Trying to manage customer support when your tools don’t play nice together can feel a bit like juggling. If you’re using both Zendesk and Freshdesk, you probably know the feeling: tickets scattered everywhere, customer history stuck in different places, and agents hopping between tabs just to figure out what’s going on. Both platforms are great on their own, but using them together often creates frustrating data silos and makes workflows a real headache.
AI is super promising for making support smoother, but how does that actually work when your support team is split across two big helpdesks like Zendesk and Freshdesk? Can AI really help bridge that gap and bring your workflows together? This guide will look at the challenges of this multi-platform setup and share a smart way to use AI effectively across both Zendesk and Freshdesk, making things easier for your team and your customers.
What are Zendesk and Freshdesk? (Quick Look)
Basically, Zendesk and Freshdesk are two of the top platforms for customer service out there. They both give you solid tools for handling customer chats, mostly through a ticketing system. Lots of businesses use one or the other, but sometimes companies end up using both. This can happen for a bunch of reasons, maybe after a merger, because different teams like different tools, or just because it’s tough to get rid of older systems. While they do similar main jobs, it’s good to remember they’re totally separate platforms made by different companies.
You can find tons of articles comparing them, like this one from Zendesk itself, Zendesk vs. Freshdesk: How to choose, or pieces from other places like Freshdesk vs. Zendesk: Which should you use? [2025] or Freshdesk vs Zendesk: A Comparison Guide for 2025.
Managing support across different platforms
Running customer support using separate Zendesk and Freshdesk setups brings a bunch of real-world problems that can really slow things down and bum out your agents. It’s more than just having two logins; it’s about how information and tasks are handled fundamentally. These are the main challenges support teams hit when they’re handling tickets across separate platforms like Zendesk and Freshdesk:
- Switching back and forth: Agents constantly flip between two different screens to see customer history, find info, or manage tickets. This makes it hard to focus, slows down replies, and makes it easier to miss important stuff.
- Data and knowledge stuck in silos: Customer info, past chats, and internal help articles are separate in each platform. An agent working in Zendesk might not easily see if that customer had a chat in Freshdesk, and vice-versa. This means they don’t have the full story, forcing them to ask customers to repeat themselves.
- Inconsistent workflows: Since Zendesk and Freshdesk have different ways of automating, tagging tickets, and sending issues up the chain, it’s super hard to make sure support processes are the same across the whole operation.
- More work for the agents: More manual steps, longer times spent on each ticket, and a higher chance of mistakes are direct results of using systems that aren’t connected. Agents spend more time navigating tools and less time fixing problems.
- Complicated reporting: Trying to pull data together and get a single picture of how support is doing across both platforms is tough. You often have to export data manually and mess with complicated spreadsheets.
How AI can really help multi-platform support
Bringing AI into customer support usually makes things way better, like speeding up replies, cutting down agent work, and making support more consistent. But when you’re dealing with a setup that uses multiple platforms like Zendesk and Freshdesk, AI’s ability to bring things together and make them run smoothly becomes even more powerful.
Ideally, AI could act like a bridge, giving you one place to get information that pulls from both platforms. It could automate tasks no matter which platform the ticket started in or lives in. This would mean agents get consistent help, whether they’re working in Zendesk or Freshdesk. AI specifically could make agents working with both Zendesk and Freshdesk much more efficient and productive by reducing that constant switching and making sure they have all the info they need, no matter where it’s stored.
Why native AI isn’t enough in a Zendesk and Freshdesk setups
Both Zendesk and Freshdesk have put a lot of effort into AI, offering their own AI features built right in. Zendesk has its standard Zendesk AI and a fancier, paid version called Zendesk Advanced AI. Freshdesk has its AI features powered by Freddy AI. These tools are designed to make support better within their own platform.
But here’s where you run into trouble when you’re using both. Native AI is pretty much built to work only within its own system. Can you technically connect Zendesk’s native AI features directly into Freshdesk? While Zendesk does offer specific, technical ways to integrate, like the one talked about in their help article, “Connecting your advanced AI agent to Freshdesk“, this usually just means pushing certain AI actions or data into Freshdesk. It doesn’t mean you can use the whole Zendesk AI package or get one seamless AI layer working inside Freshdesk for your agents. These kinds of direct integrations between native tools, even when possible for specific things, are often tricky and limited for most users.
Just relying on native AI in a mixed environment has some big downsides. You end up with AI knowledge stuck in silos; AI trained on Zendesk data won’t automatically know about Freshdesk data, and vice-versa. This leads to a different AI experience depending on which platform the agent or customer is using, with different abilities and behaviors. Plus, the cost can really add up. Paying for separate AI extras or features for both platforms can get very expensive, especially with the per-agent and potential per-resolution costs you see with tools like Zendesk Advanced AI, as we pointed out in our Zendesk AI pricing explained blog. So, while using native AI is one option for bringing some AI into your Zendesk and Freshdesk setup, it’s not the best way to truly bring them together.
A smarter solution for both platforms
Since native AI has limits in a multi-platform situation, you need a different kind of solution: a third-party AI tool made specifically to work across different platforms. This type of solution can help you get past the problems of AI stuck in silos.
eesel AI is built to connect with your current helpdesk systems, including both Zendesk and Freshdesk, to put a single AI layer on top of what you already have. This is one of the different ways you can use AI when you’re running both Zendesk and Freshdesk, and arguably the most effective for really unifying things.
How can third-party AI tools connect and work with both Zendesk and Freshdesk at the same time? eesel AI links up with platforms like Zendesk and Freshdesk using their APIs or other connection methods. These platforms become “Destinations” where the AI does its work, whether that’s automating tickets, helping agents, or talking to customers. At the same time, eesel AI connects to different places where you store knowledge, including data from Zendesk (like old tickets or help articles) and data from Freshdesk (like their knowledge base or ticket history), plus other sources like Google Docs, Confluence, or internal wikis. This builds a central AI brain that understands information from everywhere and can act in either place, giving the AI a single source of truth.
The good things about this unified approach are pretty big:
- Single source of truth for AI: The AI learns from data across all your connected platforms, not just one.
- Consistent AI behavior: The same AI rules, style, and abilities apply no matter which platform the ticket is in.
- Cost savings: Using one AI solution can often save you money compared to managing and paying for separate native add-ons, especially with https://eesel.ai‘s clear, pay-per-interaction pricing model, which avoids the per-agent fees you often see with native tools.
How eesel AI connects to Zendesk and Freshdesk
Getting eesel AI set up to work with both Zendesk and Freshdesk is designed to be pretty simple:
- You add Zendesk and Freshdesk as “Destinations” inside eesel AI’s platform, which tells the AI where it needs to operate.
- You also add your relevant Zendesk data and Freshdesk data (like past tickets or help articles) along with any other internal documents (Google Docs, Confluence, PDFs) as “Knowledge Sources” for training.
- This process creates a central AI brain that understands information from everywhere your support data lives and can then act within either your Zendesk or Freshdesk environment, giving you a single layer of intelligence.
You can find out more about connecting eesel AI with your platforms on our pages for Zendesk integration and Freshdesk integration.
Key AI features for using Zendesk and Freshdesk together
Using a single AI solution like eesel AI across both Zendesk and Freshdesk unlocks specific abilities that are super helpful for handling support in a mixed environment. These features directly fix the problems caused by having platforms that don’t share information:
- Finding knowledge from everywhere: An AI trained on data from both Zendesk and Freshdesk (and any other connected sources) can give much more complete answers. eesel AI’s AI Assistant (Copilot) feature, which you can use with a browser extension, helps agents find information fast, no matter if the right document or past ticket is saved in Zendesk or Freshdesk. This is a key AI feature that’s most useful when you’re using both Zendesk and Freshdesk because it breaks down those knowledge walls. The advantages of using one AI knowledge base that pulls info from both Zendesk and Freshdesk are clear: agents have all the background they need in one spot.
- Smartly sorting and sending tickets: AI can look at incoming tickets from either Zendesk or Freshdesk, adding the right tags, setting how important they are, or sending them to the correct agent or team based on one set of rules, no matter where the ticket came from.
- Automated replies and handling simple questions: The AI Agent can handle basic Tier 1 tickets using the combined knowledge base from both platforms. This stops simple questions from even reaching agents in either system, freeing them up to work on trickier issues.
- Doing things across platforms: eesel AI’s Custom API Actions let the AI perform tasks (like getting order details from Shopify) when a ticket comes in either Zendesk or Freshdesk, doing the action no matter where the ticket is.
The practical steps involve connecting your knowledge sources, connecting your destinations (Zendesk and Freshdesk), and then setting up how your AI should respond and act based on all that combined knowledge.
Picking an AI tool when you use different systems
When you’re handling support across multiple helpdesks like Zendesk and Freshdesk, choosing the right AI solution takes some thought. You can’t just grab a tool made for only one platform. Here are the main things you should think about when picking an AI tool to make support workflows better in a mixed environment using Zendesk and Freshdesk:
- Look at how well it can connect. Can the tool really link up with all the platforms you use – Zendesk, Freshdesk, where you keep your knowledge (wherever that is), and any internal tools you need it to talk to?
- Very importantly, does it give you unified knowledge? The AI should be able to build one single, searchable place for knowledge from different sources across both platforms.
- Think about how flexible and customizable it is. Can you change the AI’s behavior, how it talks, and its workflows to fit exactly what you need, or are you stuck with rigid options?
- The cost is a big deal. Is the pricing clear and easy to guess, especially as you get more tickets or agents? Be careful about per-agent or unpredictable per-resolution fees you often see with some native AI tools. A per-interaction model, like https://eesel.ai‘s, can be more predictable.
- Finally, consider how easy it is to set up and test. How fast can you get going, and can you test the AI thoroughly in a safe space before letting it handle real customer conversations?
eesel AI is built to tackle these points head-on, offering wide-ranging connections, training on knowledge from everywhere, flexible customization, and a clear pricing model. It’s a strong option compared to just relying on native AI when you’re using different systems.
Ready to make support smoother across Zendesk and Freshdesk?
Trying to manage customer support using separate Zendesk and Freshdesk systems pretty much guarantees you’ll have silos. This split makes things less efficient, frustrates agents, and means customers don’t always get the same experience. AI is a great way to make support smoother, but the AI tools built into each platform are usually made to work alone, not to connect things between them.
Having one AI layer that works across everything is the key to solving this problem. By connecting to both Zendesk and Freshdesk, a single AI solution can bring consistency, efficiency, and a better experience for both agents and customers, no matter which platform they are using. While native AI tools are out there, they’re often tied to one platform and don’t really solve the challenge of working across multiple systems effectively.
If you’re using both Zendesk and Freshdesk and want to bring your support together with smart AI automation that works across both platforms, check out eesel AI. It’s designed to connect easily with your current helpdesks and knowledge sources.
Book a demo or Start a free trial today to see how our app can add unified intelligence to your support setup that spans multiple platforms.
