Personalizing intelligent triage by creating custom topics

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<p id="docs-hc-snippet" style="display: none;">Intelligent triageleverages AI to automatically classify incoming tickets by topic, language and sentiment. The Zendesk Topic Model includes pre-trained topics across several industries, providing relevant topics and use cases tailored to each account's ticket data. If your account doesn't yet have ticket data, you'll see a standard set of topics designed to support common use cases across industries.</p>
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<p id="docs-ai-summary-content">You can create custom topics for intelligent triage to classify tickets by your business-specific request types, fill gaps in prebuilt topics, and organize them with categories and subcategories. Use clear, single-use topic names and descriptions, avoid overlap and redundancy, and review recommendations to improve topic detection. Custom topics start classifying incoming requests when activated.</p>
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<div class="note attention">
<span class="attentiontitle"></span> Intelligent triage classifications are available on Suite and Support Professional plans and above. Using them in workflows requires the <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5524125586330" target="_blank">Copilot add-on</a>.</div>
<p class="p"><a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4964463770650" target="_blank">Intelligent triage</a> leverages AI to automatically classify
incoming tickets by topic, language and sentiment. The Zendesk Topic Model includes
pre-trained topics across several industries, providing relevant topics and use cases
tailored to each account's ticket data. If your account doesn't yet have ticket data,
you'll see a standard set of topics designed to support common use cases across
industries.</p>
<p class="p">To give you greater flexibility over your available topics, you can create custom topics
that address issues specific to your business needs. You can also add new categories and
subcategories as you create custom topics so that you can keep your topics
organized.</p>
<p class="p">This article contains the following topics:</p>
<ul class="ul" id="automated_triage_custom_intents__ul_bs1_h1y_c2c">
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_zyc_c1y_c2c">About custom topics</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_qp5_c1y_c2c">Creating a custom topic</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_lq3_f1y_c2c">Examples of custom topics</a></li>
</ul>
<p class="p">Related articles: </p>
<ul class="ul" id="automated_triage_custom_intents__ul_i5c_1by_c2c">
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4550640560538" target="_blank">Automatically classifying tickets with
intelligent triage</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/9488234915610" target="_blank">Accessing and viewing intelligent triage
topics</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title2" class="topic nested1" id="topic_zyc_c1y_c2c">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title2">About custom topics</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">A topic is an AI-powered classification of what a ticket is about. While intelligent
triage includes prebuilt topics, you can create custom topics to fill any gaps in
the predefined list. Your custom topics are unique to your account and begin
classifying incoming requests immediately upon activation.</p>
<p class="p">To further fine tune your topics, you can also <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/9484697389210#topic_hq4_zfj_zfc" target="_blank">review and accept topic recommendations</a>
made by intelligent triage. </p>
<p class="p">Topics are designed to identify the core reason for a request rather than specific
details such as product names or locations. Instead, see the <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/6711181959194" target="_blank">entity detection</a> feature to identify business-critical
information in your incoming requests automatically.</p>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title3" class="topic nested2" id="topic_vlk_pgn_w3c">
<h3 class="title topictitle3" id="ariaid-title3">Guidelines and best practices for creating topics</h3>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">To maintain a high-quality topic library, follow these guidelines and best
practices when creating or editing custom topics:</p>
<div class="div accordion">
<p class="p"><strong class="ph b">Topic guidelines</strong></p>
</div>
<div class="div panel">
<div class="p">
<div class="tablenoborder">
<table border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" class="table" frame="border" id="topic_vlk_pgn_w3c__table_u5c_vmn_w3c" rules="all" summary="">
<colgroup>
<col style="width:50%">
<col style="width:50%">
</colgroup>
<thead class="thead" style="text-align:left;">
<tr class="row">
<th class="entry cellrowborder" id="d90e135" style="vertical-align:top;">Guideline</th>
<th class="entry cellrowborder" id="d90e138" style="vertical-align:top;">Description</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody class="tbody">
<tr class="row">
<td class="entry cellrowborder" headers="d90e135" style="vertical-align:top;"><strong class="ph b">Represent a single use case</strong></td>
<td class="entry cellrowborder" headers="d90e138" style="vertical-align:top;">Each topic should be defined for only one use case.
Avoid combining multiple scenarios into one topic. This
ensures that the topic is meaningful and actionable
within your workflows.<p class="p">See <a class="xref" href="#topic_lq3_f1y_c2c">Examples
of custom topics</a>.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="row">
<td class="entry cellrowborder" headers="d90e135" style="vertical-align:top;"><strong class="ph b">Optimize for operational clarity</strong></td>
<td class="entry cellrowborder" headers="d90e138" style="vertical-align:top;">Topics should help you identify the types of requests
you’re receiving, and help you develop efficient
workflows. If different processes are required to
resolve similar requests, create separate topics to
match those processes.</td>
</tr>
<tr class="row">
<td class="entry cellrowborder" headers="d90e135" style="vertical-align:top;"><strong class="ph b">Remove ambiguity</strong></td>
<td class="entry cellrowborder" headers="d90e138" style="vertical-align:top;">Topic names and descriptions should be clear and
unambiguous. Choose precise words and phrases that avoid
multiple interpretations.</td>
</tr>
<tr class="row">
<td class="entry cellrowborder" headers="d90e135" style="vertical-align:top;"><strong class="ph b">Ensure consistency</strong></td>
<td class="entry cellrowborder" headers="d90e138" style="vertical-align:top;">Provide a concise, unambiguous name that reflects the
core of the issue or request. The description should
directly expand on the name, offering clear context
about what the topic includes and its primary purpose.
<p class="p">Keep both the name and description closely
aligned and focused on defining the topic, rather
than listing exclusions or unrelated
scenarios.</p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr class="row">
<td class="entry cellrowborder" headers="d90e135" style="vertical-align:top;"><strong class="ph b">Avoid redundancy</strong></td>
<td class="entry cellrowborder" headers="d90e138" style="vertical-align:top;">
<a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/9488234915610#topic_l3b_hn3_fzb" target="_blank">Check whether a
similar topic already exists</a>.<p class="p">Similar or
overlapping topics can lead to low-confidence or
wrong topic detection. Additionally, creating a high
number of custom topics can lead to performance
issues.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="div accordion">
<p class="p"><strong class="ph b">Topic best practices</strong></p>
</div>
<div class="div panel">
<ul class="ul" id="topic_vlk_pgn_w3c__ul_hyh_34n_w3c">
<li class="li" dir="ltr">Use the default topics provided. Modify these topics by <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/9488233422746" target="_blank">editing their names or
descriptions</a> so that they're more consistent with your
business. <p class="p">Especially, refer to terminology used by your end users.
When editing a topic, make sure the same user request is
represented.</p>
</li>
<li class="li" dir="ltr">Create custom topics when the user request you want to detect
isn't represented in the list of topics available in your account.</li>
<li class="li" dir="ltr">
<a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/9488233422746#topic_oq2_hc4_32c" target="_blank">Deactivate topics</a> that aren't
useful, that don't fit your business, or are redundant.</li>
<li class="li" dir="ltr">Use the recommendations tab to review new topic suggestions,
and to understand if you have conflicts (overlap or duplicate) between
topics. <p class="p">Keep in mind that every time you make a change to a topic,
it's reassessed for conflicts.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title4" class="topic nested2" id="topic_custom_topic_limits">
<h3 class="title topictitle3" id="ariaid-title4">Limits for intelligent triage custom topics</h3>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">When you create custom topics, keep the following limits in mind:</p>
<ul class="ul">
<li class="li">You can create up to 500 custom topics per account.</li>
<li class="li">Topic names can contain up to 255 characters.</li>
<li class="li">Topic descriptions can contain up to 650 characters.</li>
<li class="li">Topic names can't contain special characters.</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title5" class="topic nested1" id="topic_qp5_c1y_c2c">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title5">Creating a custom topic</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">To create a custom topic, you must have <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4550640560538#topic_gpp_p4g_htb" target="_blank">topics turned on</a>. </p>
<p class="p">Review the <a class="xref" href="#topic_vlk_pgn_w3c">guidelines and best
practices</a> before creating a custom topic.</p>
<p class="p"><strong class="ph b">To create a custom topic</strong></p>
<div class="p">
<ol class="ol" id="topic_qp5_c1y_c2c__ol_hwd_vby_c2c">
<li class="li"><span class="ph">In <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4581766374554#topic_hfg_dyz_1hb" target="_blank">Admin Center</a>, click <img class="image" id="topic_qp5_c1y_c2c__image_thz_dh1_s2c" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/icon_ai.png">
<strong class="ph b">AI</strong> in the sidebar, then select <strong class="ph b">Intelligent triage &gt; Topic</strong>.</span></li>
<li class="li">Click <strong class="ph b">Create topic</strong>. <p class="p"><img class="image img-screenshot" id="topic_qp5_c1y_c2c__image_x5k_qqv_s2c" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/ai_hub_intents_screen.png" width="600"></p>
The Create custom topic page opens.</li>
<li class="li">Enter a <strong class="ph b">Name</strong>.<p class="p">Use a short, descriptive name for the topic. The
topic name is visible to agents, so make sure it’s clear and concise so
they can quickly understand it.</p>
<p class="p"><img class="image img-screenshot" id="topic_qp5_c1y_c2c__image_bfn_fcy_c2c" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/copilot_intents_create_custom.png" width="400"></p>
<div class="note">
<span class="notetitle">Note:</span> Custom topics don't support special characters such as
dashes, underscores, colons, and so on.</div>
</li>
<li class="li">Enter a <strong class="ph b">Description</strong>.<p class="p">This is the explanation of what the ticket is
about. Clearly define what the topic should include and exclude. Write
the description as if you’re explaining an issue to an agent on their
first day. Consider including examples and common words that users might
use.</p>
</li>
<li class="li">Select a <strong class="ph b">Category</strong>.<p class="p">Topics are organized hierarchically in three
levels: category, subcategory, and topic. The category is the broad
reason for an incoming request, the subcategory provides a more detailed
breakdown of the reason, and the topic is a single, very specific
reason.</p>
Alternatively, you can create a custom category:<ul class="ul" id="topic_qp5_c1y_c2c__ul_hlb_l3m_dhc">
<li class="li">Select<strong class="ph b">+ Add category and subcategory</strong> from the menu.<p class="p"><img class="image img-screenshot" id="topic_qp5_c1y_c2c__image_tp5_h3m_dhc" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/ai_triage_custom_intent_category.png" width="400"></p>
</li>
<li class="li">Enter a <strong class="ph b">Category name</strong> and <strong class="ph b">subcategory name</strong>.<p class="p"><img class="image img-screenshot" id="topic_qp5_c1y_c2c__image_u2g_bjm_dhc" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/ai_triage_custom_inent_create_category.png" width="300"></p>
</li>
<li class="li">Click <strong class="ph b">Add</strong>.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li class="li">Click <strong class="ph b">Create custom topic</strong>. <p class="p">The new topic is added to the Topic
list tab and is labeled <em class="ph i">Custom</em>.</p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title6" class="topic nested1" id="topic_lq3_f1y_c2c">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title6">Examples of custom topics</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">Below are some examples of well-defined custom topics: </p>
<p class="p"><strong class="ph b">Product not working as expected</strong>
</p>
<ul class="ul" id="topic_lq3_f1y_c2c__ul_o5t_qcy_c2c">
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Name</strong>: Product not working as expected </li>
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Category</strong>: Order </li>
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Sub-category</strong>: Product issue </li>
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Description</strong>: The requester wants to report a product that is not
functioning correctly, has developed a fault, or is not meeting quality
expectations. </li>
</ul>
<p class="p"><strong class="ph b">Cancel direct debit</strong></p>
<ul class="ul" id="topic_lq3_f1y_c2c__ul_jtp_qcy_c2c">
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Name</strong>: Cancel direct debit </li>
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Category</strong>: Billing </li>
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Sub-category</strong>: Change payment method </li>
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Description</strong>: The customer wants to stop or cancel an existing direct
debit or automatic payment arrangement. They may cite reasons such as financial
constraints, changes in circumstances, or dissatisfaction with the service.
</li>
</ul>
<p class="p"><strong class="ph b">Change booking arrival location</strong></p>
<ul class="ul" id="topic_lq3_f1y_c2c__ul_jsk_qcy_c2c">
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Name</strong>: Change booking arrival location </li>
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Category</strong>: Travel </li>
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Sub-category</strong>: Booking update </li>
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Description</strong>: The end user wants to modify the arrival location of their
booking. This could include changing flight destinations, correcting errors in
the booked location, or updating hotel addresses.</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
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