Zendesk launches CX solutions to strengthen AI-human collaboration

Customer experience (CX) solutions provider Zendesk has rolled out several artificial intelligence (AI)-powered tools designed to enhance collaboration between human agents and AI. These new offerings include omnichannel AI agents, an enhanced agent copilot, and a customisable agent builder, all aimed at improving service delivery and scaling operations effectively. With these innovations, Zendesk aims to help businesses provide top-tier customer support that is easy to implement and drives tangible business outcomes.

Among the key updates is a fully integrated voice solution that allows agents to deliver faster, more personalised, and human-like interactions. The voice solution is equipped with enhanced features such as advanced call monitoring, intelligent routing, and improved queue management, enabling human agents to concentrate on resolving more complex customer inquiries. Zendesk has been operating in India since 2016, working with businesses across industries such as finance, e-commerce, healthcare, retail, and edutech. With its AI-driven CX solutions, the company sees significant potential in India.

Zendesk's CEO, Tom Eggemeier, emphasised that AI is bridging the gap between high-quality service at reduced costs while offering more personalised experiences. He pointed out that Zendesk’s new AI-driven voice capabilities enable human agents to collaborate with AI efficiently, resulting in quicker issue resolution, higher customer satisfaction, and valuable business insights.

Zendesk’s Future of AI-Powered CX Report highlights that 89% of CX leaders in India expect significant changes in the customer experience landscape over the next three years, with 83% predicting that AI will power most customer interactions in that timeframe. Despite the increasing shift towards digital-first experiences, phone support remains a critical channel for complex customer issues, making omnichannel support essential to meet customer demands.

Maureen Chong, Zendesk's Regional Vice President for Asia, pointed out that Indian consumers continue to expect businesses to offer a variety of communication channels, including email, chat, phone, and self-service. The challenge for companies today, she explained, is to balance cost management with delivering exceptional customer service across all these channels. Zendesk’s AI solutions provide an integrated approach to handling increasing ticket volumes and complex issues while improving overall agent productivity.

To address rising ticket volumes and the growing complexity of customer service inquiries, Zendesk has introduced AI-powered voice innovations aimed at transforming traditional call centers into modern, omnichannel service hubs. The new voice features allow companies to quickly route and resolve calls, provide in-depth reporting on voice metrics, and use AI agents, powered by Poly.ai, to autonomously resolve up to half of all customer calls. Additional AI-powered capabilities like transcription and summary tools help human agents resolve calls more quickly and accurately, while comprehensive QA insights ensure that service gaps are identified and addressed.

In a rapidly evolving landscape where automated interactions are becoming the norm, Zendesk’s expanded AI agent capabilities allow businesses to fully harness the power of AI by delivering instant, accurate responses and addressing more sophisticated customer inquiries across all communication channels. A new AI agent builder provides companies with the ability to customize AI interactions with no required training, ensuring that businesses can deploy and maintain AI agents quickly and efficiently.

Zendesk’s enhanced agent copilot feature takes the guesswork out of high-value customer interactions by anticipating customer needs, offering proactive recommendations, and performing routine tasks autonomously. With business procedures automatically synced, agents are always kept up-to-date with the latest workflows. In voice interactions, the agent copilot offers instant insights, including customer sentiment and intent, while quickly retrieving answers from the company’s knowledge base to help agents resolve complex, high-value customer issues more effectively.

These enhancements also include AI-powered business intelligence tools, which provide actionable insights for CX teams to make real-time adjustments and optimise customer interactions. These insights allow businesses to pinpoint the reasons behind customer inquiries with greater detail, refine workflows, and improve overall customer satisfaction through more efficient issue resolution.

Earlier this year, Zendesk launched Zendesk Ventures, a global venture fund aimed at supporting AI-first startups. This fund provides emerging companies with capital, strategic partnerships, and access to Zendesk’s expertise in customer experience and artificial intelligence. Recent investments include conversation AI company PolyAI and customer feedback platform unitQ, adding to Zendesk’s portfolio of innovative solutions designed to advance customer service capabilities.