Understanding chatbot options in your Zendesk account

When a customer needs help, they want it ASAP, but most organizations don’t have the support staff to be available 24/7. You can reduce, or even eliminate, the time your customers have to wait for assistance by providing automated support using chatbots.

Chatbots are conversational customer support UIs, fueled by artificial intelligence, to help automate simple tasks, create better experiences for your customers, and work alongside your agents to give them a helping hand.

You can incorporate chatbot functionality into your customer service experience with our own Zendesk AI agents, use Sunshine Conversations to build your own AI agent, or integrate a bot from a third party. All approaches allow you to customize chatbot performance and behavior.

In this article, we’ll provide you with an overview of each of these options, along with a framework to get you started with your chatbot of choice.

For a more detailed look at chatbots, see our Complete guide to AI chatbots.

This article discusses the following chatbot options:

Built-in solution: Zendesk AI agents

Do-It-Yourself: Sunshine Conversations' Web Messenger

Outside the box: Third-party bots

Built-in solution: Zendesk AI agents

Zendesk AI agents are highly customizable, automated conversation bots that can be added to your Web Widget, mobile app, and social or third-party channels. It can help deflect tickets by guiding customers through a conversation to refine their support request, suggesting help center articles to self-solve issues, and gathering useful information from your customers before handing them off to a live agent, which gives your agents an opportunity to handle more support requests and reduce wait times for all customers.

Zendesk AI agents use Native Language Processing (NLP) to interpret support requests and to learn from customer responses to deliver better service with each interaction.

Zendesk AI agents come with a simple out-of-the-box AI agent that can be published, with no further work on your part. Zendesk AI agents are available to all accounts using Zendesk messaging. When you’re ready to use an AI agent for your messaging channel, you can start by creating an AI agent.

You can create AI agents to use in any channel that uses Zendesk messaging for connecting with customers, including:

Web Widget: Embeds messaging functionality in your own website or Guide help center.

Mobile apps: Delivers messaging capabilities via your customers’ mobile devices. Compatible with iOS, Android, and Unity SDKs.

Third-party and social channels: Connect with and support customers wherever they are. Zendesk AI agents are available for Slack DM, Facebook Messenger, X Corp DM, WhatsApp, InstagramDM, WeChat, and more.

No matter which (or how many) channels you’re using to connect with your customers, your agents can manage their interactions via a single ticket interface: The Agent Workspace. There, agents can use the appropriate channels to address issues, without being restricted to the channel in which the customer originally made contact.

For detailed information, see the following articles:

Getting started with messaging for web and mobile

Getting started with social messaging

Creating an AI agent to automatically resolve customer issues

Do-It-Yourself: Sunshine Conversations' Web Messenger

Sunshine Conversations Web Messenger channel allows you to design and embed a highly customizable, asynchronous chatbot on your own website. It can be accessed by your customers via desktop or mobile browsers, and can enable them to continue conversations over connected social or business channels.

Note: Sunshine Conversations requires a separate license.

This section includes high-level information on the following topics:

Web Messenger capabilities

More customization options

You can also use Sunshine Conversations to design and implement your own programmable conversations, connect to an existing chatbot, or integrate prebuilt third-party chatbots with your Zendesk account.

For detailed information, see the following articles:

Sunshine Conversations Overview

Sunshine Conversations marketplace

Sunshine Conversations API code walkthrough

Web Messenger capabilities

You can incorporate following capabilities – and more – into your Web Messenger as you like.

Content types: Text, images, file attachments, and emojis.

Structured Messages: Including scrollable and clickable options.

Conversation Lists: Lets customers navigate among multiple ongoing conversations.

Unread message identifiers: Allows customers and agents to see whether their last comment has been viewed.

Forms: Capture user data to help agents better serve their customers.

User authentication: Increased security in your conversations.

For a complete list of these options, along with examples and descriptions, see Web Messenger Capabilities.

More customization options

Web Messenger includes built-in customization options you can use to refine the appearance and performance of the widget, including (but not limited to):

Display Style: Present Web Messenger to customers as a button or a tab.

Colors, Business profile, and Background Image: Reflect your company’s brand through the widget’s look and feel.

Sound notification: Customize (or disable) audio notifications.

Browser storage: Keep track of anonymous users in the browser.

For more information on customization options and processes, see Web Messenger Customization.

Outside the box: Third-party bots

You can bring your Zendesk and third-party chatbots together into a single, continuous conversation you can share with every team in your business.

Zendesk Marketplace has chatbot-related apps you can install and use with your Support, Chat, or Sell accounts.

Sunshine Conversations Marketplace has chatbot options to choose from.

Each app has its own setup and configuration process, as well as its own features and functionality, determined by the third-party developer. This information can be accessed from an app’s marketplace entry.

The following resources can help you figure out which chatbot solution is right for you:

What is a chatbot and how does it work? The ultimate guide

A comparison chart of the top AI chatbots

Chatbots vs. Conversational AI: What's the difference?