Zendesk AI agents in email channels

If you work in customer support, you know the email queue is a beast that never sleeps. It's a constant stream of password resets, order status questions, and "how-to" inquiries that can easily bury your team. For years, the standard response was a generic auto-reply that basically said, "We got your email, now please wait." Not exactly a great customer experience, but it was something.

Zendesk has recently updated its platform to bring generative AI into the email channel, promising to move beyond simple article links and provide real, conversational answers. It’s definitely a step in the right direction, but does it actually solve the problem?

This guide will give you a straight-up overview of Zendesk AI agents for email. We’ll walk through what it is, how to get it running, what it costs, and, most importantly, the big limitations you need to know about before you decide to flip the switch.

What are Zendesk AI agents in email channels?

Think of this feature as the next generation of Zendesk's old "Answer Bot." Instead of just shooting over a list of help center articles that might be relevant, the new AI Agent actually reads the customer's email and uses generative AI to write a direct, conversational response.

The catch? It can only pull information from your public Zendesk Help Center articles. The idea is to give a complete, personalized response that answers the customer's question without making them dig through a long article. This is a huge improvement over the old way of doing things.

The good news is that this feature is now included in all Zendesk Suite and Support plans, so most people can access it without an immediate upgrade. The goal is simple: resolve repetitive questions instantly so your human agents can focus on the trickier stuff. It’s a solid first step, but as we’ll see, it’s just that, a first step.

How to set up Zendesk AI agents in email channels

Getting started with Zendesk's email AI is pretty straightforward, but it’s not quite a one-click setup. You'll need to go through a few key steps in the Zendesk Admin Center to get it right.

Step 1: Give your AI agent a persona

First up, you need to give your AI a little personality. This means hopping into the AI Agent settings to give it a name, an avatar, and define its tone of voice. You can decide if you want it to be formal, casual, or somewhere in between.

This is a nice touch because it helps keep your brand’s voice consistent, even in automated messages. It makes sure the AI's responses don't feel out of place compared to how your human agents talk to customers.

Step 2: Turn on the email and web form channels

Once you've set up the persona, you need to tell the AI where to work. On the AI Agent's configuration page, you can scroll down and pick the specific email addresses and web forms you want it to cover.

Flipping this switch is what activates the generative replies for any new tickets coming in from those sources. From that moment on, instead of the standard confirmation email, customers will get a generated response from your new AI agent.

Step 3: Deal with conflicting triggers

This is a small but really important step that’s easy to overlook. When you enable the email channels, Zendesk automatically creates a new set of triggers to manage the AI’s responses. It also sets up automations that will, for example, solve a ticket after a few days if the customer doesn't write back.

The thing is, you probably already have triggers that send a "we've received your request" email. If you don't turn off or change these existing triggers, your customers will get two emails: your old, generic notification and the new, AI-generated answer. That can be confusing and look unprofessional, so be sure to check your existing triggers and tweak them to play nicely with the new AI.

Core features and critical limitations

Zendesk's AI for email is certainly an upgrade from old-school auto-replies. But before you get too excited, it's important to understand what it can and can't do. The built-in features have some pretty big limitations that might prevent you from getting the end-to-end automation you're hoping for.

What Zendesk AI agents do well: Basic knowledge deflection

Let's give credit where it's due. If your company can answer most customer questions with information that lives only in your public Zendesk Help Center, the AI agent can be pretty useful. It’s great at handling common, low-effort Tier 1 questions by giving fast, direct answers instead of just links. For simple FAQs, this is a solid win.

Limitation 1: It's stuck inside your Zendesk help center

Here's the first major roadblock. The standard AI agent that comes with your Zendesk plan can only learn from one place: your Zendesk Help Center articles.

The problem is that for most companies, knowledge is scattered all over the place. You have internal Google Docs, detailed guides in Confluence, Notion pages, and, most importantly, thousands of past ticket conversations your team has already handled. If the answer isn't written down in a help center article, Zendesk's AI can't find it, which means it can't answer a huge range of customer questions.

An infographic showing how eesel AI connects to multiple knowledge sources, unlike the more limited Zendesk AI agents in email channels.

For comparison, a tool like eesel AI works differently. It connects to your existing Zendesk account but can pull knowledge from over 100 sources. It learns from your help center, but also from Confluence, Google Docs, and even your past ticket history, making sure it has access to all your team’s expertise.

Limitation 2: It can't take action or access outside data

This is another huge gap. Zendesk's AI agent can share information, but it can't actually do anything. It can't check an order status, process a refund, look up shipping details, or update a customer’s account. These are some of the most common and repetitive requests support teams deal with, and the AI is powerless to help.

These tasks require connecting to other systems like Shopify, Magento, or your internal databases. This kind of functionality is only available if you buy the much more expensive "AI Agents - Advanced" add-on, which puts real automation out of reach for most businesses.

This is where a dedicated AI platform can make a big difference. For instance, eesel AI includes customizable "AI Actions" out of the box. This lets your AI agent look up live order information from Shopify, update ticket fields in Zendesk, or escalate a conversation to the right team, all without forcing you into a pricey plan upgrade.

Limitation 3: Not much control or testing

With Zendesk's setup, once you turn the AI agent on, it's live. There's no built-in way to safely test how it will perform on your real tickets or to roll it out slowly to a small group of customers. You can't see how it would have answered last week's tickets before you let it start talking to today's customers.

This "all-or-nothing" approach can be a bit of a gamble. If the AI doesn't perform well, it directly affects your customer experience, and you won't know until the complaints start coming in.

A screenshot showing eesel AI's simulation mode, a feature missing from the standard Zendesk AI agents in email channels.

In contrast, eesel AI was built with this exact problem in mind. It has a simulation mode that lets you test your entire setup on thousands of your past tickets. You can see exactly how the AI would have responded, get solid data on potential resolution rates, and find gaps in your knowledge base, all before a single customer ever interacts with it. This lets you launch with confidence because you know what to expect.

Understanding the pricing

While the basic generative email feature is included in your plan, unlocking the kind of automation that actually saves your team time comes at a steep, and often unpredictable, cost.

Included features in Zendesk suite plans

As we've mentioned, the generative email replies are part of the "AI Agents - Essential" package and are included in the standard Zendesk Suite plans. This makes it easy to get started with basic deflection, but it's important to keep those limitations in mind.

Here's a quick look at the standard plans:

Source: Zendesk Pricing Page

The cost of better features and resolutions

To get past the limitations (like connecting to other tools, using custom actions, or building more complex conversation flows), you have to buy the "Advanced AI Agents" add-on. This isn't part of any standard plan and usually requires a chat with their sales team.

On top of the add-on cost, Zendesk's pricing is based on "automated resolutions" (ARs). Each plan comes with a small number of ARs per agent each month, but once you go over that, you pay for each resolution. These costs can be around $1.50 to $2.00 for every extra automated resolution. This model can lead to some surprisingly high bills, especially during busy months when you need automation the most.

A more transparent alternative: eesel AI pricing

If that sounds complicated and expensive, you're not wrong. That’s why eesel AI's pricing is designed to be clear, predictable, and easy to scale.

Key features that are locked behind Zendesk's pricey add-on, like training on past tickets and using AI Actions to connect to other tools, are available on eesel AI's Business plan. Most importantly, eesel's plans are based on a generous monthly pool of "AI interactions" (which is just a reply or an action) and have no per-resolution fees. You'll never get a surprise bill for successfully automating more conversations.

Source: eesel AI Pricing Page

When to use Zendesk AI agents in email channels vs. a dedicated solution

So, what's the verdict? Zendesk's built-in AI for email is a decent starting point for small teams with very simple support needs. If your entire knowledge base lives in your Zendesk Help Center and you just want to deflect basic FAQs, it can definitely provide some value.

However, for any team that needs to give comprehensive answers from multiple knowledge sources, perform actions like checking order statuses, and wants to test and launch automation with confidence, the built-in tool will quickly become a bottleneck. The limitations are pretty serious, and the cost to get around them is steep and unpredictable.

A dedicated AI platform like eesel AI offers a more powerful, flexible, and affordable path to real email automation. The best part is that you don't have to replace your help desk. It works with your Zendesk setup to make it a whole lot smarter, connecting all your knowledge and enabling your AI to resolve issues from start to finish.

Ready to see what that actually looks like? Try eesel AI for free and you can simulate its performance on your own past tickets in just a few minutes.