Lisa Kelly

Dark mode addresses common concerns among agents who spend long hours in front of screens, helping to reduce eye strain, headaches, and fatigue. By providing a more comfortable viewing option, especially during nighttime shifts or in low-light environments, dark mode can improve overall productivity and accessibility. Dark mode also supports users with color blindness and light sensitivity, ensuring that our Zendesk platform is usable for everyone.

Dark mode in Support includes tickets, views, Support settings pages, and so on. No features or capabilities are impacted.

Dark mode changes the default interface for the Support ticketing system from light to dark.

To turn on dark mode

1. In Support, click your profile icon in the top bar.
2. Click Display to open the Display menu and select Dark mode.

   

   The interface changes to dark mode immediately.

Turning off dark mode changes the interface for the Support ticketing system from dark to light again.

To turn off dark mode

1. In Support, click your profile icon in the top bar.
2. Click Display to open the Display menu and select Light mode.

   The interface changes back to the default light mode.

In addition to switching between light and dark mode, you can set Support to match the system appearance on your laptop. This can be useful for situations where you work on multiple laptops or devices with changing interface options.

To match your system appearance

1. Set the system appearance on your laptop.

   For example, use settings in Mac OS to set the appearance or use settings in MS Windows to set personalized colors.

2. In Support, click your profile icon in the top bar.
3. Click Display and select Match system appearance.

   The Support interface will change to match the dark or light mode settings on your laptop.

Admins have an account-wide setting that allows agents to switch between dark and light mode in Support. When this setting is turned on, agents can use their profile menu to turn dark mode on and off. This setting works for Support only, not Admin Center or other Zendesk products and apps.

In certain cases, you might not want agents to use dark mode. For example, if you have apps or custom integrations that don't support or work well with dark mode.

When dark mode is deactivated, agents will not see a Display menu when they click their profile icon.

Dark mode limitations include:

• The dark mode setting applies to Support only, not Admin Center or other Zendesk products.
• Dark mode doesn't work for the in-product help panel or for some in-product notifications.
• Dark mode does not work for third-party apps and integrations that appear in the Support interface.

Zendesk provides a set of Zendesk Suite plans for customers who want to exclusively use Zendesk products for internal employee services, such as Human Resources (HR), Finance, Legal, and Information Technology (IT). These plans include features and terminology specifically geared toward managing employee services.

You can learn more about Employee Service Suite plans from our Zendesk web page. This page includes pricing details and plan features.

To buy an Employee Service Suite plan

1. Open the Zendesk pricing page for Employee Service Suite.

   A page appears with a description of the Employee Service Suite plans. Use this page to view the key features associated with each plan. Scroll down the page to see the full list of features.

   

2. Review the feature lists for each plan to decide on the plan you want to buy.
3. When you've decided on a plan, click Talk to Sales to get in touch with a Zendesk Sales Representative.

   The representative can help you with any additional questions you have about the plans. If you currently use a different Zendesk Suite plan to manage employee service, a representative can also walk you through available migration options and recommendations. Self-service options are not available for purchasing Zendesk Employee Service plans at this time.

A well-organized knowledge base is crucial for helping users find answers and troubleshoot issues. Creating one is just the beginning: Your knowledge base must be tailored to meet user needs and continuously updated to remain relevant.

To optimize

• Know your goals and users. Start by defining what you want to achieve with your knowledge base and who will be using it. Understanding your audience helps you create content that meets their needs.
• Identify common issues. Look at frequent support tickets and popular macros to spot recurring problems. This insight will guide you in creating relevant content. Organize your information clearly, and write in a way that’s easy for users to understand.
• Make content easy to find. Use tags and labels to boost the visibility of your articles. Implementing semantic search can also help users quickly locate the information they need.
• Keep improving. Track how your knowledge base is performing by monitoring article views, feedback, and comments. This will help you spot areas for improvement and ensure your content stays useful over time.

Additional resources

• 5 strategies for building up your knowledge center content for AI
• Maintaining and improving your knowledge base

Intelligent triage uses AI to automatically detect why a customer is reaching out (their intent), in which language the ticket is written, and whether the customer's message is positive or negative (its sentiment). You can also use entity detection to detect specific products and other key words (entities) and automate workflows based on that information.

Why this step? Setting up intelligent triage will allow you to understand your CS operations and act on insights faster, automate top recurring requests, eliminate manual triage and boost operational efficiency, and streamline your operations by identifying and acting fast on urgent issues.

Why this step? Zendesk's agent copilot empowers customer support representatives by automatically generating personalized, contextually relevant draft responses to reduce response times, improve consistency, and allow agents to focus on more complex problem-solving and customer relationship building. These features provide immediate value to agents by reducing agent handle time and aiding agents in composing friendly and professional responses in seconds.

Why this step? When people think of AI, they often think of bots, which we call AI agents, first. Since you’ve already optimized your knowledge base (see Week 0), these AI agents will pull in the most accurate data from that knowledge base when responding to customers on your behalf. AI agents are included in Zendesk Suite.

Why this step? Zendesk's AI-powered dashboards and reporting tools provide you with actionable insights to measure the effectiveness of this trial now – and in the future, to continue automatically analyzing customer interaction data, identifying performance trends, predicting potential bottlenecks, and offering predictive analytics that enable more strategic decision-making and continuous improvement of customer support operations.

Take one last look at your data in comparison to your goals. Export any final metrics you may need in making your pitch to stakeholders.

Your trial ends after 30 days. We hope you had a great trial experience and that AI has made your work day easier, whether it's optimizing workflows, boosting agent efficiency, or deflecting customer requests. To purchase Copilot, see Buying the Copilot add-on.

Zendesk Copilotis a set of features that expand on the AI offerings already built into the Zendesk Suite. You can try it out the Copilot add-on before purchasing. This test-drive enables you to work with Copilot features before making a final decision to purchase. You must be the account owner or a billing admin to start the trial.

If your plan is eligible, you'll see an banner on the Subscription page in Admin Center. Otherwise, you can contact Zendesk Sales and ask about starting a Copilot trial. For more information about how Zendesk trials work, see Trying out a plan or feature upgrade.

You can start your trial before or after you review the material in this article.

• Instill the belief that AI exists to serve agents and simplify their work.
  • When you’re introducing AI, clearly communicate the benefits that agents can expect and how AI will help agents in their roles.
• Give agents a voice in the AI implementation process.
  • Conduct surveys and focus groups to understand agents' concerns and expectations.
  • Create your AI guidelines and processes alongside agents to make sure they’re bought into the implementation experience.
• Allow agents to experiment and familiarize themselves with AI.
  • Allow agents to experiment with AI before it becomes a standard part of their work, like a sandbox.
  • Ask for agents' early feedback to be based on direct experience. Fear and uncertainty can cause them to reject new technology, while giving space for agents to familiarize themselves with AI can shift their preconceived notions and make change less concerning.

• Document exactly how to use AI with demos and training.
  • Document how you’re adding AI to agents’ workflows and share training resources on best practices.
  • Showcase how AI works with side-by-side, before-and-after demos contrasting agent experiences with and without AI. This demonstrates how AI handles tedious parts of agents’ jobs, allowing them to focus on more meaningful work.
• Set baseline performance metrics to quantify success.
  • Set baseline KPIs before deploying AI so you can monitor shifts in metrics as new capabilities get enabled.
  • We suggest tracking metrics like first response time (FRT), customer satisfaction (CSAT), and ticket reopens.
• Roll out a targeted pilot to prove value.
  • Consider choosing a specific support channel to implement a targeted AI pilot.
  • Use this trial to gather stats on the value of AI and share those widely.
  • To show AI’s value, consider turning on AI, then turning it off to compare the performance before and after.

• Lean on AI agents (previously known as bots) to gather all the right customer context before handing tickets over to an agent.
• Improve productivity with tailored insights and next steps from AI.
  • AI can offer guidance by surfacing previous, similar tickets and suggesting the right responses based on those interactions. Sign up for the EAP to try this out.
  • This is especially helpful for newly hired or developing agents and lower performers.
• Automatically route tickets with AI to develop your agents’ skill set.
  • Consider gradually increasing the complexity of the requests agents handle as they learn.
  • Use AI to route tickets to the right person based on their skill level and capacity.
  • As agents ramp up, you can automatically route them to more complicated issues.

This is especially important when considering the challenges teams are facing. Challenges like surging ticket volumes, distributed teams, and new customer preferences. AI-powered workforce management (WFM) and quality assurance (QA) allow you to stay agile and manage these challenges. Contact Zendesk Sales for more information.

• Implement workforce management to streamline forecasting, scheduling, and productivity, which enables your team to meet customer demand as it changes in real time.
• Implement quality assurance to track your service quality. QA can score interactions, analyze trends, and identify opportunities for your team to improve.
• Taken together, these tools make sure everything is running smoothly, across both your human teams and the AI systems you’re using.

• Establish automated feedback loops where agents flag flaws in support.
  • Create feedback loops where agents can quickly flag inaccurate AI responses. This promotes engagement and provides systematic feedback on how to improve. For example, create an internal Community site for this purpose.
• Closely monitor analytics for trends and insights to improve.
  • Evaluate AI-powered reporting on trends across your customer base using resources like the Intelligent triage dashboard. Keep an eye out for problem areas like tickets with a high number of agent replies or long resolution times for particular issues.
• Offer a dedicated forum to keep agents informed.
  • Set up a dedicated forum, such as a Slack channel or recurring meeting, to keep agents updated and encourage feedback sharing. This helps foster an environment where agents feel valued and empowered to contribute to improving things.

Successful AI adoption is an iterative process that requires ongoing attention, agent feedback, and continuous refinement. By maintaining open communication channels and demonstrating AI's tangible benefits, you can foster a workplace where agents view AI as an invaluable partner in delivering exceptional customer service to your customers.