How can I train my AI agent and improve suggestions?

Question

Why isn’t my AI agent suggesting articles? My AI agent gives wrong answers and can’t find related articles from my help center. I want to create AI agents that automatically reply to customer support questions via chat or email.

How can I train my AI agent to answer common questions? For example, questions about lost passwords, security settings, resources, verification emails, and other platform issues based on my company’s procedures.

Answer

Your AI agent may not be suggesting the right articles because your help center articles may be restricted or their keywords may not match queries. You could also improve your AI agent set up. Use the guide below.

In addition, training your AI agent over time by using feedback will maximize the performance and effectiveness of your AI agent.

Your set up and options depend on the product you use.

Step 1: Optimize your help center content

Your help center is the crucial source of the content your AI agent uses.

To tailor your articles to answer questions from your customers, follow these guidelines:

Ensure your articles are public

Generative responses are based on publicly accessible help center articles. Restricted articles that require login are harder for the AI agent to retrieve and surface.

Add key phrases to the top 75 words of your articles

Include key phrases your customers use in their requests at the top of your articles to optimize their citations and search results. Add multiple sentences with different key words.

Include short questions, partial keywords, and at times single words, to improve matches.

Add labels to your help center articles

Labels are single words or multi-word phrases that you can add to articles in your help center. They enhance the discoverability of articles and influence AI agent search relevance.

Structure articles with headings

Use formatted headings to include structured titles in your article content that AI agents will understand and use.

For example, your articles could contain uniform sections like Question and Answer, or Issue and Resolution steps.

Merge similar articles

Avoid duplicate articles to avoid confusing your AI agent. When the request is ambiguous and multiple articles exist, the AI agent may not find a correct match.

For example, the AI agent might struggle to determine the best response if the end user introduces the text: Modify invoice, but several of your answers and articles include those two words.

Keep your articles up-to-date

Avoid outdated or unreliable information, which AI agents will use.

For more information, see Best practices: Preparing your help center for generative AI.

Step 2: Optimize "AI agent for messaging (Legacy)" option

If you drafted or published an AI agent as of February 2, 2025, you use AI agent for messaging (Legacy).

To improve the performance of your AI agent, follow these guidelines:

Activate generative replies

Your AI agent will instantly answer user questions by using generative AI to review all your help center articles and deliver clear, relevant replies during the conversation.

Adjust your standard response and answers

To train your AI agent over time, use the data collected from users when escalating to a human agent. Identify commonly misunderstood and frequently asked questions, then improve your help center content to improve matching.

Tailor the fallback response and the unhelpful response to ask your customers to rephrase the request and add more context or information.

If most of the articles in your help center include the same keywords, such as invoice, modify, and cancel, create one answer with a flow to cover each topic. This will optimize your AI agent and help your customers self-serve.

Avoid duplicates. The AI agent might struggle to determine the best response if the end user introduces the text Modify invoice, but several of your answers or articles include those two words.

Adjust the training phrases and intents

Enriching the answer to better match specific questions will improve accuracy. Generic training phrases lead to inaccurate matches.

Alternatively, create a new answer with training phrases to match a common question.

Connect your AI agent with auto assist

If you created procedures, the AI agent will hand off a conversation to auto assist when the customer requests to speak to an agent.

When the auto assist suggestions aren't helpful, click Leave feedback to improve its quality and accuracy.

Analyze AI agent performance data

Navigate to Admin Center to AI > AI Agents > click the name of your AI agent and use the Insights tab to review unresolved conversations and question resolution rates.

Access the Zendesk Answer Bot dashboard in Explore to monitor resolved and unresolved conversations, search terms asked, and article recommendation performance.

For more information, see:

Overview of the Zendesk Answer Bot dashboard for autoreplies and bot builder

Using AI to generate replies in an AI agent for messaging (Legacy)

Step 2: Optimize "AI agent - Essential" option

If you did not draft or publish an AI agent as of February 2, 2025, you most likely use AI agent - Essential.

To improve the performance of your AI agent, follow these guidelines:

Create instructions

Control your AI agent behavior to respond to specific requests.

Analyze AI agent performance data

Navigate to Admin Center to AI > AI Agents > click the name of your AI agent and use the Insights tab to review unresolved conversations and question resolution rates.

Access the Zendesk Answer Bot dashboard in Explore to monitor resolved and unresolved conversations, search terms asked, and article recommendation performance.

Note: This article describes functionality available to customers who either use AI agent for messaging (Legacy) or AI agent - Essential. For information about equivalent functionality in the AI agents - Advanced add-on, verify automated resolutions and this section: Building dialogues for AI agents - Advanced.