Announcing the conversational help center (EAP)

Announced on | Rollout starts | Rollout ends
July 16, 2026 | July 16, 2026 | July 22, 2026

We’re excited to announce an Early Access Program (EAP) for the conversational help center experience, delivered through the new Lisbon theme. This EAP introduces an AI-powered help center layout that combines natural-language question answering with standard help center navigation, allowing end users to ask questions and receive quick answers generated from your published content.

This announcement includes the following topics:

What is changing?

Why is Zendesk making this change?

What do I need to do?

What is changing?

We're introducing a new conversational help center experience through the Lisbon theme. Instead of relying only on keyword search or browsing through categories and sections, end users can ask a question in natural language and receive a quick answer based on published help center content. The answer includes links to the source articles so users can review the original content and continue reading if they need more detail.

The Lisbon theme includes the following capabilities:

Conversational layout with a prompt field where users ask questions and receive AI-generated quick answers

UI-based customization without code, including branding controls for colors, logos, hero area, featured banners, global alerts, and dark mode support

Conversational follow-up with AI agents - if the user asks a follow-up question, the experience transitions into a broader conversation powered by your AI agent and procedures configuration

Support for dark mode

The theme is configured entirely through UI settings - no code editing required. Admins can customize link color, background color, accent color, fonts, logos (light and dark mode), favicon, greeting message, search placeholder text, and brand accent gradients.

To view a list of limitations, see Limitations of the conversational help center.

Why is Zendesk making this change?

The conversational help center is intended to help customers improve self-service outcomes while reducing the effort required to configure and maintain the experience. It combines AI-powered answering with familiar help center content, which can help users get to relevant information more quickly.

Instead of navigating through multiple articles or relying on keyword search alone, end users receive a direct answer to their question along with links to source articles. This preserves the full help center structure while adding a faster, more guided path to resolution.

What do I need to do?

Before you install and use the conversational help center, confirm that the required supporting features are already configured in your account:

Quick answers enabled

AI agents configured

Web widget embedded in your help center

Multi-conversations turned on

To install and configure the EAP, see the following sections within Creating a conversational help center experience with the new Lisbon theme (EAP):

Turning on the conversational help center

Install the Lisbon theme

Configure the conversational help center

Setting up multilingual content

Preview and publish the conversational help center

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.