Zendesk for customer service reviews: An honest look in 2025

If you've worked in customer service for more than a week, you've heard of Zendesk. It’s one of the biggest names in the game, and for a long time, it's been the default choice for countless companies. But let's be honest, the game is changing. With AI becoming smarter and teams needing to be more agile, does the old champion still hold up? Is it still the best tool for teams that can't afford a clunky, expensive setup?

We got curious and decided to dig in. This isn't a sales pitch; it's an honest look at Zendesk based on what real users are saying on places like Reddit, Trustpilot, and G2. We’ll explore its core features, AI tools, pricing, and the common headaches that teams seem to run into. And for anyone feeling a bit trapped by a platform that’s become too complex or pricey, we’ll also look at how you can add some modern AI muscle to your setup without going through a painful migration.

What is Zendesk?

At its heart, Zendesk is a cloud-based platform that aims to bring all your customer conversations into one place. Whether a customer reaches out via email, chat, phone, or social media, the idea is that it all lands in a single, manageable hub.

Their big selling point is being an all-in-one solution. You get a solid ticketing system, a customizable help center for customer self-service, and a bunch of reporting tools. It's built to work for everyone from a tiny startup to a massive enterprise.

This long history in the market makes it a go-to for many companies. But as we'll see from user feedback, being the legacy option comes with its own baggage, especially when you start talking about flexibility and modern AI.

A deep dive into Zendesk’s features

Zendesk is loaded with features, but how do they actually feel to use every day? Here’s a breakdown of its main tools, comparing what Zendesk promises with what users are actually experiencing.

The ticketing system: Powerful but sometimes rigid

The core of Zendesk is its omnichannel ticketing system. It’s designed to pull all customer chats and emails into a single view and comes with tools like automated ticket routing, macros for quick replies, and service level agreement (SLA) tracking to keep your team on target.

Here’s the deal, according to users:

It's a workhorse, no doubt about it. Many people give it credit for being able to organize and track a huge volume of tickets without breaking a sweat.

But there are some common frustrations.

A big complaint you’ll see on forums like Reddit is that long, complicated tickets can feel like a 'text message chain.' Imagine a single support case that stays open for weeks, with dozens of updates, screenshots, and internal notes. Trying to find a key piece of information in that format can be a nightmare.

Reddit

Another surprisingly common issue is that the built-in reporting on ticket types is pretty basic, forcing teams to spend a ton of time on customization just to get simple insights.

If you’re struggling with manually sorting and routing tickets, a smart integration can really change things. Instead of building a web of complicated rules, a tool like eesel AI can plug into your Zendesk and use AI Triage to automatically analyze, tag, and route incoming tickets. It learns from your team's past ticket history, so it figures out where new requests should go on its own.

Knowledge base and self-service

Zendesk provides the Help Center, a feature for building out a knowledge base with articles, FAQs, and forums. The goal is to let customers help themselves and reduce your team's workload.

Here’s what users are saying:

When it’s set up well, it's a great way to deflect those common, repetitive questions. Teams definitely appreciate having one central place to store all their help content.

The irony, as several reviews point out, is that the self-service search function can sometimes be more of a "barrier" than a help, often digging up irrelevant articles. This just leads to frustrated customers giving up and creating a ticket anyway, which defeats the whole point. The process of deciding what content to create can also feel like a total guessing game, disconnected from what customers are actually asking.

Instead of guessing what articles your customers need, a better approach is to let your actual support conversations guide your content. For example, eesel AI can analyze your resolved Zendesk tickets and automatically generate draft knowledge base articles based on the most successful solutions your agents have already provided. This way, your help center is always full of relevant, proven answers to real problems.

Customization and integrations: A double-edged sword

Zendesk has a massive Marketplace with over a thousand apps and an API for custom work. On paper, this means you can make it do pretty much anything.

Here's the reality for users:

The good part is that you can connect Zendesk to your other tools, and if you have the time and money, the sky's the limit.

The bad part is that this is a huge pain point for many. Users frequently complain that "basic tasks" and what they consider essential features require buying a third-party app. This leads to hidden costs and adds another layer of complexity. To really get the most out of Zendesk's customization, you often need a dedicated administrator who can work on it full-time, which just isn't an option for many small and medium-sized businesses.

This video provides an ultimate review of Zendesk for customer service, highlighting its features and what it can do for your business.

Evaluating Zendesk’s AI and automation capabilities

Zendesk is pushing its new AI features hard, but reviews from both admins and users suggest there’s a bit of a disconnect between the marketing hype and the day-to-day reality.

Zendesk’s native AI agents

Zendesk has its own AI Agents and Copilot, which are meant to automate answers to simple questions and help human agents write their responses.

Here’s what users are finding:

The experience for customers can be pretty rough.

One viral Reddit comment told the story of a company’s Zendesk bot that would either 'ghost' people mid-conversation or get stuck in a loop, asking the same question over and over without solving anything.

Reddit

For the teams on the other side, the AI can feel like a "black box." You don't get much say in how it behaves, what information it uses, or when it should just give up and pass the ticket to a human.

Good automation isn’t just about deflecting tickets; it's about resolving them correctly and giving you the peace of mind to actually trust the AI. This is where having control is so important. Unlike a rigid, built-in bot, eesel AI gives you a powerful simulation mode. It lets you test your entire AI setup on thousands of your own past tickets before it ever speaks to a customer. You can see exactly how it would have replied, get a real forecast of your resolution rate, and then roll it out slowly. You could start by just automating one simple ticket type and expand from there as you get more comfortable.

A screenshot from eesel AI showing the powerful simulation mode, a key feature in many Zendesk for customer service reviews.

The challenge of a siloed knowledge source

A massive blind spot for many native AI tools is that they only learn from the information stored inside their own platform. Zendesk's AI mostly pulls from your Zendesk help articles. But what about all the important stuff that lives somewhere else?

Let's be real, your company's collective brain isn't just in your helpdesk. Critical knowledge is often scattered across Confluence pages, Google Docs, Notion wikis, and internal Slack channels. eesel AI was designed to fix this. It connects to all your knowledge sources instantly, giving your AI the full picture so it can give complete answers that a siloed system never could. You can use it as an AI Agent in Zendesk for your customers or in Slack for your own team's internal questions.

An infographic from eesel AI showing how it connects to multiple knowledge sources, a topic often discussed in Zendesk for customer service reviews.

Zendesk pricing and the reality of customer support

For a lot of teams, the decision comes down to two things: budget and the quality of support they get when things go wrong. On these fronts, user reviews paint a very clear, and often frustrating, picture.

Breaking down Zendesk’s pricing plans

Zendesk uses a tiered pricing model, meaning you have to pay more to unlock more advanced features. Here’s a quick look at their standard "Suite" plans.

What users say: A common word that comes up on review sites is "extortionate." Many users feel the pricing gets out of hand very quickly. They complain about the high cost of add-ons and being pushed into an expensive enterprise plan just to get one or two features they really need. Others have mentioned aggressive renewal tactics and have found it nearly impossible to downgrade their plan if their team size shrinks.

Having predictable costs is a big deal. Many AI tools, including some of Zendesk's, use a per-resolution fee that can make your bill jump unexpectedly during a busy month. In contrast, eesel AI offers transparent, flat-rate pricing without any hidden fees. You know exactly what you’re paying each month and can start on a flexible monthly plan to prove its value before signing a long-term contract.

A screenshot of eesel AI's transparent pricing page, a welcome alternative for those who have read negative Zendesk for customer service reviews about pricing.

The irony: A customer service company with poor support

This might be the most frequent and damaging complaint you'll find on Trustpilot, Reddit, and G2. For a company that sells customer service software, its own support is known for being incredibly hard to get a hold of. Users describe painfully slow response times, generic copy-pasted answers, and no phone number or direct contact when something is urgently broken.

The verdict: Is Zendesk right for you?

So, after sifting through hundreds of reviews, what’s the final call? Zendesk is a powerful, feature-rich platform. It can absolutely be the right choice for a large company that has a dedicated administrator to manage it and a healthy budget to back it up. It has a long track record and is built to handle a ton of volume.

However, for teams that value flexibility, real control over their AI, predictable pricing, and a simple setup, Zendesk's complexity can be a killer. The constant need for customization, the high price tag on advanced features, and the dependency on third-party apps mean it's anything but a plug-and-play solution.

In 2025, ripping out your entire helpdesk and replacing it is a massive, risky project. A much smarter move is often to add to the systems you already have. A tool that integrates cleanly can give you the modern AI capabilities you need without the migration headaches.

Upgrade your Zendesk experience with controllable AI

eesel AI is built for teams that want powerful, modern AI without having to change their entire workflow. It plugs directly into your Zendesk account and can be up and running in minutes, not months.

You can connect all your scattered knowledge, confidently test your automation in a risk-free simulation, and give your team an AI copilot that actually makes their jobs easier. Stop fighting with a rigid system and see how a flexible AI layer can transform your support.

Start your free trial of eesel AI