Zendesk's AI Agent: Solving 80% of Support Issues

Zendesk's AI-Driven Transformation of Customer Support

Zendesk unveiled a suite of new products powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) at its AI summit on Wednesday.

These innovations are designed to fundamentally alter the company’s dependence on human support staff.

Introducing Autonomous and Co-Pilot Agents

At the core of these new features is a fully autonomous support agent.

Zendesk anticipates this agent will resolve 80% of customer support inquiries without the need for human intervention.

Complementing this will be a co-pilot agent, intended to assist human technicians with the remaining 20% of issues.

Expanding the AI Agent Ecosystem

Beyond the primary agents, Zendesk is also introducing an admin-layer agent, a voice-based agent, and an analytics agent.

This comprehensive approach aims to cover a wide spectrum of support needs.

A Shift in the Support Industry

According to Shashi Upadhyay, President of Product, Engineering and AI at Zendesk, these new agents represent a larger trend within the support sector.

He believes AI is poised to take over a significant portion of tasks traditionally performed by humans.

“The industry is evolving towards systems where AI handles the majority of the workload, rather than software designed solely for human users,” Upadhyay explained to TechCrunch.

AI Capabilities Validated by Benchmarks

Independent evaluations demonstrate the potential of current AI models to handle these tasks.

The TAU-bench, a benchmark focused on tool-calling capabilities, presents scenarios like processing product returns – a common support task.

Currently, Claude Sonnet 4.5 leads with an 85% success rate on this test.

Strategic AI Acquisitions Fuel Innovation

Zendesk’s current direction is built upon a series of AI acquisitions following a period of investor contention in 2022.

The newly launched analytics agent is directly based on the company’s acquisition of Hyperarc, finalized in July.

Previous acquisitions include Klaus, a QA and agentic service system (acquired in February 2024), and Ultimate, an automation platform (acquired in March 2024).

Positive Early Results from Customer Previews

Zendesk has been previewing the new system with select customers, and the initial feedback is encouraging.

“Customers utilizing the system have reported a five to 10 point increase in consumer satisfaction,” Upadhyay shared with TechCrunch.

Broader Trends in AI-Powered Customer Support

While Zendesk’s scale is notable, the deployment of LLMs for customer support is not entirely new.

Companies like Airbnb and Regal Theaters have already experimented with in-house chatbot solutions, often working directly with foundation model providers.

However, these systems typically focus on information retrieval rather than complex troubleshooting or independent action.

Significant Economic Implications

Successful implementation of AI-based support could have substantial economic consequences.

Zendesk’s Resolution Platform currently serves nearly 20,000 customers, processing 4.6 billion support tickets annually.

The U.S. alone employs 2.4 million customer service representatives, with even larger workforces in other nations.