How to use Zendesk Explore recipes to measure Answer Bot resolutions

So, you’ve got Zendesk’s AI agent (the tool formerly known as Answer Bot) up and running. You're hoping it will handle some of the more common questions and give your support team a bit of breathing room. That’s a smart, strategic move.

But now for the real question: how is it performing? How many tickets is it really resolving on its own? Understanding how customers find the article suggestions helps you know if your investment is paying off and how to fine-tune your self-service strategy.

Lots of folks head straight to Zendesk Explore to build custom reports. While navigating comprehensive datasets and metrics takes a little practice, it's a powerful way to unlock insights. This guide is here to help. We'll walk through a practical way to use Zendesk Explore recipes to measure Answer Bot resolutions. We’ll also cover some key considerations to keep in mind and show you a complementary path to getting even more granular insights.

What you’ll need to get started

Before we jump in, let’s make sure you have everything lined up. Zendesk provides various tiers to match different team sizes and reporting needs.

• A Zendesk Suite plan: You'll need to be on a Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus plan.

• Zendesk Explore: Make sure you have access to Explore Professional or Enterprise, as this is where the advanced custom report building happens.

• The right permissions: You’ll need to be an Editor or Admin in your Zendesk account to create and manage Explore reports.

• An active AI agent: This might seem obvious, but your Zendesk AI agent needs to be enabled and actively offering up articles to your customers.

A step-by-step guide to measuring Answer Bot resolutions

Zendesk offers a few "recipes" to get you started, and one of the most useful is the resolution funnel report. It’s designed to show you the whole journey: how many times an article was suggested, offered, clicked, and finally, led to a ticket being solved.

Here’s how to put it together, one step at a time.

Step 1: Create a new report in Explore

First things first, you have to get into Explore and pick the right dataset. This part is important because it ensures you have access to the specific bot data you need.

1. From your main Zendesk dashboard, find and click on the Explore section (it's the little graph icon).

2. In the Reports library, hit New report.

3. You'll see a "Choose a dataset" page. Find and select Answer Bot > Answer Bot - Article Recommendations, then click Start report.

Step 2: Add your key metrics

Okay, now we'll add the numbers that will build the stages of our funnel. We want to see the whole story, from the first attempt to the final resolution.

1. Look for the Metrics panel on the right and click Add.

2. From the list that pops up, you’ll want to find and select these four metrics under the Answer Bot answers section:

   • Attempts: This counts every time the bot had a chance to suggest an article.
   • Answers: This is when the bot actually found and offered at least one article.
   • Clicks: This tells you a customer clicked on one of the articles the bot suggested.
   • Resolutions: This is the big one-it's when a customer marked their ticket as solved after clicking a suggestion.

3. Click Apply.

Step 3: Visualize the data as a funnel

A list of numbers is helpful, but a visualization tells a clearer story. Let’s switch it to a funnel chart so we can see the customer journey.

1. Click the Visualization type icon on the right-hand menu.

2. Select Funnel.

3. Next, click the Chart configuration icon (it looks like a little paint palette) and go to the Chart tab.

4. Change the Computation method to Percent of the first element. This setting shows each stage as a percentage of the total "Attempts," which makes it easy to see your conversion rates at a glance.

And there you have it. You've built a robust funnel report that shows how well your Answer Bot is turning questions into solved tickets. You can use filters (like "Answer created - Date") to see how things look over different weeks or months in 2026.

Considerations when using Zendesk Explore recipes

While that recipe gives you a strong starting point, Zendesk is a mature, enterprise-grade platform with deep capabilities that reward careful setup. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you scale your reporting:

• It offers extensive customization. Building and tweaking these custom reports allows for extreme precision, though it does require a bit of dedicated time. The fact that Zendesk has published dozens of official Explore recipes is a testament to how flexible and powerful their reporting ecosystem really is.

• Data is organized into specialized datasets. Zendesk organizes bot analytics into specific buckets, like "Article Recommendations" and "Flow Builder." This structure ensures you have access to detailed metrics for each specific feature, though you may want to view them side-by-side to see the full picture.

• Understanding resolution criteria. The default reports typically track a resolution when a customer clicks an article and then marks their ticket as solved. This provides a concrete, verified success metric, though it may not account for customers who find their answer and simply close the tab.

• Focusing on actionable insights. The funnel chart is perfect for showing the "what." To find the "why"-such as which specific topics might need more content-you can use the data provided by Explore as a foundation for your content strategy.

Zendesk's native tools provide an impressive breadth of data, making it the industry standard for support reporting.

A complementary way to measure Answer Bot resolutions

Instead of spending all your time on manual configuration, you can plug specialized AI platforms directly into your Zendesk ecosystem to enhance your workflow. This is where a tool like eesel AI works beautifully. It seamlessly integrates with Zendesk and provides automated, complementary reporting that builds on top of your native Zendesk data.

Finally see your real resolution rate

eesel AI works within the Zendesk ecosystem to help you understand the context of a conversation even more deeply. It learns from your past tickets and macros, and can even connect to other knowledge sources you use, like Confluence or Google Docs.

The analytics dashboard offers a helpful, simplified view alongside your Zendesk reports:

• Automated resolution rate: See the percentage of interactions handled completely by the AI, working in tandem with your Zendesk setup.

• Cost savings: A straightforward calculation that helps demonstrate the ROI of your Zendesk and AI investment.

• Knowledge gaps: The AI helps highlight questions it couldn't fully answer, providing a helpful guide for what content to add to your Zendesk knowledge base.

Test your setup before it goes live

One of the best ways to ensure success with AI in 2026 is through simulation. eesel AI's simulation mode lets you test your AI on historical Zendesk tickets before it starts interacting with customers. It provides a helpful forecast of your potential resolution rate and shows how the AI would have answered real questions. This adds an extra layer of confidence to your Zendesk rollout.

Pro tips for measuring Answer Bot resolutions

Whether you focus on native tools or bring in a complementary platform like eesel AI, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Prioritize resolution and satisfaction. While "deflection" is a common term, focus on the actual resolution rate and customer satisfaction (CSAT) within Zendesk. This ensures your AI agent is truly serving your customers' needs.

• Treat unanswered questions as opportunities. When your AI doesn't have an answer, it’s a direct signal of what your customers need. Use these insights as a roadmap to improve your Zendesk knowledge base.

• Start small, then build. Zendesk's scalability is one of its greatest strengths. Use a tool that lets you roll out automation to specific channels or ticket types first, then expand as you refine your strategy and content.

Get the answers you need from Zendesk Explore

Monitoring your support AI's performance is essential for a successful CX strategy. While Zendesk Explore recipes provide the mature, robust data needed for deep analysis, integrating complementary tools can help you unlock those insights even faster.

By leveraging a platform built to enhance your workflow, like eesel AI for Zendesk, you can gain additional context that helps you lower costs and provide a world-class customer experience.

Curious about your potential resolution rate? Sign up for eesel AI and run a free simulation on your Zendesk tickets in minutes.

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