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Generative email replies with AI Agent Essentials in Zendesk
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“The goal of any customer (or employee) service team is to make sure users get a correct answer to their question quickly.” Zendesk's platform is designed for this purpose. If customers email your team, submit a form, or contact you via social channels, the platform ensures that interactions are captured and routed to the right agent. This agent can either be human or AI-powered.
“Nobody likes waiting for a resolution and even though most people can understand that some questions take time to figure out and resolve, the reality is that most of those questions can be resolved with a bit of prewritten and reusable information.” Zendesk's platform is designed for this purpose. If customers email your team, submit a form, or contact you via social channels, the platform ensures that interactions are captured and routed to the right agent. This agent can either be human or AI-powered.
This article wouldn't exist if that hadn't changed. Announced last month and now available to all customers is the new generative replies for email, part of AI Agent Essential. It removes the old "email with links" and replaces it with personal responses to customer emails. These responses are based on your Help Center content and offer customers answers to their questions in a personal and custom tone. “Instead of the customer needing to read an article, they now get a response that explains how they can resolve their inquiry, right from the email.” If they do reply with additional feedback or requests, the ticket will arrive in your agents' inbox and they can take over this ticket. But for most single touch tickets, AI Agent Essential over email should suffice. Naturally, any knowledge gaps the system detect should be filled by your team over time to further improve its' efficiency.
Instead of the customer needing to read an article, they now get a response that explains how they can resolve their inquiry, right from the email. If the solution helps they can either ignore the email and move along with their life. This will trigger an automatic closure via automations, followed with a satisfaction survey. “Naturally, any knowledge gaps the system detect should be filled by your team over time to further improve its' efficiency.” 💡
And if it didn't, well, at least the agent didn't loose time sending those links, and maybe the customer might even reply with additional context on why the support article didn't resolve their inquiry. “This strategy works, but it does create a few issues. For one, the customer needs to do all the work.” Second, even though they get suggested solutions, the static format of those emails and the links to your help center make those emails feel like automations in response to their email, instead of personal answers to their inquiry. It's a small nuance, but if you read further in this article, you'll see what I mean.
This strategy works, but it does create a few issues. For one, the customer needs to do all the work. They need to read a few articles and look for the relevant section that answers their question. (As always, it's better to write 3 short on topic articles, than one longer article that handles all three). “Second, even though they get suggested solutions, the static format of those emails and the links to your help center make those emails feel like automations in response to their email, instead of personal answers to their inquiry.” And thirdly, Answer Bot replied based on semantic search and replied with articles that contain some version of the keywords used in the customers' email. So your success rate highly depends on how good the customer phrased their email.
Secondly, and this is a nitpick, but Zendesk sends out the AI Agent response immediately. Sending a support email and getting a 2 paragraph response from a bot in seconds is actually a weird experience for customers. Delaying that reply with a few minutes, like we can with AI Agents Advanced, actually creates the illusion of work and effort, and I've seen and heard from customers that their users trust the answers more if they were sent with a small delay. “Getting an email titled "we received your request" that then contains an actual solution to your question is a bit weird.” Making the experience even better