Zendesk

Set up an AI agent for Zendesk. It works tickets like a teammate, drafting or sending replies and tagging and routing, trained on your help center and macros.

eesel's AI agent for Zendesk works inside your Zendesk account like another agent on your team. It drafts or sends ticket replies, tags and routes tickets, and learns from your help center, macros and past tickets.

Invite your AI teammate into Zendesk and it works like any other agent on your team. It reads your help center, your macros and your past tickets, so it already knows how your team answers before it handles anything. Then it picks up tickets the way you tell it to: drafting replies for a person to check, answering the routine ones itself, tagging and routing the rest.

In this example the agent read the ticket history, checked the order, and drafted a public reply.

A Zendesk ticket about missing order items, assigned to eesel AI, with the public reply it drafted.

Set up eesel in Zendesk

1

Ask your agent to connect Zendesk

Open the chat in your dashboard and tell it what you want. It walks you through connecting. It asks for whatever it needs, and confirms when it is done. Prefer to click? Integrations in the left sidebar has the same options.

The agent offers two ways to connect Zendesk.

2

Choose Quick start or Full connection

• Quick start. Give your Zendesk subdomain and it reads your public help center. No sign-in, but no tickets, macros, triggers or actions.

• Full connection. Your agent sends you a link to approve in Zendesk, and everything unlocks: past tickets and macros as knowledge, triggers, and actions.

Start with either. Moving to a full connection later keeps your help center and adds tickets, macros, triggers and actions.

A full connection has a Choose what to import section, answered before you approve anything in Zendesk. Everything is imported by default. Untick Help Center, Macros or Past tickets and eesel never downloads that source. If your agent connects Zendesk for you in chat, tell it which sources to leave out before you open the link. To bring a source in later, turn it back on in its settings or ask your agent in chat.

Connecting a specific brand

Each brand connects separately, and each can go to a different agent with its own triggers and actions.

1. Sign in to Zendesk first, as an agent, at https://<your-account-subdomain>.zendesk.com. If you see the end-user form, click Switch to agent sign-in. If you are not signed in, Zendesk sends you to your default brand. It then connects that brand, not the one you wanted. So sign in first, then start the connection.

2. Start a full connection for the agent this brand belongs to, in chat or under Integrations > Zendesk.

3. Give the brand subdomain when asked, the part before .zendesk.com, for example your-brand. eesel imports tickets and help center articles from that brand only.

Click Zendesk under Integrations to see every connected brand and add or remove them.

Two Zendesk brands connected to the same workspace.

3

Approve it in Zendesk

For a full connection, your agent hands you a link.

The agent posts the approval link in the chat.

Open it and sign in with your Zendesk staff login. Zendesk calls this the agent sign-in. If you land on the end user form, click Switch to agent sign-in. Zendesk then asks you to allow eesel AI, and lists what it can read and do. The window closes itself once you approve.

The Zendesk staff sign-in screen.

This approval is the one step a person has to do in the browser. If Claude Code or a script is doing the setup, it hands you the link and waits.

4

Check what it can read

Back in the dashboard, Integrations > Zendesk shows the connection and everything it pulled in. Each source has its own toggle, so you can leave a source out without disconnecting. Each source shows a document count once its sync is done. From a terminal, eesel status lists the integration as connected with its source counts.

Each source has its own toggle and its own document count.

5

Try it on a real ticket

Before you automate anything, ask your agent to work a ticket in the chat. Ask it a question your customers ask, or ask for a draft on one of your open tickets. It reads the ticket, searches your help center, macros and past tickets, and shows you the reply it would send.

Ask for a draft on a real ticket and your agent reads the ticket, checks your knowledge and writes the reply.

Under the draft it names the help center article it used, then asks whether to post the draft as an internal note or send it as a public reply.

Every draft names its sources.

6

Correct it once and it remembers

Tell it what was wrong, right there in the chat. Too formal, missing a step, wrong sign-off, wrong email address. It rewrites the draft.

Ask for the changes in plain words and it rewrites the draft, then offers to save them as preferences.

Say yes and it writes the corrections into its own instructions, so every later draft follows them.

It confirms what it saved and links you to the full instructions.

Check it worked. Your Instructions page holds the rules in plain sentences, and you can edit them there. From a terminal, eesel instructions prints the same text.

The corrections written out as a rule on your Instructions page.

7

Create your first automation

Connecting alone does not start your agent. It needs an automation first. Tell it what to handle and it creates an automation: a Zendesk trigger plus instructions. In the instructions you describe which tickets it should handle and what to do with them. It leaves the rest alone.

Ask in chat for the automation you want, and the agent builds it.

It shows up on your Automations page, switched on and ready. From a terminal, eesel automations lists it as on.

The new automation on your Automations page, switched on.

Open the automation to see or change what it does. The trigger event is fixed when the automation is created. So a new automation is required for each different trigger event.

The automation editor, where you change the instructions it follows.

8

Check automation work in Zendesk

Open Zendesk and look at the next ticket that comes in to see what the automation did there. In this example it left a drafted reply as an internal note, signed by eesel AI, for a teammate to review and send.

The drafted reply waiting as an internal note on the ticket.

From Claude Code, Cursor or a terminal. The same setup works as commands: eesel login, then eesel integrations connect zendesk (a person approves it in the browser; if the receipt has no link, ask eesel chat for one), eesel integrations download start to copy your sources in, and eesel automations to see and switch on the automations. Trigger keys for this page are in the Triggers table below. Full command reference: The eesel CLI. Step-by-step: Set up from Claude Code or the terminal. From an MCP client: Claude Code and MCP clients.

Sources, triggers and actions

Sources

Sources are what it learns from:

Source	Description	Requires
Help Center	Your support articles. Filter by category, include or exclude drafts	Quick start or Full connection
Macros	Shared macros, optionally personal ones too	Full connection
Tickets	Past tickets, defaulting to solved and closed across all time. The first import is a sample of up to 1,000 recent tickets. Ask your agent, or set a filter, to import more. Filter by status and date, with optional PII redaction	Full connection

Every other integration on the agent is also a source, so a Zendesk reply can draw on Confluence, your website, and your files at once. See Integrations.

Your agent answers from every source that is on. If your ticket history is not something it should learn from, test data, an old product, another team's queue, switch the Tickets source off on the integration page. Telling it in its instructions to ignore past tickets does not stop it finding them; the switch does.

Triggers

Triggers are the Zendesk events an automation can run on:

Trigger	Fires when	Best for	Key
When a customer sends a message	A customer sends any message on a ticket	Full automation	zendesk_ticket_commented
Only on the customer's first message	A ticket is opened, before any agent replies	Triage and routing	zendesk_triage_first_message
When a ticket is resolved	A ticket is marked solved or closed	Post-resolution follow-up	zendesk_ticket_closed
Call @eesel in an internal note	A teammate mentions @eesel in a note	On-demand help	zendesk_internal_note_supervisor

Actions

Actions are what it can do:

	Action	What it does
Respond	Send ticket reply	Sends a reply to the customer
	Leave internal note	Adds a private note only your team sees. Start here: the agent drafts, a person sends. Every note ends with a short "Left by eesel AI" line linking to the run in your dashboard
	Draft ticket reply	Writes a reply and holds it for a person to approve. Nothing reaches the customer until someone approves it in the dashboard
Manage	Add tags	Tags the ticket
	Create ticket	Creates a new ticket
	Assign to teammate / Assign to team	Routes the ticket to a person or a team
	Close ticket	Marks the ticket solved
	Update ticket	Changes fields like status or priority
Look up	Read ticket / Search tickets / List tickets	Reads and finds tickets
	Look up customer / Look up company	Finds customer and organization details
	Get ticket fields / Get ticket field options	Reads fields and their allowed values, so tags get set correctly
	List groups	Lists the teams available for assignment

You stay in control the whole way. Adjust your AI agent's access to knowledge and its action permissions to your liking. See Actions and Approvals.

Zendesk Messenger

Zendesk Messenger is the live chat widget on your website and help center. Connect it and the same agent that handles your tickets answers chats in real time from the same knowledge, hands over to a human when it should, and can open a ticket from the conversation. See the Zendesk Messenger guide.

The same agent answering live in the Zendesk Messenger widget on your site.

Limitations

• Quick start reads your help center only. Tickets, macros, triggers and actions need a full connection.

• The first check cannot see custom ticket fields. Filter on tags, groups or brands instead. A Zendesk trigger can add a tag from a custom field value.

• One trigger per automation. The trigger event is fixed when the automation is created, so each trigger needs its own automation.

• Turning a source back on does not import it. Ask your agent in chat to import it, and say which tickets you want.

• Replies post as the Zendesk user who approved the connection. Change that user's name in Zendesk to change what customers see.

• Attachments are limited. It reads up to five images or PDFs per turn. Videos, zip files and other formats are ignored.

• No sender blocklist. The first check cannot see the requester's email address. To skip a sender or domain, add a tag such as no_ai with a Zendesk trigger, and tell the automation to skip that tag.

Troubleshooting

Agent not responding to tickets?

Check that an automation is enabled on the agent's Automations page, that its instructions cover the tickets you expect, that the Zendesk connection is still authorized, and that at least one action is enabled.

Macros or Tickets greyed out?

These sources need a full connection. If you connected with Quick start (help center only), switch to a full connection to unlock macros, tickets, and actions.

Setup form keeps reappearing after connecting?

Re-run the connection and confirm you granted every requested permission; a dropped permission leaves the connection incomplete. For a specific brand, sign in to Zendesk with your staff login first. See Connecting a specific brand in Set up eesel in Zendesk.

Help Center not syncing?

Make sure the URL is right and publicly accessible, and that the Help Center source's draft filter matches what you expect, since drafts are excluded unless you include them. For a failing full connection, check you have admin permissions in Zendesk, then disconnect and reconnect.

FAQ

How do I add an AI agent to Zendesk?

Ask your agent in the eesel dashboard chat to connect Zendesk, choose a full connection, and approve it in Zendesk with your staff login. Then ask it to create an automation, for example "leave a drafted reply as an internal note on every new ticket". Connecting alone does not reply to anyone: your agent does not act until you enable a trigger and an action, so you can test in the dashboard first. The steps are in Set up eesel in Zendesk.

How long does it take to set up an AI agent in Zendesk?

One approval in Zendesk, then one automation, which you can ask your agent to create in chat. Your help center, macros and a first sample of up to 1,000 recent tickets import in the background, so you can test in the chat while they arrive.

Does the Zendesk AI agent send replies or only draft them?

Either, depending on how you set it up. Leave internal note writes a private note your team reads, edits and sends. Draft ticket reply writes the reply and holds it until a person approves it. Send ticket reply sends to the customer.

Many teams start with internal notes, then move to sending replies once they are happy. You can turn on both a reply and an internal note and tell it in your instructions when to use each, for example "always reply to the customer and leave an internal note summarizing the resolution."

Replies and internal notes post as the Zendesk user you signed in as during setup. To change the name customers see, change that user's name in Zendesk.

Can I control which Zendesk tickets the AI agent responds to?

Yes, for tickets. In the automation's instructions, describe the tickets you want in plain language (a group, a tag, a language) and what to do with them. The agent only runs on those, and the automation's activity shows every ticket it skipped, with the reason. You can also set Wait before processing, up to 15 minutes, so your own Zendesk triggers and spam rules run before your agent looks at the ticket. Live chat takes every conversation, because a customer in chat is waiting for an answer.

Can the AI agent classify and route Zendesk tickets?

Yes. Describe your categories and where each one goes in the automation's instructions. It can add tags, assign to a teammate or a group, and change fields like status and priority. Only on the customer's first message is the trigger built for triage. It runs when a ticket is opened, before anyone replies.

Can I connect Zendesk to Claude or ChatGPT?

Yes, through eesel. Once Zendesk is connected, you can talk to your eesel agent from Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor, and it works with your Zendesk tickets, macros and help center. See Use eesel from Claude and other assistants, Use eesel from ChatGPT and Claude Code and MCP clients.

What reporting do I get for the Zendesk AI agent?

The Activity page lists every ticket your agent handled, with what it searched, each action it took, who approved it, and its reasoning. Skipped tickets are listed with the reason. The Reports page shows volume, triggers, and approvals over time. You can also ask your agent for a written report, or put one on a schedule.

How does the Zendesk AI agent get better over time?

Correct it in chat and it writes the rule into its own instructions. Run the Simulation skill to replay past tickets and score the gap against what your team actually sent. Skills like Analyze ticket trends and Review agent setup can do this on a schedule.

Can the Zendesk AI agent read screenshots and attachments?

Yes. When a customer attaches an image or a PDF, a screenshot or a receipt for example, your agent reads it along with the ticket. It looks at up to five attachments per turn. Videos, zip files and other formats are ignored.

Related pages

• Helpdesk for the job your teammate takes on in a ticket queue

• Automations and Schedules for triggers, instructions and schedules

• Actions and Approvals for choosing what your agent may do

• Integrations overview for how sources, triggers and actions fit together

• Set up from Claude Code or the terminal