Using dynamic content in messaging triggers: A complete guide

We’ve all been there. You send a message to a company with an urgent problem, and a second later, you get a completely robotic auto-reply. "We've received your request and will get back to you soon." It’s not great, is it? These messages feel impersonal, they don't help, and they often make you feel like you’re just talking to a wall.

But what if automation could be smarter? What if it could be personal, genuinely helpful, and maybe even solve your problem right then and there? That’s the whole idea behind using dynamic content in messaging triggers. It’s how you can send personalized, relevant, and timely automated messages that actually help your customers.

In this guide, we'll walk through what dynamic content is and how it works with messaging triggers. We’ll take an honest look at how platforms like Zendesk handle it, point out the limitations of these older methods, and show you how modern AI can open up a much more intelligent and effective way to automate your support conversations.

The basics of using dynamic content in messaging triggers

Let's quickly break down these two concepts. They sound a bit technical, but they're pretty straightforward and work wonders when you put them together.

First up, messaging triggers are just automated rules that start an action when a certain thing happens. You can think of them as simple "if this, then that" instructions for your support system.

• For example: If a customer’s message has the word “refund,” then the system automatically tags the ticket as “Urgent - Refund Request.”

• Or: If a new ticket has been sitting unassigned for more than 10 minutes, then it sends a follow-up message to the customer.

Simple enough, right? Then you have dynamic content. This is the personalized info you drop into those automated messages. Instead of sending the exact same text to every single person, dynamic content pulls in specific details about that user or their particular situation.

When you combine the two, you get the magic of using dynamic content in messaging triggers. You can set up automated messages that are uniquely tailored to each customer, pulling in their name, language, order number, or even their support history. This one change turns a generic "we got your message" into a valuable, personal interaction that makes your customer feel like you're actually paying attention.

A closer look at using dynamic content in messaging triggers on Zendesk

To see how this works in the real world, let’s check out how a popular helpdesk, Zendesk, sets this up. While its features are a decent starting point, they also shine a light on the limitations of a traditional, non-AI approach.

How Zendesk enables using dynamic content in messaging triggers

Zendesk has a feature called "Dynamic Content," which is mainly designed to help with multilingual support. Admins can create reusable chunks of text, called "dynamic content items," that can be easily dropped into replies.

Each of these text blocks has a default version, usually in English, and then you can add multiple "variants" for other languages. Zendesk gives each one a unique placeholder, something like "{{dc.greeting_message}}". When you use this placeholder in an automation or a macro, Zendesk looks at the customer's language preference in their profile and automatically slots in the correct version. It’s a pretty slick way to manage support in different regions without creating tons of separate rules for each language.

How to start using dynamic content in messaging triggers with Zendesk

Setting it up is pretty straightforward. An admin just goes into the trigger settings, defines a condition like "When a ticket is created," and then chooses the "Send message to customer" action.

In the message box, they can type out a reply and pop in one of those dynamic content placeholders, like "{{dc.welcome_message}}". Now, when a new ticket is created, the trigger fires off, and the customer gets the welcome message in their preferred language (as long as you’ve created a variant for it). For basic localization, it works well.

A look inside Zendesk’s admin panel, where an admin is setting up the conditions for an automated messaging trigger.

Limitations of the native-only approach

While Zendesk’s system is handy for sending the same message in different languages, it doesn't quite get you to true, smart personalization. Here’s where you start to see the cracks.

Your knowledge is stuck in a silo. Zendesk's dynamic content can only pull from the text blocks you’ve manually typed into Zendesk. It has no idea what’s happening in your other tools. It can't grab real-time shipping updates from Shopify, look up an article in your Confluence knowledge base, or pull a troubleshooting guide from a Google Doc. All your useful information is trapped.

It's all manual and static. The content isn't really "dynamic" in the way we think of it today. It’s just a pre-written, fixed piece of text that gets swapped based on language. If your return policy changes, you have to remember to go in and manually update every single dynamic content item where it’s mentioned. The system can’t think for itself or create new content on the fly.

There's no learning involved. The system doesn't learn from past conversations or get smarter over time. It can’t see that your top agent just wrote a brilliant, clear response to a common problem and start using that information. Every bit of knowledge it uses has to be manually written and maintained by your team.

The workflows are rigid. The triggers are basically stuck inside Zendesk. You can’t create a trigger that checks a customer’s subscription status in your billing system and then decides which message to send. The automation is limited to what's available inside the helpdesk, which stops you from tackling more complex, real-world problems.

Using dynamic content in messaging triggers with AI: Beyond basic placeholders

This is where a modern AI platform really starts to shine. Instead of just slotting in pre-written text, an AI-powered system can generate genuinely dynamic responses because it understands your whole business and can access all of your knowledge.

Unify your knowledge for advanced messaging triggers

The big advantage of a platform like eesel AI is that it doesn’t just live in your helpdesk; it connects to all your knowledge, wherever it is. With just a few clicks, you can plug it into Zendesk, your Confluence wiki, Google Docs, your public help center, and even your entire history of past ticket conversations.

This means that when a trigger fires, the AI doesn't just grab a static bit of text. It pulls together information from every source it has and generates the most accurate, up-to-date, and helpful response possible. Even better, it automatically learns from your best agent replies, so its knowledge is constantly improving without you having to do a thing.

Create truly dynamic workflows

Here’s where it gets really interesting. An AI agent from eesel AI can do more than just send a pre-written message; it can perform custom actions. This means it can actually interact with your other business tools in real-time to solve problems.

Here are a few examples of what that could look like:

• E-commerce: A customer messages, "Where's my order?" Instead of a generic reply, the AI uses a custom action to look up their order in Shopify, sees that it’s marked "out for delivery," and then generates a personalized response that includes the live tracking link.

• SaaS: A user thinks they've found a bug. The AI can use an action to create a new ticket in Jira, link it to the support ticket, and then reply to the user letting them know the engineering team is on it and has all the details.

• Internal Support: An employee asks for the office Wi-Fi password in a Slack channel. The AI finds the answer in a secure Confluence page and replies directly in the chat with the password.

This kind of control lets you automate complex, multi-step tasks that are simply impossible to build with the standard messaging triggers found in most helpdesks.

This workflow diagram illustrates a ticket's journey when handled by an AI agent, from initial receipt to final resolution, showcasing the intelligence of AI-powered systems.

How to get started

The good news is that switching to a more powerful AI solution doesn’t have to be some massive, six-month project that needs a team of developers. Modern AI platforms are built to be incredibly easy to set up and use with confidence.

Simulate before you automate

One of the biggest worries with automation is the "what if." What if the AI gets it wrong and makes a customer angry? This is why eesel AI’s simulation mode is so valuable.

Before your AI agent ever talks to a real customer, you can test it on thousands of your own past tickets. The dashboard shows you exactly how it would have replied, what information it used to come up with the answer, and what your estimated automation rate would be. This risk-free approach lets you tweak the AI’s tone and knowledge until you’re completely comfortable with its performance. It’s a world away from the old "build it and pray it works" method of setting up triggers.

A simple, self-serve setup

You don't need to sit through a bunch of sales calls or hire someone to get started. With eesel AI, you can connect your helpdesk with a single click and have a working AI agent running in just a few minutes.

The platform is designed to be self-serve from the ground up, slotting right into your existing tools like Zendesk without making you switch platforms or completely change how you work. This makes it really easy to start small, prove the value of AI automation, and then scale up as your team gets more comfortable.

Using dynamic content in messaging triggers: From static rules to intelligent conversations

Using basic dynamic content for different languages is a nice first step, but it’s a solution from another time. The content is static, the knowledge is locked away, and the workflows are rigid for what customers expect today.

The future of automated support is AI that can actually understand context, access real-time information from all of your business tools, and take smart actions to solve problems. It’s about shifting away from sending pre-written messages and toward having intelligent, automated conversations.

eesel AI helps you make that shift. It’s a platform that brings all your knowledge together, gives you full control over your automation, and lets you roll out new workflows with confidence.

Ready to get started?

Stop letting rigid, static messages be the first thing your customers see. With eesel AI, you can build truly dynamic, intelligent workflows that solve issues faster and keep your customers happy.

Book a demo or start your free trial today to see how it works.