Announcing the Employee Service AI Agents (EAP)

Announced on | Rollout starts
July 10, 2026 | August 3, 2026

Zendesk is excited to introduce a new AI agent experience designed for employee service. This update brings AI-native support directly to your employees, helping resolve internal requests faster and more securely within their existing workflows.

This announcement includes the following topics:

What is changing?

Why is Zendesk making this change?

What do I need to do?

What is changing?

The Employee Service AI Agents EAP delivers conversational AI-based support directly to your employees, helping resolve internal requests faster and more securely within their existing workflows.

When the employee service (ES) AI agent is enabled on an account, when employees visit your company help center, the traditional search bar experience shifts to an interactive conversation with the AI agent. This AI agent automatically connects to your company's knowledge to deliver instant answers to your employees.

Key features of the ES AI Agents EAP include:

Automatic activation: The ES AI agent experience turns on automatically for Employee Service Suite accounts with the following exceptions: HIPAA or FedRAMP certified accounts, accounts opted out of generative AI, and accounts that already have an active AI agent solution.

Enterprise search: You can connect your internal knowledge from key systems with pre-built connectors to common sources: Google Drive, SharePoint, Confluence, Notion, Slack, Teams, Box, Seismic, and a Web Crawler. We will introduce additional connectors later this year.

Secure knowledge: AI agents respect existing content permissions at the source, ensuring employees only see what they’re allowed to see, no matter which system the information comes from.

Employee channels: The AI agent can be integrated with Slack and Teams, so your employees can reach out for and receive support where they’re already working.

AI agent actions: Soon after the EAP begins, an update will allow you to connect the employee service AI agent to action flows to seamlessly handle tasks across Zendesk and third-party services, resolving requests end-to-end.

This EAP will be available on the Employee Service Suite only, but will expand to include eligible customers using our Customer Service Suite for internal service when the product becomes generally available.

A note on pricing and credit structures: During the EAP, the ES AI agents are free to use. When the feature becomes generally available, resolutions using connected external sources might count toward your automated resolution credits and totals.

Why is Zendesk making this change?

Zendesk has heard your feedback that traditional customer-facing AI tools often fall short for internal teams such as IT, HR, Finance, and Operations. Internal employee support requires managing fragmented information across various enterprise systems while strictly maintaining security and role-based data permissions.

The Employee Service AI agent experience addresses those barriers directly, allowing you to deliver fast, secure, and automated internal support right where your employees already work.

What do I need to do?

No action is required. This EAP is being turned on automatically for all eligible Employee Service Suite accounts. Exceptions include HIPAA or FedRAMP certified accounts, accounts opted out of generative AI, accounts with an active AI agent solution, and Employee Service Suite Team plans. Admins for impacted accounts have already received email notification about the EAP rollout.

To customize your employee service AI agent experience, you can:

Connect external enterprise knowledge sources: Box, Confluence, Google Drive, Notion, Seismic, SharePoint, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Web crawler.

Extend support to collaborative channels that your employees use daily, such as Slack or Microsoft Teams.

Prior to the launch of the EAP, you can opt out of this automatic activation. To do so, contact Zendesk Customer Support and include "Opt out of Employee Service AI Agent EAP" in your message. After the launch of the EAP, you can disconnect the Employee Service AI agent from your help center at any time.

If you have feedback or questions related to this announcement, visit our community forum where we collect and manage customer product feedback. For general assistance with your Zendesk products, contact Zendesk Customer Support.