Zendesk at its annual Relate conference announced its vision for the Autonomous Service Workforce, a new approach to customer service powered by its core platform.
This move replaces standard deflection-based bots with specialized artificial intelligence agents that operate across all channels and use cases and are priced solely on the outcomes Zendesk verifiably resolves.
At the center of this vision is the Zendesk Resolution Platform, a unified system that brings together data, intelligence, knowledge, workflows, and governance. Trained on roughly 20 billion ticket interactions, the platform operates through the Resolution Learning Loop, which captures insights from every interaction to close knowledge gaps and improve automated responses in real time.
"The era of the chatbot—the era of frustration and deflection—is over. We are entering the age of the Autonomous Service Workforce," said Tom Eggemeier, CEO of Zendesk, in a statement. "We believe every business will soon run on specialized AI agents that work alongside human experts as one unified team. These agents will be more than just code; they will be team members, held to the same high standards of accountability as any human. Our vision is to put the power to build this workforce into the hands of every enterprise, on one elegant platform. Whether those agents are crafted by Zendesk, by our partners, or by your own teams, they will all speak with one voice. We are providing a future where AI is the foundation and human experts are the architects."
This transition is powered by new capabilities that turn service into a coordinated, self-improving operation. They include the following:
- Agent Builder, a no-code interface that enables companies to build, test, deploy, and optimize custom AI agents tailored to their unique policies, workflows, data, and business logic. Agent Builder is designed to help organizations automate more complex front, middle, and back office service work while maintaining governance and oversight from a single control plane.
- Zendesk AI Agents now operate across messaging, email, voice, and AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini, maintaining shared context and continuity across interactions. Zendesk has expanded this functionality in part through its acquisition of Forethought. These agents are designed to operate across Zendesk and external service environments, including through the new Zendesk MCP Server, which connects Zendesk tickets, knowledge, and customer data to external AI platforms to deliver personalized, verified answers wherever customers seek help.
- Expanded support for voice AI agents, including multi-brand and multilingual support across more than 60 languages. The agents can now switch languages mid-conversation while maintaining full context and continuity, strengthening Zendesk's cloud contact center offering powered by Amazon Connect.
- Fully autonomous AI agents for Employee Service purpose-built for internal support. Powered by Zendesk's Unleash acquisition, these agents operate in tools such as Slack and Microsoft Teams, search across enterprise systems, and enforce source-level permissions so employees only receive answers they are authorized to access.
- New Copilot experiences for agents, admins, knowledge teams, and analysts. These include Agent Copilot, connecting to internal and external sources to generate procedures and take action on at least 30 percent of tickets; Admin Copilot, to help administrators identify operational issues, recommend fixes, and apply workflow changes in real time; Knowledge Copilot, which identifies gaps, outdated content, and inconsistencies based on real customer conversations; and Analyst Copilot, to help teams spot trends and understand root causes through a new agentic analytics experience.
- Quality Score, which analyzes 100 percent of human and AI interactions, giving teams an objective view of service quality and surfacing opportunities to improve performance in real time.
- Context Graph, the operational memory layer that powers Zendesk's agentic analytics experience by capturing past analyses, agentic reasoning, and performance context to improve future recommendations.
- Expanded Knowledge Graph connectors to sources such as SharePoint, Google Drive, Notion, Guru, Contentful, Document360, and more.
- Action Flows for AI Agents, allowing teams to build integrated workflows for AI agents directly inside Action Builder. This capability helps AI agents take action across systems with greater governance and orchestration.
- A library of 40 prebuilt workflow connectors, for systems such as Okta, Claude, and OneDrive, with more than 100 additional apps planned by the end of the year.
- Support for Model Context Protocol (MCP), including client and server experiences. With Zendesk MCP Client, AI Agents and Agent Copilot can connect to external systems once and automatically expand their capabilities as new MCP tools are added. With Zendesk MCP Server, businesses will be able to connect Zendesk tickets, knowledge, and other data to external AI systems in a trusted and governed way.
- An outcome-based pricing model in which every resolution for which Zendesk charges is verified both by the AI agent and a dedicated AI evaluation model.