Intelligent triage use cases and workflows

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Intelligent triage is an AI-powered feature that automatically detects what a ticket is about (its intent), what language it's written in, and whether the customer's message is positive or negative (its sentiment). You can use this information to route tickets to the right groups automatically, create views to group similar types of requests, and report on trends in the types of tickets your customers are submitting.

This article describes example use cases to help you better understand how intelligent triage can streamline your workflows and support your business. Specifically, you'll learn how to use intelligent triage to automatically deflect tickets, route tickets to the right groups, reduce resolution time and touches, and forward information to external parties.

As you read through the use cases provided here, remember that you can always modify or expand on them to better support your specific workflows.

For more information about intelligent triage, see Intelligent triage resources.

This article contains the following topics:

Deflect: Redirect customers to self-serve or correct destination

Route: Send tickets to a specific language queue from a general queue

Reduce: Proactively request more information

Forward: Use webhooks to pass information to external resources

Related articles:

Automatically detecting customer intent, language, and sentiment

Analyzing intelligent triage results and taking action

Using intelligent triage to identify and act on ticket escalations

Note: When creating triggers, views, or reports in Admin Center or Explore, intelligent triage prediction values are available only in English. However, intelligent triage is capable of evaluating content in the languages listed here.

Deflect: Redirect customers to self-serve or correct destination

Scenario: An end user is contacting you about a process where submitting a ticket or contacting support is not the best course of action. Instead, the required information is provided on your website or some other source, meaning the user can self-serve by following a process or other documentation that’s readily available.

Examples:

Subscription cancellations

User profile update requests

Refund, return policy, and warranty questions

Job applications

How to use intelligent triage to address the scenario:

Identify any intents that are frequently applied to the tickets submitted in the scenario described above (for example, "Cancel subscription"). If helpful, you can group multiple related intents together (like "Refund request" and "Refund via specific channel").

Determine the necessary confidence level that the intent must have for you to be comfortable taking automatic action on it. In other words, are false positives acceptable, where the end user can reply if they still need help?

Create a trigger that sends an automated reply to the end user. Include instructions on how they can complete the task, a link to where they need to go in their account or app to complete the task, or a link to an existing document that answers their question.

Leave the conversation open-ended in case the intent was accidentally mismatched, but set the ticket to a Solved status.

Route: Send tickets to a specific language queue from a general queue

Scenario: All or most end users submit tickets to a common queue, with tickets from different languages ending up in the same queue.

Examples:

All end users use the same contact form or email address, regardless of language

End users use the source platform in one language, but their preferred language is different from the current language of the platform or browser

How to use intelligent triage to address the scenario:

Option 1: Create a trigger (leaving out any intent conditions) that routes tickets to the appropriate agents or group based on language (and potentially language confidence, if necessary).

Option 2: Use other integrations to reference the ticket’s language value and take an action based on that value. For example, if you currently translate macros using dynamic content, you could instead use Liquid markup to determine which language the macro should use based on the intelligent triage Language field. This approach is useful if the requester's language isn't already set in their profile (for example, if they're contacting support from an unregistered email, or in a different language than the one they have set in their profile).

Reduce: Proactively request more information

Scenario: Customers contact support, but don’t include the details required to resolve the request. Agents have to reply asking for the necessary information rather than being able to solve the request during the first touch.

Examples:

Return/replacement requests where the customer needs to provide an address

Processes where the customer must include a purchase order or invoice number

How to use intelligent triage to address the scenario:

Identify any intents that are frequently applied to the tickets submitted in the scenario described above (for example, "Return order"). If helpful, you can group multiple related intents together.

Determine the necessary confidence level that the intent must have for you to be comfortable taking automatic action on it.

Create a trigger that sends an automated reply to the end user, prompting them for the required details if they haven't already included them. This gives the customer the opportunity to reply before the agent sees the ticket, and makes it more likely that the agent can solve the ticket in a single touch.

Watch the video below for an example of how to set up intelligent triage to address this scenario.

Intelligent triage: How to proactively request more information from your users in tickets (3:10)

Forward: Use webhooks to pass information to external resources

Scenario: Customers contact support for a request that requires involvement from an external team or system. Agents must manually forward these requests to the appropriate destinations.

Examples:

End users reach out to customer support to change their email address or other contact details, but that’s owned by a team outside of Zendesk

Certain requests require compliance or other processes to be followed outside of Zendesk

How to use intelligent triage to address the scenario:

Identify any intents that are frequently applied to the tickets submitted in the scenario described above (for example, "Change email address"). If helpful, you can group multiple related intents together.

Determine the necessary confidence level that the intent must have for you to be comfortable taking automatic action on it.

Create a trigger that sends an automated reply that does both of the following:

Informs the requester that their ticket has been received.

Uses a webhook, email target, or other means from within the product to forward the relevant details from the customer’s request to the appropriate external team. For example, you might send an email to an external team that includes the requester’s name, email address, subject, and original message. The external team can then process the customer’s request in their system.