A practical guide to Zendesk conversational CRM

Let’s be honest, the modern customer journey is a bit of a mess. A customer might see your ad on Instagram, ask a question on your website chat, send a follow-up email, and then mention you on X (formerly Twitter) when something goes wrong. Each interaction is a piece of the puzzle, and the big idea behind modern customer support is to put all those pieces together into one clear picture.

This is where the concept of a "Conversational CRM" comes into play, a strategy Zendesk has been talking about a lot. It’s about moving away from treating every message as a separate ticket and instead creating one long, continuous conversation with a customer, no matter how they contact you.

But what does it actually take to bring this vision to life?

This guide will give you a straight-up look at what Zendesk conversational CRM is, what you get, how much it costs, and where you might run into some trouble. We’ll also cover how you can get that seamless conversational experience without having to completely overhaul your current workflow.

What is Zendesk conversational CRM?

First things first, Zendesk’s conversational CRM isn’t a single product you can just buy. It’s more of a philosophy baked into their platform. The goal is to ditch the old, transactional way of doing support (where every email starts a new ticket) and shift to an ongoing, omnichannel dialogue that feels more natural for the customer.

Think of it like a text thread with a friend. You can pick it up at any time, on any app, and the context of your last chat is right there. That’s the kind of easy, continuous experience Zendesk wants to create between companies and their customers.

This approach is meant to give support agents and sales reps the full backstory on every customer, using context from every touchpoint to make the next interaction better. Zendesk makes a pretty good case for it: happier customers, more efficient agents, and a service team that actually helps the business grow.

Key features of Zendesk conversational CRM

Zendesk builds its conversational approach on a few key pillars. They sound great in theory, but it’s worth knowing the practical challenges that can pop up with each one.

Omnichannel messaging

Zendesk pulls conversations from channels like your website, mobile app, and social media (like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger) into one place. This gives your agents a single screen with a customer’s entire history, which is a huge improvement over flipping between a dozen browser tabs.

A screenshot of the Zendesk agent workspace, showing how Zendesk conversational CRM unifies interactions from different channels into a single ticket view.:

But here’s the catch: while the agent’s view is unified, the AI powering it can be surprisingly disconnected. Zendesk’s native AI mostly learns from content within its own ecosystem, like your Zendesk Help Center articles. This means it often misses out on all the useful information hiding in other places.

Built-in AI and automation

Zendesk includes AI-powered bots as part of its Zendesk AI Agents feature. These bots are built to handle common questions, give customers instant answers, and send tickets to the right person automatically.

A screenshot of the Zendesk workflows builder, which is used to create automations for Zendesk conversational CRM.:

The tricky part is that these bots can be a bit… well, robotic. If you want to change their personality, tweak their logic, or have them do more complex tasks, you have to get your hands dirty in Zendesk’s workflow builder. It often doesn’t have the simple, plug-and-play feel you need to create custom actions without a lot of setup.

Analytics and reporting

Zendesk gives you dashboards to track metrics like conversation volume, agent performance, and customer satisfaction scores across your channels.

An example of the analytics dashboard in Zendesk, which provides reporting for Zendesk conversational CRM.:

The reports are good at showing you what happened, but they often leave you playing detective to figure out the why. For instance, trying to identify the exact gaps in your knowledge base that cause the same questions to come up again and again can still be a slow, manual process.

Where the Zendesk approach gets tricky

Making Zendesk’s vision a reality is about more than just flipping a switch. Here are some of the real-world hurdles that teams often run into.

The ‘all-in’ commitment and setup time

To really get the most out of Zendesk’s conversational tools, you generally have to go all-in on their ecosystem, which usually means signing up for their more expensive plans. Setting up advanced routing, building genuinely helpful bots, and creating custom workflows isn’t a quick job. It takes a lot of admin time and a deep understanding of the Zendesk platform.

This is a big difference from modern AI tools designed to be up and running fast. For example, platforms like eesel AI can connect to your helpdesk and be live in minutes, not months, because they work on top of the setup you already have.

The knowledge gap in your AI

And this is a big one: Zendesk’s AI is mainly trained on your Zendesk Help Center articles and macros. But what about all the know-how stuck in your team’s Google Docs, Confluence pages, Notion wikis, or even buried in the solutions of old tickets? That information gets left behind, leaving you with an AI that only knows a small part of what your top agents do.

A screenshot showing the Zendesk Help Center, the primary knowledge source for the native Zendesk conversational CRM AI.:

A truly smart system should be able to learn from all your knowledge sources. An AI like eesel AI connects to over 100 sources right away, including your past Zendesk tickets, so it can give complete answers from day one.

Rolling out automation without the stress

Putting a new bot in front of your customers is always a bit nerve-wracking, isn’t it? How do you know for sure that it will answer questions correctly and not just annoy people? Zendesk’s testing environment, the Sandbox, is usually only available on their pricey Enterprise plans. Even then, it’s more for testing general settings than seeing how an AI agent will actually perform with your real customer questions.

Thankfully, there’s a less stressful way to do this. With eesel AI’s simulation mode, you can test your AI agent on thousands of your past tickets. It shows you exactly how it would have replied, giving you a clear forecast of its performance and resolution rates before it ever talks to a single customer.

A look at Zendesk conversational CRM pricing

Getting all the conversational goodies from Zendesk isn’t as simple as picking one plan. To get the full experience, you’ll need to subscribe to one of their higher-tier Zendesk Suite plans.

Here’s a quick look at where the key features show up:

Feature / Plan	Suite Team ($55/agent/mo)	Suite Professional ($115/agent/mo)	Suite Enterprise ($169/agent/mo)
AI Agents	Essential (Basic)	Essential (Basic)	Essential (Basic)
Advanced AI	Add-on	Add-on	Add-on
Help Centers	1	Up to 5	Up to 300
Skills-Based Routing	No	Yes	Yes
Custom Reporting	No	Yes	Yes
Sandbox Environment	No	Add-on	Yes (Up to 2)
HIPAA Compliance	No	Yes	Yes

As you can see, important features like skills-based routing, custom reports, and a sandbox for testing don’t even appear until the Suite Professional plan, at $115 per agent, per month. And if you want more advanced AI, you have to pay extra for the "Advanced AI agents" add-on, making your total cost even harder to pin down.

This tiered, feature-gated approach can be frustrating. In contrast, eesel AI has transparent pricing where all the core features, like training on past tickets and simulation mode, are included in its business plan, with no surprise fees per resolution.

How to get true conversational support with Zendesk

The good news is you don’t have to leave Zendesk to get a top-tier conversational experience. You can supercharge the setup you already have with a smarter, more flexible AI layer that plugs right in.

Here’s a quick comparison of the native Zendesk approach versus adding eesel AI on top:

Capability	Zendesk Native AI	eesel AI on Zendesk
Setup Time	Days to weeks of configuration	Minutes
Knowledge Sources	Limited to Zendesk Help Center	Zendesk, Confluence, Google Docs, past tickets, and 100+ more
AI Customization	Rigid, workflow-based	Full control with a simple prompt editor and custom actions
Pre-launch Testing	Limited (Sandbox on Enterprise plan)	Powerful simulation mode on thousands of past tickets
Pricing Model	Gated features by plan + add-ons	Transparent, predictable plans. No per-resolution fees.

When you put it side-by-side, eesel AI offers a faster, smarter, and more budget-friendly way to achieve the goals of conversational CRM, all inside the Zendesk account you already know.

An eesel AI agent shown working within the Zendesk interface, demonstrating how to enhance Zendesk conversational CRM.:

Build on a smarter foundation

Look, Zendesk has the right idea with its conversational CRM framework. But getting the most out of it means looking beyond the walls of its own ecosystem.

Real conversational support comes down to having an AI that can access all of your company’s knowledge, can be fully customized to your brand’s voice, and can be launched without any risk or guesswork. The future of support isn’t about finding one giant platform that does everything okay; it’s about using the best tools for the job to create an amazing experience for your customers and your team.

Supercharge your Zendesk support today

If you’re using Zendesk and want to offer support that’s truly conversational, instant, and accurate, you don’t need to switch platforms. You just need a better AI engine.

eesel AI connects to your Zendesk account in one click, learns from all your scattered knowledge, and lets you automate support with complete control. Try it for free and see how your own AI agent performs on your real support tickets in just a few minutes.