A step-by-step guide: How to use Zendesk automate ticket tags with intent detection models

If you’re in customer support, you know the drill. A new ticket comes in. Someone has to read it, figure out what the customer wants, and slap the right tags on it before it can even get to the right agent. It’s slow, a little mind-numbing, and a perfect recipe for human error. And all that time spent triaging is time a customer is left waiting.

The good news is, you can get this entire task off your team's plate. Using intent detection, AI can automatically read incoming tickets and understand why a customer is reaching out. It can tell the difference between a refund request, a technical bug, or a billing question, and then apply the correct tags in a split second. This means tickets get routed to the right people faster and urgent issues get the attention they need.

In this guide, we'll look at two ways to set this up. First, we'll go through Zendesk's built-in "Intelligent Triage." Then, I'll show you a more powerful and flexible way to do it using a seamless eesel AI integration.

What you'll need to get started

Before we dive in, let’s quickly cover what you need for each option. Right off the bat, you'll see a pretty big difference in accessibility and cost.

For Zendesk's native Intelligent Triage:

• A Zendesk Suite Professional plan or higher.

• The paid "Advanced AI" add-on, which costs extra on top of your plan.

• A solid amount of historical data. Zendesk recommends having at least 1,000 tickets from the last six months for its model to learn from.

• Your business needs to fall into one of Zendesk's supported industries, like e-commerce, software, or travel.

For the eesel AI method:

• Any Zendesk plan.

• An eesel AI account, which you can set up yourself in just a few minutes.

Native method: Setting up "Intelligent Triage"

Zendesk’s own feature for this is called Intelligent Triage. It uses an AI model to guess a ticket's intent, sentiment, and language. Once you enable it, the tool adds tags and populates custom fields on new tickets with things like "intent__refund_request" or "sentiment__negative".

Here’s a quick overview of how to get it going.

1. Switch on Intelligent Triage: First, you’ll have to navigate to the Admin Center. From there, find the AI section and select Intelligent Triage. This is where you’ll manage all the settings for intent, sentiment, and language detection.

2. Choose your settings: After it's enabled, you get to decide which channels you want the AI to look at. You can turn it on for email, your web form, API tickets, and a few others. It gives you some control over where the automation is active.

3. Make your own intents (if you need to): Zendesk provides a list of pre-built intents based on your industry. If those don't quite cover what you do, you can create custom intents. For example, if you constantly get questions about "Defective Products," you can create a specific intent for that by giving it a name and a description.

4. Build your triggers: The AI itself doesn't actually route anything, it just adds the tags. It's on you to make those tags do something useful. You’ll need to go into your Zendesk triggers and create rules based on the AI's output. For instance, you could set up a trigger that says, "If the Intent field is 'Refund Request', then assign the ticket to the 'Billing Team' group."

A screenshot showing how to build triggers in Zendesk based on the AI's output.

While this is definitely a step up from doing everything by hand, it does have some pretty big drawbacks:

• It’s pricey and not for everyone: The biggest hurdle is the cost. Intelligent Triage is only available on Zendesk's more expensive plans, and even then, you have to pay extra for the Advanced AI add-on. That puts it out of reach for a lot of teams.

• You can't customize much: Sure, you can create custom intents, but you're still playing in Zendesk's sandbox. You don't get much say over how the AI thinks, its personality, or what it can do beyond what a normal trigger allows.

• The AI only knows Zendesk: The model is only trained on what's inside your Zendesk account. It has zero clue about the super important info your team might have in Confluence, Google Docs, or even in old Slack threads. This knowledge gap can lead to less accurate or overly generic tagging.

A better way: Use eesel AI to automate ticket tagging

Zendesk's native tool is a start, but for teams that need really accurate, highly customized workflows, it can feel a bit limited. An integration like eesel AI for Zendesk is built to get around these roadblocks. Best of all, you can get it up and running in a few minutes.

Here’s how you can build a smarter automation workflow.

Connect your knowledge sources

The accuracy of any AI really boils down to its training data. Zendesk's AI is stuck looking at just one source, but eesel AI can connect to all of your company knowledge, no matter where it lives.

First, you connect your Zendesk account with a single click. Right away, eesel AI starts learning from your past tickets, macros, and help center articles. This helps it pick up on your brand voice, common customer issues, and what a good resolution looks like.

But you don't have to stop there. You can easily connect dozens of other apps. Link your team’s wikis in Confluence or Notion, pull in guides from Google Docs and PDFs, or even connect it to Slack. When you give the AI a full picture of your business, you get much more accurate and context-aware intent detection than any tool stuck in a silo can offer.

An infographic demonstrating how eesel AI connects to multiple knowledge sources.

Instruct your AI agent

With all your knowledge connected, you're ready to build an automation workflow that’s actually tailored to your team. This is where eesel AI really starts to shine.

Instead of being limited to predefined categories, you use a simple prompt editor to give your AI agent specific instructions. You can define its persona, tone, and the exact steps you want it to take. For instance, you could give it a simple instruction like: "When a customer mentions a 'broken item,' tag the ticket as 'Damaged_Product' and assign it to the 'Replacements' team."

But the real magic is in the custom AI Actions. Your AI agent can do a lot more than just add a tag. It can:

• Update any ticket field: Automatically change the priority, set the status, or update any other custom field you rely on.

• Escalate intelligently: Send complicated issues directly to a senior agent or a specialized team without anyone having to touch it.

• Look up info from other apps: Imagine a customer asks about their order status. Your AI agent can ping your Shopify database in real time, grab the information, and use it to tag or even reply to the ticket.

You just can't get this level of control with the rigid, trigger-based systems found in most help desks.

A view of the eesel AI workflow screen for customizing AI actions.

Test and deploy your automation

Flipping the switch on a new automation can be nerve-wracking. What if it gets things wrong and makes a mess of your queue? eesel AI gets rid of that guesswork with its simulation mode.

Before the AI touches a single live ticket, you can test it on hundreds or thousands of your past tickets in a safe sandbox. The simulation report shows you exactly how the AI would have tagged, routed, and responded to each one.

The eesel AI simulation mode for safely testing automations.

You can review its work, see the potential automation rate, and spot any areas where your instructions or knowledge sources might need a quick adjustment. This lets you fine-tune everything with real data, so you can be completely confident before you go live.

When you're ready, you can roll it out slowly. Start by letting the AI handle just one or two simple ticket types, like "Password Resets," and have it send everything else to your human agents. As you see the results and get more comfortable, you can gradually let it handle more. This risk-free approach gives you a level of control that most built-in tools just don't have.

Tips and mistakes to avoid

As you get started with automating ticket tagging, keep these things in mind to make sure you get the best results.

Mistake 1: Getting stuck on keywords

A common trap is to create simple rules that just scan for keywords like "refund" or "cancel." The problem is, customers rarely use the exact words you expect. They might say, "I want my money back," or "This isn't what I ordered." A proper intent detection model understands the meaning behind the words and knows these phrases are all about the same thing. That's the core advantage of using a modern system like eesel AI over older, rule-based setups.

Mistake 2: Launching without testing

Please, don't turn on an automation system without testing it first. A poorly configured AI can easily send tickets to the wrong place, give customers incorrect info, and create a bigger headache for your team. Always use a simulation feature to check how your setup performs against your own historical data. It lets you iron out the wrinkles before a customer ever sees it.

The bottom line: Take back control with automated tagging

Automating ticket tags with intent detection isn't just a "nice-to-have" anymore, it's essential for any support team that wants to be fast and efficient. While Zendesk’s native Intelligent Triage is one option, it has some real limits when it comes to cost, flexibility, and the knowledge it can access.

For teams that want fine-grained control, high accuracy, and a safe way to roll out automation, a dedicated solution is the way to go. By connecting all your knowledge sources and giving you a powerful workflow builder, eesel AI lets you create a truly smart triage system. It saves time, reduces agent burnout, and frees up your team to focus on what they do best: solving tough customer problems.

Ready to put the manual work behind you? Start your free eesel AI trial and see how you can automate your Zendesk ticket tagging in a matter of minutes.