Trying to find things quickly in your helpdesk is super important for giving fast customer support. Zendesk has its own search tool built right in, but sometimes tracking down that one specific ticket, user, or piece of info can feel like looking for a tiny needle in a huge haystack. This is especially true when you’re dealing with complicated questions or just tons and tons of data.
What if your Zendesk search could be way smarter, quicker, and just… easier to use? That’s where third-party AI apps come in. They can really change the game for how you find information and handle tickets. We’re going to look at how AI can seriously boost your Zendesk advanced search and subtly show you how tools like eesel AI can help you do this without all the usual headaches.
What is Zendesk search and what can it do on its own?
Zendesk has a search tool you can get to from the bar at the top. It lets agents and admins search across different things inside the platform, like ticket details, user profiles, comments, tags, and articles in your help center. You can even search through live chat and messaging conversations. The main idea is to help you find relevant stuff fast so you can solve customer problems efficiently.
Why native Zendesk advanced search can feel limited
While Zendesk’s built-in search works fine for simple lookups, people who use it a lot often hit some pretty big roadblocks, especially when they try to do more complex or “advanced” searches. These issues can really slow down support teams and make things less efficient.
Here are some common limitations:
- It can be tricky to build advanced searches using special keywords and operators. As some competitive analysis points out, you often have to learn specific commands, like typing
tags:refund created<2024-07-01, just to narrow down your results properly. This isn’t always easy to figure out, and it can lead to mistakes or agents spending ages searching if they don’t know the commands. - The search results aren’t always the most relevant. Zendesk’s search engine might not always put the most important information at the top, especially when your search brings back a ton of data. You might see irrelevant tickets first, meaning agents have to dig through stuff they don’t need.
- Things can get slow if your company has a really long history of tickets. The search can become sluggish, and sometimes it only shows a limited number of results (like just the first 1,000). This makes it hard to get the full picture or export large sets of data for reports. Even though Zendesk offers an Advanced Search app, reviews suggest it still has issues with being predictable and handling big exports.
How AI makes Zendesk search way better
Artificial intelligence brings a whole new level of power and smarts to helpdesk search. Instead of just matching keywords or needing complicated commands, AI can actually understand what you mean and the context of your question. This leads to results that are much more accurate and relevant.
AI-powered search can use techniques like semantic search. This means agents can just ask questions in plain language instead of needing specific keywords or operators. For example, an agent could ask, “Show me all tickets about refund requests from customers in California from last week,” and the AI can figure out what they want and find the right tickets, even if those exact words aren’t in the ticket text.
AI doesn’t just find tickets, either. It can help you get information in several ways:
- Summarizing helpful articles
- Picking out key details from conversations
- Pulling related data from other systems you use
This means agents spend way less time manually digging around for info and more time actually solving problems. AI helps turn search from just a simple lookup into a smart helper that brings the right information to you.
Another option: eesel AI for a better Zendesk search experience
Looking to tackle those limitations of native Zendesk search and get some deeper capabilities? eesel AI offers a strong alternative for boosting how you find information and manage tickets right within Zendesk. Unlike basic search tools or add-ons that might not do much, eesel AI is built to work smoothly with your current helpdesk setup and uses advanced AI to make things smarter.
Learns from more than just Zendesk
One big plus is that eesel AI can learn from a wide range of knowledge sources, not just your Zendesk help center. This includes:
- Old tickets
- Internal documents (like Google Docs or Confluence)
- PDFs
- External wikis
- Over 100 other integrations
Training on all this means the AI can find relevant info no matter where it lives, giving agents a much richer picture than search that’s stuck only inside Zendesk. This directly helps when you need to search for information outside of Zendesk that’s related to a customer’s question.
Automate more than just search
eesel AI also does more than just find information. It lets you use AI to take actions based on search results or what’s happening in a ticket. For instance, the AI Agent can help with smart ticket sorting, automatically sending tickets to the right place, adding tags, or deciding which ones are most urgent based on what the customer said and how they said it. This automates tasks agents used to have to do by hand after searching for and looking at a ticket. You can even set up custom actions using APIs to grab specific customer data from places like Shopify or do things like start a refund, all based on what the AI understands about the ticket.
Drafts replies and understands context
While Zendesk’s own search, and even some plugins, might struggle with complicated questions or finding the most relevant stuff, eesel AI’s advanced language models are designed to understand context really well. This means you get more accurate and useful results. The AI Assistant (we call it Copilot) can even suggest draft replies based on the ticket and the info it found. This directly helps support agents day-to-day by saving them time they used to spend searching and writing responses from scratch.
Test before going live
What’s more, eesel AI has solid testing features. You can test out responses and tweak how the AI behaves before you make it live. This is different from the limited testing you often get with built-in helpdesk AI, helping make sure your AI-powered search and automation work correctly right from the start.
Picking the right AI for better search
Choosing a third-party AI app to improve your Zendesk advanced search means thinking about a few things. You want to make sure it fits what your team needs and works smoothly with what you’re already doing.
Here are some key criteria to consider:
- Knowledge sources: Think about the kind of information your agents need to get to often. Can the AI solution learn from all the places you keep important data, including your internal documents, past tickets, and other platforms? How many sources it supports is a big deal for getting complete search results.
- Integration depth: Consider how deeply it connects. Does the AI just give you search results, or can it actually do things based on what it finds? Features like automatically adding tags, routing tickets, or triggering external actions can really make agents much more efficient, beyond just finding data.
- Ease of use and customization: Check how easy it is to use and change. Can your team set up and manage the AI without a ton of hassle? Is it simple to adjust the AI’s answers and behavior so it fits your team’s specific ways of working and your company’s voice? Being able to fine-tune the AI is key to making it truly effective.
- Pricing model: Look at how they charge you. Some solutions charge per agent, which can get expensive as your team grows. Others, like eesel AI, charge based on how many interactions you have. This can give you costs that are easier to predict and scale with how much you use it, not just how many people you have. Understanding the pricing model is important for planning your budget long-term.
Good things about using AI for search in Zendesk
Adding AI to your Zendesk advanced search brings real benefits that help both your support team and your customers.
Here are some of the key advantages:
- Faster ticket resolution: The quickest win is often faster ticket resolution. When agents can find the info they need quickly and accurately, they can reply to questions much faster.
- Increased agent productivity: AI-powered search also makes agents way more productive. Spending less time manually searching through tickets and documents means agents have more time to handle tricky issues or work on more valuable tasks. An AI Assistant feature, like eesel AI’s Copilot, can even draft replies, cutting down the time spent on each ticket even further.
- Better data utilization: Using your data better is another major plus. AI can connect information from different places that might otherwise be separate and make it searchable. This creates a more connected knowledge base that’s easy to get to just by asking natural questions.
- Improved customer satisfaction: Ultimately, all these improvements lead to happier customers. Faster, more accurate, and more personalized responses mean customers are more satisfied. When agents have the right information right away, they can give better support.
Wrapping it up
While Zendesk’s built-in search gets you started, its limits, especially with complex questions, finding relevant stuff, and handling lots of data, show why you might need something more advanced. Third-party AI apps offer a powerful way to fix these problems. They can turn your Zendesk advanced search into a smart tool that truly helps your support team.
By using AI, you can let people search using everyday language, get more relevant results, find information from all sorts of places beyond just your help center, and even automate tasks based on what the search finds. This means quicker solutions, agents getting more done, and a better experience for your customers.
Choosing the right AI solution means looking for deep connections, the ability to learn from lots of sources, flexibility to customize things, and a pricing model that makes sense. Tools like eesel AI are built to give you these advantages, working smoothly with Zendesk to provide smarter automation and better search without the complexity or unpredictable costs you might find elsewhere.
See the difference eesel AI can make. Start your free trial today (you don’t need a credit card) or book a demo to learn more about how we can help you provide smarter, more efficient customer support.
