How to use AI agents to automate support in Zendesk: A practical guide

Let's be honest, everyone is trying to automate their Zendesk support. Ticket volumes are up, budgets are tight, and customer expectations have never been higher. Using AI to handle the flood of repetitive questions isn't just a neat idea anymore; it's about survival.

Zendesk has its own AI agents that promise to deflect common questions and free up your team. But getting started can feel like a bit of a maze, with specific plan requirements, surprise add-on costs, and a setup that takes some serious tinkering.

This guide will walk you through two ways to use AI agents to automate support in Zendesk. First, we’ll go over setting up Zendesk's native AI. Then, we'll show you a more flexible and powerful method that puts you in the driver's seat, connects to all your company knowledge, and won’t leave you guessing about your monthly bill.

What you'll need to get started

Before you can flip the switch on automation, you need to have the right pieces in place. What you need depends on which route you take.

For Zendesk’s native AI agents:

• A Zendesk Suite Plan: You’ll need to be on the Suite Team plan or higher to even access the basic AI features.

• The Advanced AI Add-on: For the more interesting features like intelligent triage and sentiment analysis, you'll need this add-on. It costs an extra $50 per agent, per month, according to their pricing page.

• A solid Zendesk Help Center: Zendesk’s AI leans heavily on your Zendesk Guide articles, so they need to be comprehensive and up-to-date.

• Admin access: You'll need to be an admin in your Zendesk account to get in and configure everything.

For a more flexible AI agent (like eesel AI):

• Any Zendesk plan: You don't need a specific, pricey plan to get started.

• An eesel AI account: You can sign up and connect it to Zendesk in just a few clicks.

• Access to your knowledge sources: Just pull together your existing documentation, whether it's in Zendesk, Confluence, Google Docs, or even just the treasure trove of information in your past support tickets.

The standard approach: Using Zendesk's native AI

Zendesk gives you some built-in tools to get a taste of automation. The process is all about using your existing Zendesk Help Center to power an AI agent that can hopefully handle common questions. Here’s a look at how it's done.

Step 1: Polish your help center and pick your plan

The smarts of your Zendesk AI agent are directly tied to the quality of your Zendesk Guide articles. So, before you do anything else, you’ll want to make sure your help center is well-organized, current, and actually answers the questions your customers are asking. Zendesk's own getting started guide calls this the first and most important step. You'll also need to make sure you're on a compatible plan and decide if that pricey Advanced AI add-on is worth it for you.

Step 2: Create and configure your AI agent

Once your knowledge base is in decent shape, you can head to the Zendesk Admin Center to build your AI agent. Here, you will:

1. Give your AI agent a name and persona: Try to define a personality that matches your brand’s voice so it doesn't sound completely robotic.

2. Connect it to your help center: You’ll point the AI agent to your Zendesk Guide content so it knows where to look for answers.

3. Set up standard responses: You can customize greetings, feedback requests, and the "I need a human!" escalation messages to make the experience feel a little smoother.

Step 3: Set up triggers and automations

Zendesk's AI needs triggers to know when to jump into a conversation. This means you'll have to dive into your account's business rules to create and prioritize these triggers. It can get a bit technical, as they lay out in their support documentation. The AI agent then uses these rules to generate replies for tickets that fit the bill.

The main catch here is that you're pretty much stuck inside the Zendesk ecosystem. The AI can't just go and check an order status in another system or pull data from your CRM without some serious, and often costly, integration work.

Step 4: Publish and monitor performance

After you’ve set everything up, you can publish your AI agent to your chosen channels, like web chat or email. Once it's live, you can watch its performance from the Insights dashboard, read through conversation transcripts, and see your deflection rate. The tricky part? There's no real way to test it on past tickets before you go live, which basically means you’re testing on real customers from the moment you switch it on.

A better approach: Using eesel AI to automate support in Zendesk

While Zendesk’s native AI is a place to start, it can feel a bit restrictive for teams that need more control, want to use all of their company knowledge, and prefer a predictable monthly bill. Here’s a more powerful way to automate your Zendesk support using a tool like eesel AI.

Step 1: Connect your Zendesk account in minutes

Forget about navigating complicated plan requirements. Getting started with eesel AI is refreshingly simple. You connect your Zendesk account with one click. You don't have to migrate your help desk or change how you work. eesel AI fits right into your current setup, so you can be up and running in minutes, not weeks.

Step 2: Bring all your knowledge together, not just the help center

Here’s where things get really interesting. Zendesk’s AI is mostly stuck with what’s in your help center, but eesel AI can learn from everything.

• Past tickets: It combs through thousands of your old Zendesk conversations to learn your brand voice, common issues, and what a good answer looks like.

• External documents: You can connect it to Confluence, Google Docs, Notion, or wherever else you keep your information. If an answer exists somewhere in your company, eesel AI can find it.

• Macros and canned responses: It also learns from the shortcuts and macros your team already uses every day, keeping the answers consistent.

An infographic showing how eesel AI can connect to various knowledge sources. This visual helps explain how to use AI agents to automate support in Zendesk with comprehensive information.

Having all this knowledge in one place means your AI agent can answer way more questions, and with better accuracy, from day one.

Step 3: Define custom actions and workflows with total control

With eesel AI, you’re not just answering questions; you’re building smart workflows.

• Automate on your terms: You can create very specific rules to decide which tickets the AI should handle. Want to start small and just automate password resets? Go for it. You can have it escalate everything else to a human. You're in complete control.

• Build custom actions: Use the simple prompt editor to tell the AI how to act and what it can do. Need it to check an order status in Shopify? Tag a ticket as "Urgent"? Send a tricky conversation to a specific agent? You can build all these custom actions without touching a line of code.

A screenshot showing the customization of AI persona and workflow actions in eesel AI, demonstrating a key step in how to use AI agents to automate support in Zendesk.

For example, a workflow could have the AI agent look at a new ticket. If it's a refund request, the agent can check the order in your e-commerce platform and draft a reply with all the details. If it's something else, it can automatically assign it to the right person. That’s the kind of smart, multi-step automation that actually makes a difference.

Step 4: See how it'll perform and go live with confidence

One of the biggest fears with AI is that it’ll say something weird or wrong to a customer. eesel AI helps you get over that with a powerful simulation mode. Before you ever turn the AI on for real customers, you can test it on thousands of your past Zendesk tickets. This lets you:

• Preview its answers: See exactly how the AI would have replied to real customer questions from last week or last month.

• Get accurate forecasts: You get real data on what your resolution rate will likely be and how much you could save.

• Find knowledge gaps: The simulation will show you where your documentation is weak so you can fix it before the AI talks to a single customer.

The simulation mode in eesel AI allows users to test their setup, a crucial feature when learning how to use AI agents to automate support in Zendesk.

This risk-free testing lets you deploy your AI knowing it's actually ready to help.

Key differences and common mistakes

It’s easy to hit a few bumps in the road when setting up AI in Zendesk. Here are a few things to watch out for.

Common Mistakes:

1. Feeding your AI a limited diet: Your AI is only as smart as the information you give it. If you only let it read your Zendesk Help Center, it's going to have a lot of blind spots.

2. Skipping the dress rehearsal: Going live without simulating first is asking for trouble. It can lead to bad answers and damage the trust you’ve built with your customers.

3. Ignoring the price tag: A "pay-per-resolution" model sounds good in theory, but a busy month can lead to a surprisingly high bill, wiping out your savings.

This video provides a step-by-step guide on how to create, configure, and publish an AI agent within Zendesk.

Ready to automate your Zendesk support?

While Zendesk's built-in AI agents can be a starting point for automation, they come with real limits on flexibility, knowledge sources, and cost. For teams that are serious about cutting down their ticket queue and making customers happier, a more powerful and controllable tool is the way to go.

By connecting a platform like eesel AI to your Zendesk account, you can pull in all your knowledge, build workflows that fit your team perfectly, and test everything without any risk. You get all the good parts of automation without the headaches or the unpredictable costs.

Ready to see how simple and powerful Zendesk automation can really be?

Start your free trial of eesel AI and automate your first Zendesk tickets today.