can see who’s working at any given time and adjust our staffing requirements"
Tembici: 75% Increase in agent efficiency, 80% Decrease in average resolution time, 30% Reduction in annual operational costs.
Link customer stories."

Resources: Sendle ups productivity with omnichannel CX and WFM tools, Tembici sees 30% cost savings with Zendesk WFM

Zendesk WFM is pretty versatile and not limited to customer-facing workflows. It works equally well for internal teams that use Zendesk to create tickets. With Zendesk WFM, you can track how much time is being spent on different aspects of your internal tasks, and understand productivity in real-time or historically. Essentially, whether it's customer-facing or internal tickets, Zendesk WFM treats them all the same, helping you manage your workflows efficiently.

Zendesk WFM helps you see real-time updates about your agents' work. Every 20-30 seconds, the system updates what ticket an agent is handling. You can sort these tickets according to the time spent, which is beneficial in monitoring work distribution. And if needed, you can directly access any ticket just by clicking on it from the report. So, Zendesk WFM keeps you connected with your team's workload in a practical and straightforward way.

Resources: About the Agent status page, About the Agent activity page

Organizational structure is completely independently approached and customized to support customers in building out different sites (Locations), teams, permissions and roles, work streams (lines of businesses/skills/buckets of work)

Resources: About WFM general tasks, Setting up locations and shifts in Zendesk WFM, Setting up teams in Zendesk WFM, Creating and editing workforce management dashboards, Managing user access in your WFM account, Managing WFM roles and permissions

For assistance with setup, we have several resources ready for you. Our Zendesk QA YouTube channel has numerous tutorials and expert interviews to guide you. When you sign up, you can check out our Zendesk QA help center that is packed with useful information. We also offer webinars and live setup sessions to assist you with onboarding. Moreover, we have a dedicated customer support team in place to ensure you're set up correctly right from the beginning. So, whether you're just exploring or ready to dive in, we have many resources to help you get the most out of these tools.

Resources: Zendesk QA Youtube, Using Zendesk QA, Contacting Zendesk Customer Support, Zendesk Workforce management (WFM) resources, Zendesk WFM (Tymeshift)

Note: Features & timelines are subject to change. 

We've got a feature called 'acceptance rates' in our dashboards. It highlights when the AI score aligns with the human score, which is typically 95-96% of the time. While AI can make mistakes, just like humans, it's important to remember that AI errors may be different than human ones.

We understand the human tendency to be cautious about AI, and that's why we have embedded this data point in our dashboards. Our AI is consistently fine-tuned for accuracy. Seeing the high acceptance rate when you start using the product could be a persuasive indicator of its reliability. We’re always working towards making our AI more trustworthy for users.

In case agents work across multiple groups, WFM adapts flexibly depending on the level of detail you need. If they're working on different types of tickets, you can set up work streams for each category. This way, the agent activity screen will show changes as soon as an agent switches from one ticket type to another giving you real-time and historical data.

If you prefer to see when agents are handling tickets in general, no customization is needed. Importantly, this set up is fully automated for agents. They don't need to manually switch statuses when they change groups. It's all based on their actual clicks, making the process easy and efficient.

Timezones can be tailored to each location/site built in Zendesk WFM. This is useful for teams that operate globally, and it translates into having agents that belong to the specific site/location seeing the data in their own time zone, while WFM Admins can still view their schedules in their own default time zone. We also have a time zone switcher that can be utilized.

Resources: Using the WFM timezone switcher, Setting up locations and shifts in Zendesk WFM

Nope - we do see that teams get a hige amount of value from using both together, but you do not need to use WFM to use QA, and you dont need to use QA to use WFM - you only need to use Zendesk to use either or both.

We do! We have courses and demo videos available on the Zendesk QA Youtube channel.

Resources: Zendesk QA YouTube

Klaus - SOC-2 Type 2 yes, HiPAA we're working on as part of the integration with Zendesk.

WFM - Yes, SOC2 Type 2 compliant. not HIPAA compliant yet.

Reach out to yout account team for a 30 day free trial!

Resources: Workforce Engagement Management

Depending on WFM goals and customer's current Zendesk environment, this is where implementation can be more or less extensive. As a benchmark based on our data and previous experience, most customers can get up and running within 4-6 weeks.

Agent Activity + Reports

Agent Activity - this is where we can identify short, alternating timesheets, with no productivity points shown below on the productivity bar.

Reports - with the use of our point-oriented metrics + Ticket Bounce Points + AHT (Agent Handle Time)

Resources: About the Agent activity page

Yes

Resources: Importing historical volume for WFM forecasts

We recommend playing with out powerful AI powered filters when you set up Klaus to find tickets that matter to you to review. Once you've found tickets, you can set up recurring assignments that will deliver randomly selected tickets that meet those criteria to each of your QA specialists to review. 

Resources: Setting up autoscoring in Zendesk QA using AutoQA, Using Spotlight to filter conversations

Using Zendesk WFM effectively to enhance agent productivity starts with understanding your data - knowing where and how agents are spending their time. Viewing this data can be eye-opening and forms the basis for further improvements.

Having a tool like Zendesk WFM can help managers spot agents who are struggling in real-time, and offer immediate support, which can result in improved performance over time.

For admins and managers, enhancing productivity begins with tracking key metrics regularly. Thanks to detailed and customizable reports provided by Zendesk WFM, you can have a clear understanding of productivity trends and make necessary changes.

Moreover, a tool like this simplifies forecasting and scheduling tasks, freeing up more time for coaches and mentors, which ultimately leads to a more productive and efficient team. Looking at it from different angles really helps in maximizing the benefits of Zendesk WFM.

Not yet - this is something that is currently under development and should be launched pretty soon. 

This functionality is currently in EAP. It should be available for every customer quite soon.

The productivity points will be calculated based on agent interaction. If an agent looks at a ticket but does not do anything, there will be no productivity points assigned. If they make internal changes but don't interact with the customer, for example, they will get an 'Attended Point'.

Resources: WFM custom report metrics