About auto assist

Auto assist is an AI-powered assistant for your agents. Using large language model (LLM) technology, auto assist understands the contents of submitted tickets and makes suggestions to your agents on how to solve them.


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Auto assist is an AI-powered tool that helps agents handle tickets by suggesting replies and actions based on procedures, help center articles, and similar solved tickets. It reduces repetitive tasks and ensures consistent responses. Agents review and approve suggestions, while some actions can be pre-approved by admins. Auto assist adapts to the conversation's tone and style, enhancing efficiency.




Auto assist is an AI-powered assistant for your agents. Using large language model (LLM)
technology, auto assist understands the contents of submitted tickets and makes
suggestions to your agents on how to solve them.
With auto assist, agents spend less time on repetitive tickets, solve tickets in a more
consistent way, and ultimately close more tickets.
Watch the demo video below to see auto assist in action, or read on for more information
about auto assist.

Zendesk agent copilot featuring auto assist (4:43)
This article contains the following topics:

Understanding auto assist and how it works
Understanding procedures for auto assist
Understanding how auto assist makes suggestions

Related articles

Turning on and configuring auto
assist



Understanding auto assist and how it works

Auto assist makes suggestions to your agents based on the following sources:
Procedures that you've created or that have been
automatically generated

Generic information from its LLM training
Your public help center articles
Similar solved tickets

These suggestions can be replies that the agent should send to the customer or
actions that the agent should take. Actions are suggested only if they've been
defined in your procedures.
Auto assist suggestions appear in tickets in the Agent Workspace interface in place
of the composer. Suggested replies and most actions require an agent’s approval
before being sent to the customer or performed, and are sent or performed under the
agent’s name. The customer isn’t aware of auto assist during their interactions with
the human agent.
Some actions, such as checking an order status, may be performed automatically by
auto assist if the action was pre-approved by an admin. Actions that are performed
automatically are logged in the ticket's events and in the conversation log so that
the agent is aware. For more information, see Understanding pre-approved actions.

When using auto assist, agents don’t have to compose replies or execute actions
themselves, except when following instructions you've defined. Instead, agents review and
approve the replies or actions suggested by auto assist. Replies suggested by auto
assist are automatically adapted to the conversation's tone
and writing style so that agents can reduce the time spent editing
responses. When making suggestions, auto assist takes into account all public ticket
comments in the conversation, including previously generated comments approved by
the agent. Suggestions are made in response to end-user comments only, though, not
agent comments.
If your procedures include direct instructions for agents, then auto assist suggests
the instructions to agents when they need them based on the flow of their
conversation. Instructions are steps that agents should perform manually. For
example, your procedures might include instructions for checking your internal stock
management system if auto assist can't access it.
To learn more about the agent experience with auto assist, see Using auto assist to solve tickets.


Note: Auto assist doesn’t work on AI agent tickets.




Understanding procedures for auto assist

A procedure is a set of written steps that tells auto assist how to advise an agent
in solving a user's request. Auto assist can suggest replies on any topic, but to
achieve best performance, creating procedures is essential. You can write your own procedures, or review,
edit, and publish AI-generated procedures.
You can link the following directly in procedures to ensure that auto assist makes
the right suggestion or performs the correct action for a user's request:

Standard actions
Custom actions
Action flows

Macros, if they're available to all
agents

Agent instructions, which tell agents
how to manually perform steps that auto assist can't
Public help center articles or other procedures See About help center content in procedures.


You can also reference certain ticket
fields in your procedures.
Auto assist knows which procedures to follow for a given customer request as a result
of its LLM training. You don’t need to map specific procedures to specific intents
or other ticket metadata in order for auto assist to suggest replies or actions.
Instead, auto assist understands the content of a customer’s request out of the box
and can map it to an existing procedure, if one has been created that addresses the
topic the customer is asking about.


About ticket fields in procedures

Auto assist has access to read the following standard ticket fields:

Assignee email
Assignee name
Brand
Priority
Requester email
Requester name
Status
Subject
Type
Tags (can read and update but not remove)

The Priority, Type, and Tags standard fields can be updated by auto assist.
Additionally, auto assist can read all custom ticket field types (except for
lookup relationship fields) and update the following custom field types:
Checkbox
Date
Decimal
Dropdown
Number
Regex


You can write procedures in plain language that references these ticket fields
and auto assist will use this information to suggest the best responses.
For example, you can leverage ticket fields in auto assist procedures in the
following ways:

Brand-aware procedures
Select the correct refund duration from an existing procedure based
on the ticket brand (for example, Brand X is 20 days, but Brand Y is
30 days).
Use the account verification procedure for Brand X because the
ticket brand is X.


Email confirmation
If the requester’s email address is example@acme.com, proceed with
the refund process.






About help center content in procedures

You can insert the following help center content in a procedure:


Articles: You can insert public, published articles in a procedure.
When you insert an article, you can choose which locale will be used. By
inserting an article in a procedure, you're telling auto assist that the
content of the article is important in the context of the procedure.

For example, say that a customer's order must be verified before
approving a refund. You can enter a step to gather information from an
article with the following wording:
"Before approving the refund,
verify if the customer's order is meeting the requirements listed in
<inserted article>"
Keep in mind that auto assist can't
comprehend images, URLs, or videos in articles. If an article relies on
this type of content, then auto assist won't be able to understand the
full picture.
It's recommended to keep your help center articles
up to date so that auto assist can make the most accurate
suggestions.


Procedures: You can insert published procedures in a procedure. When
you insert a procedure within a procedure, you're telling auto assist to
follow the steps in the linked procedure. For example, say that a customer
indicated they want to upgrade their subscription plan. You can enter a
step that links to a specific procedure based on some conditions with
the following wording:
"If the customer indicated they want to
upgrade their subscription plan, follow step X of &lt;inserted
procedure>"


You can insert up to four pieces of help center content into a procedure. For
example, add a mix of articles and procedures, such as three articles and one
procedure.




Understanding how auto assist makes suggestions

Auto assist can suggest replies and actions based on the information provided in
procedures. It can also suggest replies based on its generic LLM training
information, your public help center articles, or similar solved tickets, when a
relevant procedure or article isn't available. It can't suggest replies or actions
based on other sources.
Actions are suggested by auto assist only if they've been defined in your procedures.
The one exception to this is that auto assist may suggest setting a ticket status to
solved, even if this action isn't included in your procedures.
Auto assist can suggest replies on any topic based on the following sources:

AI-generated procedures or procedures that you've created.
Note: Procedures are
essential to achieving the best performance. See Creating procedures for auto
assist and Reviewing and publishing AI-generated
procedures for auto assist.
Auto assist uses this
procedure content, along with its built-in LLM training, to generate
suggested replies or actions, which it then presents to agents as they work
on tickets.
Procedure content can also include direct agent
instructions. These types of instructions are steps that agents should
follow and perform manually.

If a relevant procedure isn't found, then auto assist uses your public help
center articles to generate suggested replies. Only articles with a brand and
language matching the ticket brand and language are used for reply generation.
For example, if the brand on a ticket is Obscura, then only articles with the
Obscura brand are considered. Keep in mind that public help center articles
that match the brand and language of the ticket can't be excluded from auto
assist.

If a relevant procedure or help center article isn’t available, then auto assist
uses similar solved tickets to generate suggested replies.

Auto assist suggestions appear in tickets in the Agent Workspace interface in place
of the composer. If you have permission, you can view the source auto assist used to
generate the suggestion. See Viewing sources for auto assist
suggestions to learn more.

If you don't have permission to view an auto assist suggestion's source, then refer
to the list above to understand what source may have been used to generate the
suggestion.
Examples where auto assist can suggest replies include:

Advising the customer on buying a product or service sold by your company
Explaining a business policy to the customer
Helping the customer troubleshoot a problem with a product

Examples of procedures where auto assist can suggest replies and actions include:

Checking the status of a current order in Shopify, or canceling and refunding
specific items or whole orders in Shopify
Querying and modifying your own internal business systems or performing
third-party actions via API

Examples of procedures where auto assist can suggest direct agent instructions you've
written include:
Telling an agent to check your internal stock management system and adding a
refunded item as 'back in stock'
Instructing an agent on how to create and validate a new user account in
your company's human resources system