Now that you’ve had an overview of the (kinda complicated) landscape, let’s get into the nitty gritty of each of these features. 

You’ve probably seen a bunch of terms agents, copilots, macros, triage, and suggestions all thrown into one big marketing scheme. But here’s what’s actually included under Zendesk AI right now.

This chapter is your working list. These are the tools Zendesk is calling “AI,” what each one actually does, and where they show up in your workflow. We’re not talking about pricing or plans here just the features themselves and how they’re supposed to help your team.

Here’s what Zendesk AI includes right now, what it’s built to handle, how it shows up in your workflow, and what kind of work it’s good for.

AI copilot

AI copilot supports your agents directly during live conversations. It doesn’t speak to customers,  it helps human agents by drafting replies, suggesting help center articles, pulling up macros, and recommending common workflows. Basically, it cuts down on tab-switching and lets agents move faster, especially when handling high volumes of tickets.

Intelligent triage

Intelligent triage handles tickets before they hit the queue. It reads the incoming message, figures out what the ticket is about, detects the tone or urgency, and applies tags so it can go to the right person or team. It helps organize everything upfront, especially when your volume’s too high for manual sorting to keep up.

Article recommendations

Article recommendations help both customers and agents find the right content, fast. If someone starts a chat, Zendesk can show help articles that might solve the issue before a ticket even gets created. Agents can also get suggestions mid-reply, so they don’t need to dig through the help center. This feature only really works if your content is solid but when it is, it’s a huge time-saver.

Auto-replies and smart macros

Auto-replies and smart macros take Zendesk’s classic macro system and add automation. Instead of manually applying a macro, Zendesk can suggest one or send it automatically based on what the customer said. You can also layer in conditions, tags, and custom logic. When used right, this can dramatically reduce response time for high-frequency questions.

Each of these tools solves a very specific kind of problem and they work even better when combined. Think of triage + macros to pre-sort and respond, or copilot + article suggestions to speed up agent replies without sacrificing accuracy.