Updated on September 8, 2023
Zendesk acquired Zopim in 2014 to rebrand it as Zendesk Chat. So, what IS Zendesk chat?
Zendesk chat is a live chat software popular with businesses of all sizes worldwide. Zendesk chat also refers to software enabling your customer support team to engage with customers with automated bots. Customers are three times as likely to buy from your business when you reach out with a chat, making chat a critical business aspect.
But most project managers, customer support managers, and executives are still unclear about Zendesk chat functionality. Here are some questions that will help you if you are involved in a customer-facing role:
Does Zendesk Chat come with a chatbot?
Yes, Zendesk chat comes equipped with an Answer Bot chatbot that directs your customers to appropriate help articles based on their queries.
Answer Bot searches for keywords within a customer chat query and guides the user to a choice of help center articles. It uses deep learning to comprehend the context of a user query and map the query to an appropriate answer through a help article.
Answer bot uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand the underlying concept of every help article. These concepts are then mapped in detail, such that when a user asks a query, the bot matches the query to the appropriate help article.
For example,
User: How do I track my order?
Answer Bot:
- Order tracking
- How do I find my order ID
The accuracy of the Answer bot is tuned by Zendesk development teams alone and not by any user admins or agents. The developers make use of a global control called a threshold knob. This aspect determines how close two concepts must be on a ‘concept map’ to be regarded as identical concepts. Based on such programming, Zendesk chat’s Answer Bot decides how precisely it will categorize concepts within a help center knowledge base. Hence it will affect the number of article recommendations it will provide for every user query.
The Answer Bot can be set up using Flow Builder, which allows users to chart out the conversation between customers and the bot. Once created, the flow can be published in multiple languages without code.
You can also read, How to Create a Chatbot Using Zendesk Articles?
Zendesk Chat’s Answer Bot FAQs
Here are a few commonly asked questions that help customer support managers and project managers understand the Answer Bot better:
Does end-user feedback help improve Answer Bot accuracy?
While end-user feedback cannot be directly used to enhance Answer Bot’s performance, it is used by the data science team at Zendesk for global improvements.
What can you do to improve Answer Bot accuracy?
As a business user, you can alter the title of a help article along with the first 75 words to clarify a significant concept. You can even use labels to sort articles into sub-topics to better help the Answer Bot map concepts.
You can also track your Answer Bot to determine which articles perform well and which do not. Ensure that you structure your content well. For example, you need to phrase every title as a question or short sentence. You can also use machine learning and article usage data to enhance your knowledge base.
Can you train an Answer Bot as a user?
No, You cannot train the Answer Bot by any process as a user. The Answer Bot comes pre-trained to understand natural language.
Although you can reorganize your help center content to help the Answer Bot be more precise. (as mentioned above)
Is a keyword search better than the Answer Bot’s search?
It depends. Zendesk Chat’s Answer Bots are generally more precise than a keyword search when you ask the query in a complete sentence.
The Answer Bot defaults to a keyword when the search is based on a single word.
Advantages of Zendesk Chat’s Answer Bot over third-party chatbot integrations
The Answer Bot is an excellent tool for businesses once you understand the clear benefits it has to offer your enterprise:
- The Answer Bot comes pre-trained to answer your customer’s queries.
- You will only need to build your help center articles to ensure that you answer all your customer’s queries.
- The Zendesk development team will undertake and fulfill any development efforts that you need to stay updated with the market trends.
- The Answer Bot has massive research and development resources to stay relevant to the current market.
When will you need third-party chatbot integrations?
The Answer Bot by Zendesk Chat is a robust chatbot that uses a help-center knowledge base to guide users to answers.
You can use chatbot builders if you want to program your chatbot beyond just using an article base. Zendesk provides two options to obtain third-party chatbots:
- Zendesk Marketplace with over 50 chatbot apps and chatbot vendors to use for support and chat
- Sunshine Conversations Marketplace with over 20 chatbots focused on omnichannel reach
Kommunicate’s Zendesk Chatbot Integration
On Zendesk Marketplace, Kommunicate’s Zendesk Chatbot can help supercharge your business with endless chatbot capabilities without code complexity.
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Here are a few reasons why a third-party chatbot integration for Zendesk makes a lot of sense:
- The ability to scale personalized customer service using an automated chatbot driven by AI and Natural Language Processing.
- You can spare your agents the time it takes to learn a new dashboard using Kommunicate’s zero code integration to the Zendesk Dashboard
- Leverage the best of both worlds with synergistic automation and a human approach. Automated chatbots can handle repetitive queries with live agents using empathy and critical thinking to provide a superior customer experience. Reduce customer inquiry response rate by 30%.
- Kommunicate’s intuitive dashboard is easy to understand, taking the guesswork out of customer service and driving the right business outcomes.
- Seamless transfer from AI bot to live agent when the bot faces complex queries
Does your business need Answer Bot or a third-party chatbot integration?
If your business has frequent customer queries which you can resolve with help articles, Zendesk Chat’s Answer Bot is the solution. If you need more sophisticated tools to solve customer queries, then third-party chatbot integrations like Kommunicate’s Chatbot are essential. While you can decide based on your enterprise needs, a meaningful investment in customer experience always pays the best dividends.
Here’s a quick video
At Kommunicate, we are envisioning a world-beating customer support solution to empower the new era of customer support. We would love to have you on board to have a first-hand experience of Kommunicate. You can signup here and start delighting your customers right away.
