Announcing unified conversation statuses across all AI agent channels

Announced on | Rollout starts | Rollout ends
April 28, 2026 | May 18, 2026 | June 1, 2026

Zendesk is unifying conversation statuses across all AI agent channels. Messaging, email, and voice will now use the same status definitions. This means you no longer need to juggle channel-specific metrics or remember different rules for what counts as a resolution on email versus messaging. The simplified statuses translate directly into analytics, making it easier to understand your agent’s performance at a glance.

This announcement answers the following questions:

What’s changing?

Why is Zendesk making this change?

What do I need to do?

What’s changing?

We’re introducing three new conversation statuses that work consistently across messaging, email, and voice channels. Every conversation will fall into one of these categories based on the value your AI agent provided:

Unassisted: The conversation triggered only small talk or system replies, with the exception of a successful Generative reply / Knowledge reply. The AI agent performed no automation except for AI agent-level actions that are triggered for all conversations.

Assisted escalation: The conversation was escalated by the AI agent to a human agent.

Automated resolution: The conversation included at least one identified use case (other than a system reply) and a response was provided, or else a successful Generative reply / Knowledge reply was triggered.

Your reporting dashboard will reflect these changes directly when the change rolls out to your account. The new statuses translate into the new metrics you’ll see in analytics.

Conversations resolved by the AI agent, and verified by Zendesk’s large language model (LLM), are being renamed to Verified resolutions. By default, Unassisted and Assisted escalation conversations are excluded from becoming Verified resolutions.

Why is Zendesk making this change?

Our current conversation status definitions were built before agentic AI agents, and they no longer accurately reflect how AI agents create value. We've heard clear feedback about the confusion around which statuses translate into billing metrics. Understanding what counts as a resolution shouldn't require channel-specific knowledge or interpretation.

Unified statuses give you a consistent framework for measuring success and identifying where your agent needs tuning, making cross-channel optimization actionable.

What do I need to do?

No action is required on your part. Changes will automatically roll out to your account between May 18 and June 1, 2026.

Because the new status definitions are incompatible with the previous ones, we're re-mapping them for historical conversations for up to two years back. At the time of release on May 18, statuses will be mapped for at least three months back. In the following days, the full update will be completed. This mapping will apply to both conversation logs and the reporting dashboard, so your historical data will reflect the new definitions consistently.

The old statuses are going away, but they'll remain available in API data exports for an additional six months if you need to reference them.

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.