Announcing agentic AI for advanced email AI agents

Announced on | Rollout on
April 20, 2026 | April 20, 2026

Today we're announcing that agentic AI for advanced email AI agents is generally available. Powered by fully generative AI, email AI agents can now understand incoming emails, answer questions from your knowledge sources, and go further by executing business procedures through system integrations, without complex flow-building. The AI agent optimizes for fewer email exchanges by aggregating answers and collecting all needed information upfront, reducing back-and-forth while matching your tone and brand.

All newly created advanced email AI agents use agentic AI by default.

This announcement includes the following topics:

What's changing?

Why is Zendesk making this change?

What do I need to do?

What's changing?

Customers with AI agents - Advanced can now create advanced email AI agents powered by agentic AI. These AI agents handle customer emails end to end, from understanding the request through delivering a resolution or escalating to a human agent when needed.

Key capabilities

Single and multiple question handling. The AI agent answers one or more questions from your connected knowledge sources, aggregating all answers into one email to minimize back-and-forth with the customer.

Procedure automation. The AI agent executes generative procedures (for example, "Cancel my order") and collects all needed information from the customer in a single email, minimizing back-and-forth. When a customer has multiple procedure requests, the AI agent handles them sequentially across email exchanges.

Clarifying questions. The AI agent asks for specifics when a customer's request is vague, before providing an answer or triggering a procedure.

Small talk recognition. The AI agent recognizes small talk and responds appropriately—asking for the customer's query when the email lacks a question, resolving in-scope questions, or escalating out-of-scope requests.

Escalation handling. The AI agent escalates to a human agent when the customer requests it, when a procedure specifies it, or when the AI agent cannot confidently resolve the request in one response.

Messaging-aligned flows. Automation flows, conversation status management, and business logic closely mirror Zendesk messaging, so admins and customers find a consistent experience across channels.

Automatic email cleanup. The AI agent automatically strips previous replies, signatures, footers, and legal notes from email threads, so it focuses only on the relevant new content.

Automatic multi-language support. The AI agent supports multiple languages out of the box, without requiring per-language configuration or translated dialogue flows. (Though note that you still need to add and activate the languages you want to support.)

For more information, see About AI agents with agentic AI.

Why is Zendesk making this change?

Email is a high-volume, business-critical support channel. Agentic AI for email automates resolution with minimal configuration. You define business procedures and knowledge sources, and the AI agent reasons through the best path to resolution without complex flow-building. This delivers meaningful value for support teams:

The AI agent classifies, routes, and resolves incoming emails automatically.

The AI agent aggregates answers and collects all needed information upfront, reducing back-and-forth with the customer.

When the AI agent cannot resolve a request, it escalates to a human agent with full context. Either the AI delivers a quality response or a human handles it.

Capabilities across email and messaging channels are aligned for a consistent admin and customer experience.

What do I need to do?

Agentic AI for email is automatically available to all customers with the AI agents - Advanced add-on. All newly created advanced email AI agents use agentic AI by default. See Getting started with AI agents - Advanced to create and configure an advanced email AI agent with agentic AI.

Existing email AI agents are not affected by this change and will continue to function as configured.

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.