How to build an AI triage workflow in Zendesk: A step-by-step guide

Let’s be honest, manually sorting through a mountain of Zendesk tickets is a grind. Every support manager knows there has to be a better way than just assigning tickets round-robin or based on who shouts the loudest. The goal is to have a smart system that figures out what a ticket is about, who needs to see it, and how urgent it is, all on its own.

That’s the whole point of an AI triage workflow: less manual drudgery, quicker replies, and a support team that isn't constantly bogged down in the queue.

The good news? Setting this up is probably easier than you think. The tricky part is that it often feels like you need a team of developers and a six-month project plan to get it off the ground.

In this guide, we'll walk you through exactly how to build an AI triage workflow in Zendesk. We’ll look at two different ways to get it done:

1. Using Zendesk’s own Intelligent Triage feature.

2. A faster, more flexible method that gives you full control without the setup headaches.

By the end, you'll have a clear plan to get your ticket triage on autopilot and give your team more time to actually help customers.

What you'll need

Before we get into the nuts and bolts, let’s quickly cover what you’ll need for each approach.

For the native Zendesk method, you'll need:

• A Zendesk Suite Professional plan or higher.

• The Zendesk Copilot add-on (which used to be called Advanced AI).

• A decent amount of ticket history (at least 1,000 tickets over the last 6 months) so the AI has something to learn from.

• Your business needs to fit into one of Zendesk's pre-trained industries, like retail, software, or travel.

For the faster, more flexible method, you'll need:

• A Zendesk account (any plan will do).

• An eesel AI account.

• Access to where your knowledge lives (think help center, old tickets, Confluence, or Google Docs).

Method 1: Using Zendesk intelligent triage

Zendesk's own tool for this is called "Intelligent Triage." The idea is that it automatically figures out a ticket's intent (what the customer wants), language, and sentiment (if they're happy or mad). You can then use that info to build rules for routing tickets. Here’s how it generally works.

Step 1: Turn on intelligent triage in your settings

First things first, you have to flip the switch. If you're an admin, you can find this in Admin Center > AI > Intelligent Triage. This is where you’ll manage the settings and tell the AI which channels to look at, like email or your web form.

One thing to keep in mind is that Zendesk's AI is pre-trained for specific industries. If your business doesn't quite fit into their boxes, the aintent detection might be a little off, which can throw a wrench in your whole workflow.

Step 2: Use triggers to act on the AI's predictions

Once it's on, Zendesk starts adding intent, language, and sentiment data to new tickets. Now you have to make that data do something useful by setting up triggers.

For example, you could create a trigger that says, "If a ticket's Intent is Account::Password reset, then change the Group to IT Support."

You’ll set this up in Admin Center > Objects and rules > Triggers. You add a new trigger, pick your conditions (based on what the AI predicts), and then set the actions (like assigning to a group, changing the priority, or adding a tag). This works well for straightforward routing, but it can get messy if you have lots of different intents or need more specific control than the built-in options provide.

Step 3: Check your results in the intelligent triage dashboard

Zendesk gives you a dashboard in Explore to see how the AI is doing. You can see how many tickets are getting analyzed, what the most common intents are, and check if resolution times are improving for triaged tickets.

This is helpful for spotting trends, but it’s tough to test or simulate your changes. You usually have to set your triggers live and just wait to see what happens. That can be a bit nerve-wracking if you've set up a rule that doesn't work quite as expected.

Method 2: A flexible approach with eesel AI

If the built-in approach feels a little too rigid, or if you don't meet the strict requirements for ticket volume or industry, there's another way. Using a tool like eesel AI lets you build a custom triage workflow in a few minutes, not a few months.

Step 1: Connect your Zendesk account and knowledge sources

Getting started with eesel AI is refreshingly straightforward. Instead of digging through admin panels, you just connect your Zendesk account with a click. No need to bother a developer or mess with custom APIs.

But here’s where it gets really interesting. You can connect all the places your team knowledge lives, not just what's in your help center. Link up your Confluence spaces, Google Docs, Notion, and, most importantly, train the AI on your past Zendesk tickets. This means the AI learns your unique business context, your tone of voice, and common problems right from day one.

Step 2: Set up your triage rules with a flexible workflow builder

With eesel AI, you aren't stuck with a list of pre-defined intents. You get to build triage rules based on whatever criteria actually matter to your business.

You can create workflows that:

• Handle specific topics: For instance, you can automatically tag and assign any ticket mentioning "invoice request" or "shipping status" straight to the billing team.

• Prioritize key customers: If a ticket comes from a VIP account, a rule can automatically flag its priority as "Urgent" and ping a senior agent.

• Take custom actions: You can go beyond just routing tickets. The AI can add private notes for your agents, update ticket fields, or even make an external API call to look up order info in Shopify.

You do all of this in a simple prompt editor where you tell the AI how to behave and what actions it can take.

Step 3: Test your workflow confidently with simulation

One of the scariest parts of automating support is the risk of the AI messing up and annoying a customer. eesel AI has a clever solution for this: a simulation mode.

Before your AI ever touches a live ticket, you can run it against thousands of your past tickets. The simulation shows you exactly how the AI would have responded, tagged, and routed every single one. You get a real-world preview of its performance, which helps you see which tickets are easy to automate and where you might need to adjust your rules. It lets you go live feeling confident, not crossing your fingers.

Step 4: Go live gradually and check the reports

You don't have to automate your entire queue at once. With eesel AI, you can roll out your workflow piece by piece. Start with something simple, like having it automatically tag all "feature request" tickets while your team handles everything else.

Once you see it working well, you can give it more responsibility. The analytics dashboard gives you useful information, not just numbers for the sake of it. It points out gaps in your knowledge base and shows you what your customers are really asking about, giving you a clear path for making things better over time.

Tips for a successful AI triage workflow

No matter which path you take, here are a few things to keep in mind to make sure it goes smoothly.

• Don't just use your help center. Let's be real, your team's best knowledge isn't always in polished help articles. It's buried in the solutions to past tickets, in internal Confluence pages, and in random Google Docs. A smart AI needs access to all of it. This is where tools that can pull all that knowledge together, like eesel AI, really shine.

• Start small and build from there. It's tempting to try and automate everything from the get-go, but that's usually a recipe for headaches. Pick one small, predictable type of ticket, automate the triage for it, and see how it goes. Rolling it out gradually is much safer and helps your team build trust in the system.

• Have a clear hand-off to humans. No AI is perfect. Make sure you have a clear process for when the AI should just raise its hand and pass a ticket to a person. Your workflow should be great at handling what it knows and even better at escalating what it doesn't.

• Think beyond just routing. A modern AI can do more than just assign tickets. Think about how it could add helpful context in private notes, enrich tickets with customer data from other systems, or even close out duplicate requests automatically.

Get your triage workflow up and running

Building an AI triage workflow in Zendesk doesn't have to be a huge, complicated project anymore. You’ve got options.

You can go with Zendesk's native Intelligent Triage, which is a solid starting point for basic routing if your business fits its model. Or, you can use a more flexible platform like eesel AI to get full control, connect all your knowledge sources, and launch new workflows without the guesswork.

At the end of the day, the goal is the same: stop wasting hours on manual ticket sorting and help your team resolve customer problems faster.

Ready to see how quickly you can get your Zendesk triage on autopilot? Get started with eesel AI today and you could have your first workflow running in minutes.