AWS Launches New Nova AI Models And a Service That Gives Customers More Control

Zendesk Says Its New AI Agent Can Solve 80% Of Support Issues

Zendesk says its new AI agent can solve 80% of support issues, marking a major leap forward in automated customer service. Announced at its 2025 AI Summit, the new system represents Zendesk’s most ambitious use of large language models (LLMs) to reduce dependence on human technicians.

Image Credits:NurPhoto / Getty Images

A New Era Of Autonomous Support

At the heart of Zendesk’s announcement is an autonomous support agent that can handle the majority of customer inquiries on its own — no human needed. The company claims the system resolves around 80% of support issues automatically, leaving the remaining 20% to be managed by human-assisted agents.

This AI agent is joined by a co-pilot agent for live technician assistance, an admin-layer agent for backend tasks, a voice-based agent for real-time conversations, and a powerful analytics agent for insights and performance tracking.

AI Replacing Routine Human Work

According to Shashi Upadhyay, Zendesk’s President of Product, Engineering, and AI, the rollout is part of a broader industry shift.

“The world’s going to shift from software that’s built for human users to a system where AI actually does most of the work,” Upadhyay told TechCrunch.

Independent research supports Zendesk’s confidence. TAU-bench, a leading benchmark for AI tool-use, includes a test simulating customer returns — a scenario common in support centers. The current top performer, Claude Sonnet 4.5, successfully resolves 85% of those test cases.

Years Of AI Investment Paying Off

Zendesk’s journey toward full AI automation didn’t happen overnight. After a turbulent investor fight in 2022, the company doubled down on AI innovation through a series of strategic acquisitions.

• The new analytics agent is powered by Hyperarc, acquired in July 2025.

• The QA and automation tool Klaus joined Zendesk in February 2024.

• The agentic workflow platform Ultimate was acquired the following March.

Together, these acquisitions have built the foundation for Zendesk’s Resolution Platform, which now powers billions of support interactions.

Early Customer Results Look Promising

Zendesk has already been testing its AI agent with existing enterprise clients — and the results are encouraging.

“For customers using it, consumer satisfaction has been up by five to ten points,” said Upadhyay.

With nearly 20,000 companies relying on Zendesk to handle 4.6 billion support tickets each year, the scale of potential impact is massive.

Broader Impact On The Customer Service Industry

Zendesk isn’t alone in pursuing AI-driven customer service. Giants like Airbnb and Regal Theaters have experimented with in-house AI chatbots, though most are limited to simple information retrieval. Zendesk’s new AI agent takes it a step further — offering complex troubleshooting and autonomous action-taking, areas where previous chatbots fell short.

If successful, this could reshape the entire customer service workforce. In the U.S. alone, there are 2.4 million customer service representatives, with even larger numbers worldwide. As AI systems like Zendesk’s take on routine support tasks, companies may need to redefine human roles around empathy, complex problem-solving, and oversight rather than repetitive tasks.