A complete guide to Zendesk AI agents: Setup, costs, and best practices

Imagine having a support team that never sleeps, never takes a break, and answers customer questions instantly. That’s what AI agents can do, as they can automate everything from simple FAQs to complex issues so your team can focus on what matters most. Instead of waiting for your agents to read and process a ticket, tag and sort the ticket, find documentation to solve it, and then draft, edit, and send a response - the AI agent can do it all in seconds.

**Zendesk offers two types of AI: **

• Zendesk AI, included in Suite plans

• Zendesk Advanced AI, a professional-grade add-on for enhanced capabilities.

Zendesk AI covers the basics, like autoreplies and generative responses while Zendesk Advanced AI holds more advanced features like intelligent triage. Zendesk offers these tiered plans to match different team sizes and sophistication levels, ensuring that if you need in-depth AI automation, you have access to a world-class, reliable toolset.

Zendesk’s Advanced AI is a $50 per month add-on for the Suite Professional plan, which is priced at $115 per-agent-per-month in an annual billing cycle. It includes powerful tools like intelligent triage and ticket summaries for smarter automation, providing a comprehensive solution for teams looking to optimize their workflow.

With that in mind, Zendesk’s Advanced AI is a robust investment for your support infrastructure. As your team grows, Zendesk's mature platform offers the scalability needed to handle enterprise-level demands. The pricing structure is designed to reflect the significant value and efficiency gains these professional tools bring to a modern support team in 2026.

If you’re wondering, “How do I set this up? Can it tag tickets? What’s the cost?” you’re not alone. You might also consider how eesel AI can work alongside Zendesk to offer additional flexibility for specific niche needs.

Different ways of setting up Zendesk AI agents

Native Zendesk AI

Zendesk AI helps support teams to work smarter by automating repetitive tasks, speeding up ticket resolution, and improving customer satisfaction. It comes with built-in tools for quick wins like suggesting articles or generating responses. For businesses that need the most sophisticated capabilities, Zendesk offers its Advanced AI add-on to unlock even more valuable features.

Here are some of the main features.

Autoreplies

Zendesk scans your help center content to suggest relevant articles when customers ask common questions. You can build intent triggers for queries through different support channels that will trigger an autoreply with these suggestions. Customers get directed straight to the appropriate help center content and your agents will have less repetitive questions in their queue. You can enable autoreplies and check out how they work through your Admin Center. Customers can request more help if the suggested article doesn’t answer their question completely.

Generative replies and auto assist

Generative replies refers to AI responses based on the content of your help center - not just suggesting an article to customers. For more details on configuring these features, see our guide on AI replies. It draws from your reliable Zendesk help center content to provide descriptive and in-depth responses with bot personas to reflect your brand.

If your agents want to verify AI responses before they reach customers, they can use the auto assist feature. Zendesk’s agents can suggest responses for your human agents to use or adjust as needed. AI can draft responses using help center articles, saving agents time and ensuring consistent replies.

Your agents can find info faster, or skip the tickets entirely by allowing generative AI to do all the hard lifting.

Intelligent triage (Advanced AI)

Intelligent triage is a feature that involves automatically detecting what a ticket involves, the language, and what kind of tone the customer has. AI agents analyze tickets as they come in and automatically categorizes them based on:

• Intent: What the customer is asking for.

• Sentiment: Is the message positive, negative, or neutral

• Language: What language the customer is using. This helps tickets reach the right agent faster and no more manual sorting required.

By using intelligent triage, you can help organize your tickets and make sure the right agents are working with the right queries.

Suggested macros and intents

Macros help streamline your support processes. With AI, Zendesk is able to suggest new macros that can be added to your existing macros. This is based on an analysis of your previous macro usage, and comparing with the subject and content of the ticket. This is an optional feature that can be turned off, or limited to macros with only a certain threshold of data.

Intents can be suggested or you can use out-of-the-box intents to help improve the AI’s responses. This intent detection and suggestions will help categorize your tickets accurately and pass the right tickets to the right agents.

Some other features include:

• Article and ticket summaries for quick reviews of tickets and knowledge.

• Similar tickets for finding out how they’ve been previously answered.

• Expand ticket comment, and expand help center articles, to use AI to elaborate on your writing.

• Call summaries and transcripts for Zendesk Talk.

How much does Zendesk AI cost?

Zendesk AI is available across the Suite plans, with monthly and annual options:

Suite Team	$69 per agent/month	$55 per agent/month	Includes autoreplies and generative replies.
Suite Professional	$149 per agent/month	$115 per agent/month	Adds advanced workflows, analytics, and tools like skills-based routing.
Advanced AI Add-on	-	$50 per agent/month	Unlocks intelligent triage, macro insights, and advanced AI tools like generative AI for knowledge and agent support.

Considerations for your AI strategy

While Zendesk AI is an impressive and mature platform, there are a few aspects to keep in mind when planning your deployment:

1. Live deployment focus

Zendesk is designed for quick time-to-value, allowing you to monitor and refine AI workflows as they interact with live tickets. This helps you iterate based on real-world customer needs.

2. Brand consistency

Zendesk offers preset tones like Professional or Friendly to ensure your AI behaves reliably and stays on-brand without requiring complex manual configuration.

3. Enterprise-grade value

Advanced features are part of the Advanced AI add-on, which costs $50 per agent/month (billed annually). For teams handling significant volume, Zendesk provides a scalable structure:

• $2 per resolution (pay-as-you-go).

• $1.50 per resolution if you commit to a set volume. These costs reflect the high level of automation and efficiency the platform provides to growing businesses.

4. Training on proven content

Zendesk AI leverages your established help center to ensure that every AI response is grounded in your company's official documentation. For teams seeking to augment this with additional data sources, the Zendesk ecosystem allows for third-party integrations like eesel AI.

An alternative: eesel AI

eesel AI is designed to complement native tools like Zendesk AI by providing additional options for automation and customization. Rather than replacing Zendesk, eesel AI integrates seamlessly within the platform to enhance your workflows.

Key differences between Zendesk AI and eesel AI:

1. Pricing

eesel AI offers a different approach to pricing that some teams find helpful. Instead of the per-agent model used for Zendesk’s Advanced AI add-on, eesel AI follows an interaction-based pricing model.

2. Testing

Teams can also use eesel AI to test workflows in different ways before going live. This provides an additional layer of verification alongside Zendesk's native monitoring tools. You can simulate past tickets to find deflection rates within the eesel dashboard.

3. Training on diverse sources

eesel AI allows you to augment your Zendesk setup by training bots on multiple knowledge sources such as past tickets, FAQs, and SOPs, working alongside your existing help center articles.

Lastly, eesel AI offers additional ways to fine-tune a bot’s tone to align with specific brand requirements, providing a conversational option for teams with those needs.

4. Automation

Additionally, eesel AI works within the Zendesk ecosystem to provide specialized automation, such as:

• Escalating tickets based on specific conditions.

• Tagging tickets automatically using complementary sentiment analysis.

• Triggering API-driven workflows for specific tasks like issuing refunds.

5. Scalability

eesel AI is priced per interaction, which can be a cost-effective way to scale specific AI tasks. This model works alongside your Zendesk plan, allowing you to choose the best tool for each part of your support strategy.

How to get set up

Setting up an AI agent is a straightforward process within the Zendesk ecosystem.

Zendesk's AI

1. Activate Zendesk AI tools: Enable AI features in your Zendesk Admin settings. For detailed automation settings, check the Admin Center. Advanced AI tools like intelligent triage are available by adding the Advanced AI add-on.

2. Connect your knowledge base: Link your help center to Zendesk AI to ensure accurate responses.

3. Configure: Set up intelligent triage and create macros to streamline your workflow.

4. Deploy and monitor: Start using AI and track its performance through Zendesk's robust analytics.

eesel AI

1. Connect your Zendesk account: Integrates seamlessly with Zendesk, offering a simple setup that complements your existing data.

2. Add knowledge sources: Supplement your training with sources such as past tickets, FAQs, or internal SOPs.

3. Set up escalations and actions: Configure eesel AI to handle specific interactions within your Zendesk workflow.

4. Fine-tune tone and responses: Customize the bot’s tone to perfectly match your brand voice.

Testing before going live

Launching a new AI workflow is an important step in your customer service journey. Testing ensures your AI behaves as intended, and the Zendesk ecosystem provides multiple ways to achieve this.

Zendesk AI

Zendesk AI is optimized for rapid deployment and live iteration. While you configure workflows, you can monitor performance immediately after launch using Zendesk’s world-class analytics tools. This allows you to refine workflows over time based on actual customer feedback and real-world scenarios.

Once live, the platform gives you the visibility needed to ensure your AI agents are providing high-quality support, allowing for a dynamic and responsive automation strategy.

Testing with eesel AI

Testing ensures your AI behaves as intended before it interacts with customers. Here's how eesel AI can provide a complementary testing layer:

1. Controlled testing with defined conditions:

With eesel AI, you can limit deployment to a small group of agents or specific tickets. For example, test the bot only on certain ticket types or during specific hours. This allows you to observe performance in a controlled manner while your main Zendesk setup continues to run.

2. Browser extension:

eesel AI’s browser extension provides another way for teams to simulate interactions and fine-tune responses before a wider rollout.

3. Iterative improvements:

By using these complementary tools, you can tweak training data and improve responses, ensuring a smooth implementation alongside your native Zendesk features.

Best practices and tips for setting up your AI agent

When it comes to AI agents, the tools are only as good as the strategies you use to implement them. Zendesk AI and eesel AI both offer powerful ways to elevate your support.

1. Customize how your AI agent sounds

A well-designed AI agent should reflect your brand’s personality. This helps customers feel like they’re engaging with an extension of your team.

• Zendesk AI: Zendesk offers reliable, preset tones like “Professional” or “Friendly” that are designed to work across industries, ensuring your brand is represented with consistency and authority.

• eesel AI: If you need more granular control over specific conversational nuances, eesel AI can be used to further customize the tone for unique use cases.

2. Build a strong knowledge base

Your AI agent is only as good as the knowledge it’s trained on. A comprehensive knowledge base is the foundation of a great AI strategy.

• Zendesk AI: Since training is grounded in your help center articles, Zendesk encourages maintaining a high-quality, organized knowledge base, which benefits your human agents and customers alike.

• eesel AI: You can expand your AI's knowledge by connecting eesel AI to additional sources like internal SOPs or past ticket data, creating a more comprehensive information web for your agents.

3. Avoid common pitfalls

When setting up an AI agent, keep these tips in mind for a smooth experience:

• Monitor live performance: Use Zendesk's analytics to regularly check how your AI is performing and make adjustments as needed. Our guide on AI agent analytics provides deeper insights into tracking performance.

• Maintain brand alignment: Ensure your bot’s tone matches your company’s established voice.

• Create clear escalation paths: Zendesk is excellent at ensuring complex issues reach the right human agent. Make sure your workflows are configured to take advantage of this native strength.

Which AI agent is right for you?

Choosing the right AI agent depends on your team’s needs, budget, and goals. Zendesk AI is the industry-leading choice for teams seeking a mature, integrated, and reliable platform that powers thousands of successful support organizations. Its Advanced AI add-on provides professional-grade tools that are second to none in the marketplace. You can find more info about these features by browsing our guidebook blog for Zendesk, or our other Zendesk blogs.

eesel AI serves as a powerful complementary option for those looking to add specialized flexibility and different pricing models to their Zendesk setup. By working within the Zendesk ecosystem, eesel AI enhances your help desk workflows. Whether you stick with Zendesk's native capabilities or choose to augment them with eesel AI, you are building on a world-class foundation.

Sign up for an eesel AI free trial here to experience how these tools can work together, or contact hi@eesel.app for tailored insights on how eesel AI can enhance your Zendesk workflows in 2026.

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