How top web hosting provider Cloud86 taught an AI to fix real-time website issues

Cloud86 is one of the top web hosting providers in the Netherlands, and with over 40,000 customers, their support team was busy. They decided to plug eesel AI into their Zendesk, but not just to answer questions. They taught it how to run live diagnostics in SSL, DNS, and server checks which are right inside a support chat.

Now, they have an AI that handles the first wave of customer chats, checks, fixes what it can, and smartly passes the trickier tickets to the human specialists.

Who is Cloud86?

If you live in Europe, you've probably heard of Cloud86. They offer everything from basic web hosting to managed WordPress and VPS setups for over 40,000 customers. Their whole reputation is built on speed, 99.98% uptime, and having actual experts on hand to help.

As you can imagine, with a growing customer base, keeping that high-quality, super-fast support going was getting tough for their 30-person team.

The problem of keeping up with mountains of queries

More customers meant more support tickets, covering everything from "how do I pay my bill?" to "my whole server is on fire." This created a few headaches:

• The same old checks, over and over: Support agents were spending a ton of time on repetitive first steps, like checking if a customer's site was actually down or looking up their DNS settings.

• Getting tickets to the right person was slow: Every new ticket had to be read, figured out, and then sent to the right specialist. This was eating into their goal of a 2-minute average response time.

• Problems don’t sleep: Websites can break at 3 AM on a Sunday, and customers (rightfully) expect help right away.

They needed something that could handle those frontline technical questions instantly, so their human experts could focus on the really tough stuff.

An AI solution that does more than just talk

For Cloud86, a basic chatbot wasn’t enough. They chose eesel AI in their Zendesk workflow so it could actually step in and do the work.

Connecting a source of knowledge

First, they fed the AI everything they could: company website, their Zendesk Help Center, and even internal docs from CSVs and PDFs. This gave the AI a solid grasp of their products and the common problems customers run into.

A team of specialized bots

They didn't just use one bot for everything. They set up a multi-bot system to keep things moving smoothly. One bot talks to customers first, while other bots work behind the scenes to analyze and tag new tickets, keeping the queue tidy.

Putting the AI to work

But here’s where it gets really clever. They gave the bots eesel’s AI Actions, which let them automate tasks and run live diagnostics.

• Zendesk Actions: They set up actions to automatically add tags to tickets (like WooCommerce or Critical) and to hand off chats to a human agent with all the context intact.

• Custom Diagnostic API Actions: This is the fun part. Cloud86 built custom actions that let the AI act like a real support engineer. It can run a DNS check,  online check, SSL check, and status check, on the spot.

What this looks like for a customer

Okay, picture this: a customer's webshop is offline. Panic sets in.

1. First Contact: They open a chat in Zendesk: "My webshop is offline!" The eesel AI agent picks it up immediately.

2. Live Diagnostics: Instead of putting them in a queue for a human, the bot gets to work. It automatically runs an  'Online check' and a 'sslcheck'  to see what's going on.

3. Automatic Fix: The bot finds the problem: "Your site is online, but your SSL certificate has expired." It then pulls up the right guide from the Help Center and walks the customer through fixing it. Ticket closed, no human needed.

4. Smart Escalation: But what if the issue is more complicated? Another internal bot reads the conversation and tags the ticket with something like "Escalate T2"

5. Clean Handover: The bot then passes the ticket to the right human specialist. The agent gets the full chat history and all the diagnostic results, so they can jump right in without asking "Have you tried turning it off and on again?"

So, did it work?

Yes, it did.

• Their experts could finally focus: Agents weren't bogged down by repetitive tasks anymore. They could spend their time on the gnarly problems where they were needed most.

• Response times got way faster: With the AI handling a huge chunk of initial queries instantly, Cloud86 doubled down on its reputation for speed.

• Tickets went to the right person, faster: The automated triage meant no more human error in routing tickets.

• 24/7 expert help: Cloud86 now has a first-line support agent that can run real diagnostics anytime, day or night, even when the human team is asleep.

More than just a chatbot

Cloud86's story shows what happens when you move past simple FAQ bots. They didn't just get a chatbot; they got an automated team member that can actually do things. By plugging eesel AI deep into their helpdesk and giving it the tools to act, they scaled their support without losing the expert touch their customers love.

Ready to see how an AI that takes action could help your support team? Book an eesel AI demo today.