Automatically classifying customer intent, sentiment, and language


Intelligent triageuses artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically analyze new support tickets by classifying customer intent, sentiment, and language, and enriches tickets with actionable details, such as product names.


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Summary: ◀▼
Automatically detect customer intent, sentiment, and language in support tickets using AI-powered classifications. Use these insights to prioritize, route, and manage tickets based on customer emotions, language, and issue type. Configure detection settings for various channels and update classifications dynamically. Enhance workflows by creating custom intents, entities, and views, improving ticket handling and customer satisfaction through targeted automation and analytics.




Intelligent triage uses artificial
intelligence (AI) to automatically analyze new support tickets by classifying customer
intent, sentiment, and language, and enriches tickets with actionable details, such as
product names.
You can use this information to identify and display helpful context about your
incoming tickets. Additionally, you can improve your workflows by incorporating AI
classifications to more precisely deflect, route, and prioritize tickets.
This article describes how admins configure intelligent triage intent, sentiment, and
language detection settings. To configure entity detection, see Detecting unique information in tickets with entities.
This article contains the following topics:

Understanding intelligent triage
Configuring intent settings for intelligent triage
Configuring sentiment settings for intelligent triage
Configuring language detection settings for intelligent triage
Next steps

Related articles:

Configuring intelligent triage for the agent
experience



Understanding intelligent triage

The Zendesk machine learning model automatically provides classifications about your
tickets when intelligent triage is turned on. These classifications are added as
new custom fields to your
tickets, which signal what a ticket is about, the language used, and the
end user's emotional tone. Additionally, related tags are generated to simplify the creation of
automated workflows, views, and reporting, helping agents and admins efficiently
handle and prioritize support requests.
Intelligent triage classifications are supported for tickets that are started with a
public comment by either an agent or end user.


Understanding intelligent triage fields

When you turn on intelligent triage, the system adds new custom fields to your
tickets that are populated with prebuilt classifications by the Zendesk machine
learning model:


Intent: Signals what the ticket is about. The
classification is made based on the ticket's subject and the text of the
first public comment. If configured to do so, the intent is updated every time the end
user replies. You can see the possible intent values in the Intents page. If you
want to update intent values in the Intent custom field, you can do so
by editing an intent's name. Intent values can't be edited from your
ticket field settings. See Editing and managing
intents.
The Zendesk Intent Model includes
intents for all of the supported industries. Your account has access to
relevant intents and use cases based on your ticket conversation
data.


Language: Signals which language the ticket is written in.
To see the possible values, open the Language page in Admin Center. For the
Language field, intelligent triage can detect approximately 150 different languages.

Sentiment: Signals how positive or negative the customer
feels about their request. Possible values are Very Positive, Positive,
Neutral, Negative, and Very Negative. The classification is made based on
the text of the first message in the ticket. If configured to do so, the
sentiment is updated every time the end user replies. Intelligent triage
is specifically calibrated for customer service. This means that a
ticket isn’t assigned a negative sentiment just because a customer has
an issue with their order, can’t find the information they need, or some
other similar “negative” situation. Instead, the model is tuned to
analyze sentiment with the assumption that the customer is contacting
customer service because they have an issue that needs to be
addressed.


In addition, each of these fields has an associated confidence field to indicate
how likely the classification is accurate. These fields are populated by the
Zendesk machine learning model based on the content of the first message of a
ticket when it’s submitted. Agents can update the field values if
necessary.



Understanding intelligent triage tags

When the Intent, Sentiment, and Language fields are populated, tags are
also automatically added to the ticket to help you build views, triggers,
automations, and reporting. These tags reflect the values in the Intent,
Language, and Sentiment fields, and are structured as follows:

intent__value of Intent field

language__value of Language field

sentiment__value of Sentiment field


When creating business rules, you can use the field value or the tag,
depending on which is easier. For example, when creating a trigger with multiple
intents, it’s easier to use tags because you can add them faster than adding
separate conditions for multiple field values.




Configuring intent settings for intelligent triage

Intents signal what each ticket is about. You can configure intent settings in Admin
Center.
By default, intent detection is turned on. To turn off intent detection, see Turning off intent detection.
To configure intent settings

In Admin Center, click
AI in the sidebar, then select Intelligent triage > Intent.
Click Manage Settings.
To update a ticket's intent based on the latest end user message in a
conversation, click the checkbox under Dynamic detection.
Dynamic detection applies to only new tickets created after you
turn this setting on.

Under Channels, configure the channels you want to detect intent:
For Email and async channels, click the drop-down, then select or
deselect the channels. The Web form, Email, and Web service (API)
channels are selected by default. If you create tickets via channel integrations,
select Social messaging.
The Closed tickets channel is for
follow-up tickets. See Follow-up ticket
considerations.

For Messaging channels, click the drop-down, then select or
deselect the channels. The Web Widget, WhatsApp, and Facebook
Messenger channels are selected by default.
Selecting any one
of the Web Widget, iOS SDK, Android SDK, or Native Messaging
channels automatically selects all four channels together.

Select the Voice checkbox to detect intent on post-call
transcripts.
Call transcription must be turned
on and transcripts must be shown on tickets for intent to
be detected on the voice channel.



To exclude tickets created by agents from intent detection, click the checkbox
under Exclusion conditions.

Click Save.




Configuring sentiment settings for intelligent triage

Sentiments signal how the user feels about their request. You can configure sentiment
settings in Admin Center.
By default, sentiment detection is turned on. To turn off sentiment detection, see
Turning off sentiment prediction.
To configure sentiment settings

In Admin Center, click
AI in the sidebar, then select Intelligent triage > Sentiment.
Click Manage Settings.
Select the checkbox under Dynamic detection to update a ticket's
sentiment based on the latest end user message in a conversation.
Dynamic detection applies to only new tickets created after you
turn this setting on.

Under Channels, configure the channels you want to classify sentiment:
For Email and async channels, click the drop-down, then select
or deselect the channels. The Web form, Email, and Web service (API)
channels are selected by default. If you create tickets via channel integrations,
select Social messaging.
The Closed tickets channel is for
follow-up tickets. See Follow-up ticket
considerations.

For Messaging channels, click the drop-down, then select or
deselect the channels. The Web Widget, WhatsApp, and Facebook
Messenger channels are selected by default.
Selecting any one
of the Web Widget, iOS SDK, Android SDK, or Native Messaging
channels automatically selects all four channels together.

Select the Voice checkbox to detect intent on post-call
transcripts.
Call transcription must be turned
on and transcripts must be shown on tickets for sentiment
to be detected on the voice channel.



To exclude tickets created by agents from sentiment classification, click the
checkbox under Exclusion conditions.

Click Save.




Configuring language detection settings for intelligent triage

Language signals what language the ticket is written in. You can configure language
detection settings in Admin Center.
By default, language detection is turned on. To turn off language detection, see
Turning off language detection.
To configure intelligent triage language settings

In Admin Center, click
AI in the sidebar, then select Intelligent triage > Language.
Click Manage Settings.
Under Channels, configure the channels you want to detect language:
For Email and async channels, click the drop-down, then select
or deselect the channels. The Web form, Email, and Web service (API)
channels are selected by default. If you create tickets via channel integrations,
select Social messaging.
The Closed tickets channel is for
follow-up tickets. See Follow-up ticket
considerations.

For Messaging channels, click the drop-down, then select or
deselect the channels. The Web Widget, WhatsApp, and Facebook
Messenger channels are selected by default.
Selecting any one
of the Web Widget, iOS SDK, Android SDK, or Native Messaging
channels automatically selects all four channels together.

Select the Voice checkbox to detect intent on post-call
transcripts.
Call transcription must be turned
on and transcripts must be shown on tickets for language
to be detected on the voice channel.



To exclude tickets created by agents from language detection, select the
checkbox under Exclusion conditions.

Click Save.




Next steps

After you've configured intent, sentiment, and language detection features, it's
recommended that you finish setting up intelligent triage by:

Creating entities to detect unique
information in tickets.

Creating custom intents to
personalize intelligent triage for your specific business needs.

Configuring how intelligent triage
predictions are shown to agents to increase their productivity.


When you're done setting up intelligent triage, you can take these actions to
maximize its impact on your support workflows by:

Creating views for your automatically
triaged tickets: Surface tickets based on AI classifications,
such as intent and sentiment, so that your teams can quickly focus on
high-priority or specialized issues. This streamlines ticket management and
boosts response times

Choosing a routing method for
automatically triaged tickets: Automatically assign tickets to
the right agents or teams using intelligent triage data. For example, route
urgent or negative sentiment tickets to priority support, or direct
product-specific issues to specialized experts. This can ensure faster and
more accurate resolutions.

Leverage prebuilt analytics dashboards to
analyze intelligent triage performance: Gain actionable insights
on how AI-powered classifications are enhancing ticket handling. Monitor
trends in customer sentiment, popular intents, and language distribution to
continuously optimize your workflows and improve customer satisfaction.




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