About auto assist

Auto assist is an AI-powered tool that helps agents handle tickets by
suggesting replies and actions based on predefined procedures, help center
articles, or similar solved tickets. It reduces repetitive tasks, ensures
consistent responses, and requires agent approval before sending suggestions
to customers. Auto assist enhances productivity while maintaining a personalized
customer interaction experience.




Auto assist is an AI-powered assistant for your agents. Using large language
model (LLM)
technology, auto assist understands the contents of submitted tickets
and makes
suggestions to your agents on how to solve them.


With auto assist, agents spend less time on repetitive tickets, solve
tickets in a more
consistent way, and ultimately close more tickets.


Watch the demo video below to see auto assist in action, or read on for
more information
about auto assist. To get started, see
Turning on and configuring auto assist.





Zendesk agent copilot featuring auto assist (4:43)


Auto assist makes suggestions to your agents based on
specific procedures you define,
generic information from its
LLM training, your public help center articles, or
similar solved tickets.
These suggestions can
be replies that the agent should send to the customer or actions that
the agent should
take.


If you've defined direct instructions for agents in your procedures,
auto assist suggests
the instructions to agents when they need them based on the flow of their
conversation.
Instructions are steps you've written that agents should perform manually.
For example,
you might write instructions for checking your internal stock management
system if auto
assist can't access it.


When using auto assist, agents don’t have to compose replies or execute
actions
themselves, except when following instructions you've defined. Instead,
agents review
and approve the replies or actions suggested by auto assist. Replies
suggested by auto
assist are
automatically adapted to the conversation's tone and
writing style
so that agents can reduce the time spent on editing responses.
When making suggestions, auto assist takes into account all public ticket
comments in
the conversation, including previously generated comments approved by
the agent.
Suggestions are made in response to end-user comments only, though, not
agent
comments.


Auto assist suggestions appear in tickets in the Agent Workspace interface
in place of
the composer. Any replies or actions suggested by auto assist require
an agent’s
approval before being sent to the customer or performed, and are sent
or performed under
the agent’s name. The customer isn’t aware of auto assist during their
interactions with
the human agent.





To learn more about the agent experience with auto assist, see
Using auto assist to solve tickets.



Note: Auto assist doesn’t work on
AI agent tickets.




Understanding how auto assist makes suggestions


Auto assist can suggest replies and actions based on the information
provided in
procedures and its generic LLM training information. It can also
suggest replies
based on your public help center articles, or similar solved tickets,
when a
relevant procedure or article isn't available. It can't suggest replies
or actions
based on other sources.


Auto assist can suggest replies on any topic based on the following
sources:



Procedure content you've created, which is essential to achieving
the best
performance. A procedure is a set of written steps that describe
how a given
customer problem should be solved. You can think of defining
procedures as
similar to explaining to a new agent how a specific problem should
be solved
within your company.

Auto assist uses this procedure content, along with its
built-in LLM training, to generate suggested replies or actions,
which it
then presents to agents as they work on tickets in the Agent
Workspace.


Your procedure content can also include direct agent
instructions that you've defined. These types of instructions
are steps that
agents should follow and perform manually.



If a relevant procedure isn't found, then auto assist uses your
public help
center articles to generate suggested replies. Only articles
with a brand and
language matching the ticket brand and language are used for
reply generation.
For example, if the brand on a ticket is Obscura, then only articles
with the
Obscura brand are considered.


If a relevant procedure or help center article isn’t available,
then auto assist
uses similar solved tickets to generate suggested replies.



Auto assist suggestions appear in tickets in the Agent Workspace
interface in place
of the composer. If you have permission, you can view the source
auto assist used to
generate the suggestion. See
Viewing sources for auto assist
suggestions
to learn more.





If you don't have permission to view an auto assist suggestion's
source, then refer
to the list above to understand what source may have been used to
generate the
suggestion.

Examples where auto assist can suggest replies include:


Advising the customer on buying a product or service sold by
your company

Explaining a business policy to the customer
Helping the customer troubleshoot a problem with a product


Examples of procedures where auto assist can suggest replies and
actions include:



Checking the status of a current order in Shopify, or canceling
and refunding
specific items or whole orders in Shopify


Querying and modifying your own internal business systems or
performing
third-party actions via API



Examples of procedures where auto assist can suggest direct agent
instructions you've
written include:


Telling an agent to check your internal stock management
system and adding a
refunded item as 'back in stock'


Instructing an agent on how to create and validate a new
user account in
your company's human resources system