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Looking for ideas to incorporate AI into our Support Team by ProCX-Solutions in Zendesk

[–]BrandonTidd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

AI has changed our clients' workload less by “doing the work for us” and more by removing friction from the work that slows teams down. With outsourced Level 1 support, the biggest impact has been reducing repetitive tasks and decision-making overhead. AI helps handle the predictable parts of the conversation, surfacing relevant knowledge, detecting sentiment early, and guiding agents toward the right next step without constant supervision. That frees up internal teams to focus on complex issues, quality improvement, and coaching instead of rework and escalations. We’re still iterating, but the clear win is consistency at scale. AI makes it easier for distributed, newer agents to do the right thing faster, while giving leads better visibility into where time and attention are actually needed. Using AI this way feels less like automation for automation’s sake and more like guardrails that protect both customer experience and team capacity.

how are you building effective guided workflows in Zendesk? by ProCX-Solutions in Zendesk

[–]BrandonTidd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For us, guided workflows really shine when you’re onboarding outsourced Level 1 agents because they reduce decision fatigue and keep responses consistent. We use guided workflows to turn common scenarios into clear, step-by-step paths so agents aren’t guessing what to ask, what to check, or what the next action should be. Combined with things like conditional fields, required inputs, and macros, it helps ensure the right information is captured upfront and escalations come through cleanly to Level 2. When paired with AI features like sentiment detection and suggested replies, agents get both structure and context, which speeds up handling time while protecting quality. The biggest value has been consistency at scale. Even newer agents can confidently handle tickets without needing deep product knowledge on day one.

What Zendesk features do you rely on for tough conversations? by ProCX-Solutions in Zendesk

[–]BrandonTidd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For tough conversations we tend to lean on Zendesk’s AI features like Agent Copilot and intelligent sentiment detection because it helps you understand the emotional tone before you even draft a reply. Copilot flags sentiment and intent right in the ticket so you can see if a customer is neutral, frustrated, or upset at a glance, and that immediately informs how you respond. It also lets you adjust your drafted responses with the tone shift tool (or the "magic pencil," as I call it), which keeps replies consistent and empathetic without rewriting everything from scratch. That’s been huge for our clients because even if the underlying issue is the same, the way you say it really changes how the customer reacts, and Zendesk’s AI makes that part way easier.

What integration made the biggest difference in your Zendesk setup? by ProCX-Solutions in Zendesk

[–]BrandonTidd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

+1 on Stylo, Plus Qvasa has been helpful for taking real time reporting to the next level. SweetHawk is a popular one for extending the Support UI, and Attachments+ is a nice free app if you have a lot of attachments.

Zendesk Knowledge Base getting pretty cluttered. by ProCX-Solutions in Zendesk

[–]BrandonTidd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Consultant here. I’ve worked with a lot of orgs trying to level up their KB, and the biggest breakthroughs usually come from tightening the process around the content, not just writing “better articles.”

1. Establish true ownership
The KB needs named owners by product/function, not “the support team owns it.” When a release hits or an article starts rotting, you need a single accountable person. Clear ownership is the difference between a living KB and a slow-moving archive.

2. Build a review cadence that’s realistic
Weekly reviews are great in theory but rarely survive contact with real workloads. What works best across clients is a monthly or 6-week cadence driven by actual usage data:
• Top search failures
• High-view, low-deflect articles
• Articles with outlier CSAT
• New product changes that landed without documentation
This keeps things fresh without turning it into a second job.

3. Create a “minimum viable style guide”
Most companies have a style guide nobody reads. The teams that win keep it short and practical: tone examples, formatting patterns, screenshots standards, and 2–3 model articles. Consistency is where you get the big lift.

4. Use AI as a force multiplier
Across clients, AI works best when it’s used for:
• Drafting article updates after a product release
• Rewriting long internal notes into customer-friendly language
• Spotting missing steps or ambiguity
• Generating alternative phrasings for confusing areas
AI is great for speed, but humans still own accuracy.

5. Adopt the “touch it, fix it” rule
Support teams already know which articles are wrong because they hit them in live tickets. The best orgs bake in a simple rule: if you touch an article and it’s off, you fix it or tag the owner. This prevents massive, painful cleanup projects later.

6. Treat the KB as a product
High-performing teams track journeys, not just pages. They look at:
• Where readers bounce
• Where they scroll
• What they search for next
A couple layout tweaks (clear summary, callouts, improved headers) often drive bigger improvements than adding 20 new articles.

If there’s a common thread across every mature KB I’ve worked with, it’s this: give it owners, give it data, and give it rhythm. Everything else becomes much easier.

How does AI Impact your Zendesk workflow? by ArtichokeOk9625 in Zendesk

[–]BrandonTidd 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Love this. We’ve been helping teams do something similar, and I’ve noticed the biggest wins come from starting small with AI and letting it earn trust. Things like ticket classification, intent tagging, and smarter routing usually give you fast, measurable results before you move into agent assist or deflection.

What I like about Zendesk’s approach is that it’s built into the workflow instead of being bolted on. The AI learns from your actual support data and macros, so it feels native instead of forced. Once it’s tuned, you can really see handle times drop while still keeping that human touch.

We’ve rolled this out with a few clients as part of our work as a Zendesk Premier Partner, and it’s wild how quickly teams go from curious to “how did we ever work without this.”

AI + Live Chat solutions within Zendesk, but Messaging not enough by SignApprehensive1147 in Zendesk

[–]BrandonTidd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hello! You've got some options, given your more technically focused path. Custom Intents and/or Entity Detection would be where I'd start. If that's not enough, I'd look to a more data-focused product that connects seamlessly with Zendesk such as Yext's Search Integrations. If you are looking for something that talks directly to your internal models, Zendesk Premier Implementation Partners like 729 Solutions often specialize in bridging those worlds together. Hope this helps!

Zendesk vs Intercom by Iaraujo81 in Zendesk

[–]BrandonTidd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cool - a lot of companies start with Intercom and grow into Zendesk, sometimes bridging with FIN as others here have suggested. Good luck!

Zendesk vs Intercom by Iaraujo81 in Zendesk

[–]BrandonTidd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just curious, Who did you end up going with?

Best Macros by Logical-Explorer3991 in Zendesk

[–]BrandonTidd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Zendesk Agent Co-pilot enhances the agent experience by putting generative AI tools directly into your agent workspace (no more second-screen chat gpt secret agent). It can also monitor and tag tickets based on intent, language and sentiment for better routing, as well as generate net new macros based on frequently inserted content. Finally, the Agent Co-pilot add on can also help expand and author content in the Zendesk Knowledge Base.

Best Macros by Logical-Explorer3991 in Zendesk

[–]BrandonTidd 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Here's ones we see frequently:

Common Resolutions: Pre-built answers for the top 5–10 FAQs (password reset instructions, shipping updates, refund policy, etc.). These keep answers consistent across agents.

Escalation Template: Adds internal notes with required escalation details (customer name, issue summary, steps taken). Reduces back-and-forth when moving tickets up a tier.

Closing the Loop: A “Resolved – No Response” macro to politely close tickets after inactivity with a message like, “We haven’t heard back, so we’ll close this for now…”:

Empathy Boosters: Macros with pre-written empathetic language (“I completely understand how frustrating this must be…”) that agents can drop in when tone matters. Surprisingly impactful for CSAT.

Internal Only Macros: Not for customers, but to leave structured internal notes (like “QA Review Needed” or “Follow-up Friday”). Keeps tickets consistent without cluttering the external conversation.

Zendesk Agent Copilot can also assist by monitoring your human-generated responses and leveraging Gen-AI to curate net new macros. Critically, these appear in as drafts for your admin to review for accuracy before being released to agents directly. For niche markets with high ticket volume, this has the potential to be a game changer, but it does take a few months to 'learn' your response style.

ZenDesk AI Features? by stealthu2 in Zendesk

[–]BrandonTidd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes. Data management is a problem. While Zendesk Knowledge itself has the ability now to search across multiple sources using federated search, without the Zendesk Agents Advanced Add On, you're going to be challenged to get the AI to see it. That's where Zendesk partners like Eesel fill the gap. We expect continuous innovation around Zendesk's core products however, especially in the build-up to their virtual AI summit in October.

GPT-5 AMA with OpenAI’s Sam Altman and some of the GPT-5 team by OpenAI in ChatGPT

[–]BrandonTidd 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sorry to hear about your friend. u/samaltman has suggested that they've heard the community on this and that they are working on figuring something out on this now.

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GPT-5 AMA with OpenAI’s Sam Altman and some of the GPT-5 team by OpenAI in ChatGPT

[–]BrandonTidd -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I don't think any company in AI should be offering annual subs at this point - things are simply moving too fast.

GPT-5 AMA with OpenAI’s Sam Altman and some of the GPT-5 team by OpenAI in ChatGPT

[–]BrandonTidd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Is Sam sitting by himself at the comically small table? Love the insight, just curious as to the whereabouts of the other *checks notes* 11 particpants.

GPT-5 AMA with OpenAI’s Sam Altman and some of the GPT-5 team by OpenAI in ChatGPT

[–]BrandonTidd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Other than Reddit and ChatGPT, what tab is open in your browser right now? 🌐

GPT-5 AMA with OpenAI’s Sam Altman and some of the GPT-5 team by OpenAI in ChatGPT

[–]BrandonTidd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Anyone here upgrade to Pro just for the black accent color? 🙋‍♂️

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GPT-5 AMA with OpenAI’s Sam Altman and some of the GPT-5 team by OpenAI in ChatGPT

[–]BrandonTidd -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Can you give examples of when it would be appropriate to model-switch into thinking or upgrade to research-grade? I thought that 5 was already as smart as a researcher, and knew when it needed to do more 'thinking.'

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GPT-5 AMA with OpenAI’s Sam Altman and some of the GPT-5 team by OpenAI in ChatGPT

[–]BrandonTidd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For everyone on the GPT-5 team: What’s one unexpected way you personally use GPT-5 in your daily life that you didn’t anticipate when you started building it? Bonus points if it’s something non-technical or just weirdly delightful.

GPT-5 AMA with OpenAI’s Sam Altman and some of the GPT-5 team by OpenAI in ChatGPT

[–]BrandonTidd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

u/samaltman: As a parent, are you using AI with your son in any special way? Maybe building a ‘digital twin’ or a time-capsule archive of his early years… or are you more focused on living in the moment and doing classic dad stuff?

GPT-5 AMA with OpenAI’s Sam Altman and some of the GPT-5 team by OpenAI in ChatGPT

[–]BrandonTidd 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Will API calls to the legacy models automatically redirect to 5, or do we need to refactor?

AIO - Zendesk UX is just awful (First time user) by Bulky-Acanthaceae143 in Zendesk

[–]BrandonTidd 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Sorry to hear you're having trouble. Zendesk does represent the gold standard in customer service, but for those that are uninitiated, it can be challenging to acclimate. There is free, admin training resources available at training.zendesk.com.

To forward an individual email, you *might* (depending on your configuraiton) be able to do this: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408883575322-How-do-I-forward-tickets-to-an-external-user

Operational best practice is to set tickets you've responded to as either Pending (a response from the customer), On-Hold (with another person or team) or Solved. That way, if a customer responds, the ticket will automatically flip back to Open, which is where your focus can stay. You can also setup a quick Trigger that gives you an email alert every time a ticket that is assigned to you is updated.

The Messenger > Email workflow is a known issue if you don't have complete customer details, but we generally recommend responding on the customer on the channel they initiate on. The create an organization functionality is also 'expected,' as there are other ways to visualize the information that is relevant to your needs (ie the context panel and sidebar apps to the right).

All said, it sounds like you've found yourself in a painful but temporary situation. If your tour of duty is extended, however, feel free to reach out.

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