Getting started with AI agents

You can begin automating customer service in just minutes with AI agents. Start with an AI agent that answers customer questions using content from trusted knowledge sources. From there, you can move on to more advanced features such as goal-orientedgenerative procedures, scripteddialogues, authorizedactions, andAPI integrationswith systems you already use. Through it all,advanced analyticsare available to help you measure your automation success.


What's my plan?







All Suites

Team, Growth, Professional, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus










Support

Team, Professional, or Enterprise










Usage of AI agent functionality is measured
through automated resolutions. Each account includes
an allowance of automated resolutions based on their plan.
You can begin automating customer service in just minutes with AI agents. Start with an
AI agent that answers customer questions using content from trusted knowledge sources.
From there, you can move on to more advanced features such as goal-oriented generative procedures, scripted dialogues, authorized actions, and API integrations with systems you already use. Through it
all, advanced analytics are available to help you
measure your automation success.
This article gives you an overview of how to start using the most important AI agent
functionality.
This article contains the following topics:

Step 1: Optimize your help center content for AI agents
Step 2: Configure the channels you want your AI agent to work on
Step 3: Create your AI agent
Step 4: Configure your AI agent to power more complex automation (Optional)
Step 5: Activate your AI agent on your chosen channels
Step 6: Monitor your AI agent’s performance



Step 1: Optimize your help center content for AI agents

During conversations with customers, AI agents can use content from your trusted
knowledge sources, like your Zendesk help center or an external knowledge base, to
generate responses to customer questions. The better your content is, the better
your AI agents’ responses will be.
If you're just getting started with your help center, first review tickets and other
resources to find issues to populate it. See Best practices for finding customer issues to start your
knowledge base.
If you already have a help center, consider optimizing your content. See Optimizing your knowledge content for generative AI.



Step 2: Configure the channels you want your AI agent to work on

AI agents work on messaging, email, API, web form, and voice (EAP) channels to
deliver answers to customers. But before they can do that, you need to set up the
channels you want your AI agent to work on.
If you haven't already configured these channels, see the following resources:


Messaging: Getting started with messaging for your
website, help center, and mobile apps


Email: A complete guide to understanding email in
Zendesk


API: Managing API token access to the Zendesk
API


Web form: Understanding and optimizing ticket
forms


Voice: Activating the voice channel and configuring
general settings





Step 3: Create your AI agent

With your knowledge sources optimized and your channels configured, it’s time to
create your AI agent. As part of the creation process, you’ll:

Select the brand and knowledge sources the AI agent should use.
Personalize the AI agent, including defining a name, tone of voice, and
supported languages.
Customize the AI agent’s default system replies.
Activate the AI agent on the channels it should be able to interact with
customers on. (Optional)

See Creating an AI agent to automatically resolve
customer issues.



Step 4: Configure your AI agent to power more complex automation (Optional)

Depending on your automation goals, you may want to configure additional settings for
your AI agent after you create it. Performing the creation flow described in the
previous section results in an AI agent that’s capable of responding to your
customers with AI-generated responses based on the knowledge sources you connect to
it. However, with additional configuration, you can power more complex workflows.
For example, you can define specific conversation topics and configure how the AI
agent should handle conversations about those topics. You can also create actions
that the AI agent is authorized to perform, integrations with other third-party
systems you use, and more.
The following configuration steps let you power more complex automation workflows:

Step 4.1: Create use cases to identify customer requests
Step 4.2: Create generative procedures or dialogues to control responses
Step 4.3: Create actions, API integrations, and entities to increase automation (Optional)
Step 4.4: Configure additional AI agent settings to fine-tune behavior



Step 4.1: Create use cases to identify customer requests

To allow the AI agent to help customers most effectively, you need to create use
cases. Use cases are the mechanism by which AI agents understand what a customer
is asking about and connect them with the right procedure or dialogue. Think of
use cases as the topics your customers need help with, such as order returns or
refund requests.
If you don’t create any use cases, the AI agent forms responses using only the
content of your connected knowledge sources, not procedures or dialogues.
See Creating use cases for AI agents to identify
what customers are asking about.



Step 4.2: Create generative procedures or dialogues to control responses

After you create use cases, you need to define the flow of the conversation that
the AI agent should have with a customer when that use case, or topic, comes up.
Conversation flows are determined by either a generative procedure, which is
more flexible, or a dialogue, which is more structured.
Generative procedures determine the general flow that an AI agent should follow
during a conversation with a customer. Procedures allow conversation flows to
adapt to a customer’s responses during a conversation with an AI agent, while
still aligning with your business policies.
See Creating generative procedures to shape
flexible conversation flows for AI agents.
Alternatively, you can create dialogues that allow the AI agent to respond to
customer requests according to scripted conversation flows. Dialogues use
defined, branching logic to determine an AI agent's responses and actions during
a conversation with a customer.
See Creating dialogues to define scripted
conversation flows for AI agents.


Note: Email AI agents can't use dialogues, and must use
generative procedures instead.

For each use case you create, you can decide whether it should trigger a more
flexible generative procedure, or else a more prescriptive dialogue. Procedures
require less setup and maintenance, but offer less direct control over very fine
details. Dialogues offer a lot of control, but require more setup and
maintenance.
See Configuring whether a use case triggers a
generative procedure or a dialogue.



Step 4.3: Create actions, API integrations, and entities to increase automation (Optional)

With your use cases created and conversation flows defined—in addition to your
connected knowledge sources—your AI agent is capable of resolving a wide range
of customer requests. However, you can make your AI agent even more effective
creating:


Actions that allow the AI agent to perform specified tasks during
conversations with customers. These can be actions based on the details of
the session or your customer relationship management (CRM) system, or API
integrations that allow you to update data outside of Zendesk using an API
you specify. See About actions in AI agents.

Entities that hold pieces of information in customer messages that
have specific meaning, such as the user’s email address. See Creating entities in conversation flows
for AI agents.




Step 4.4: Configure additional AI agent settings to fine-tune behavior

At any point, you can always continue configuring the AI agent’s settings. See
Accessing and viewing settings for AI
agents.




Step 5: Activate your AI agent on your chosen channels

At this point, your AI agent is ready to start answering a wide range of customer
questions. If you didn’t activate your AI agent during the creation flow, and
instead opted to perform more advanced configuration, now is the time to activate
your AI agent so that it can begin responding to customers.
See Activating and managing AI agents.



Step 6: Monitor your AI agent’s performance

The final and ongoing step in creating an AI agent is to monitor its performance and
continue to improve its efficiency. The Reporting dashboard gives you insights into
key automation metrics, reports on the value of AI agent outcomes, and helps you
make data-driven decisions to improve future efficiency.
See Analyzing AI agent performance with the reporting
dashboard.


{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "TechArticle",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/8724978128282",
"url": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/8724978128282",
"headline": "Getting started with AI agents",
"description": "You learn how to set up an AI agent by preparing knowledge sources, configuring channels, creating and activating the agent, and monitoring its performance.",
"articleSection": "Getting started with AI agents",
"datePublished": "2025-01-16T16:15:43+00:00",
"dateModified": "2026-06-25T19:14:59.256867+00:00",
"inLanguage": "en",
"mainEntityOfPage": {
"@type": "WebPage",
"@id": "https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/8724978128282"