Zendesk and Ada, a provider of artificial intelligence (AI) customer service chatbots, today announced an integration designed to improve the customer service experience for customers and agents alike by enabling AI-powered chatbots and human agents to work together to resolve service issues.
The integration brings together Zendesk Chat and Ada’s AI technology for training chatbots. Chatbots can be trained to fulfill simple tasks while simultaneously identifying when a user should be transferred to a live agent. This transfer occurs when more complex or sensitive issues arise, at which time the chatbot will direct the user to a human agent. The human agent will be provided with a complete history of the conversation with the bot to ensure that the transition is seamless.
“Chatbots are great at automating simple yet time-consuming tasks, but when it comes to those more complex or sensitive issues, humans are still needed,” says Polomi Batra, product marketing manager at Zendesk. “Ada’s bot can determine if a conversation should be handed over to a live agent. Using the Conversations API, the conversations can seamlessly be moved from the bot to a queue with the live agents, where the agent would have full history of the conversation that took place with the bot.”
Batra notes that Zendesk’s chatbot solution gives customers the flexibility to integrate third-party chatbots or their own AI-powered bots into Zendesk Chat, through Zendesk Chat’s Conversations API.
“One of the things that was very important to us with our chatbot solution was providing a seamless experience for customers to hand over conversations from bots to their live agents,” Batra says.
“Automation is only as effective as the customer experience it enables. That's why the bot-to-live-human handoff is an integral piece of this partnership,” says Mike Murchison, CEO at Ada. “Once the Ada bot has determined a customer needs to speak with a human, it seamlessly transfers the conversation to a live agent who can support the customer and successfully resolve their issue. The live agent receives a full transcript of the bot’s interactions with the customer, so the customer doesn’t have to repeat responses and steps, and can be helped immediately. The live agent can seamlessly take over the conversation where the Ada bot left off.”