Sistava

Zendesk Agent Copilot: How to Turn On Auto Assist

How-to — — by Mahmoud Zalt

How to switch on auto assist in Zendesk, write the procedures it follows, add the tag it needs, and fix the reason suggestions never appear.

Auto assist is the feature that reads a ticket and suggests to your agent what to say next, or what to do next. It is one of the more useful pieces of Zendesk's AI, and it is also the one with the highest rate of people concluding it is broken when in fact it is waiting on two things nobody told them about.

Those two things are a written procedure and a tag on the ticket. This guide covers the switch, the procedure, the tag, and the order to do them in. If you only remember one thing, remember that switching it on is step one of five, not the whole job.

What is agent copilot and what does it include?

Agent copilot is Zendesk's umbrella for the AI features that help a human agent rather than replace one. Their overview article names nine of them, and auto assist is only one. Knowing the list matters, because some of what people want from auto assist is actually a different feature sitting next to it.

Zendesk's documentation lists agent copilot as an add-on called Copilot. Their auto assist article also states a channel boundary that is easy to miss: auto assist cannot be configured on chat or voice channels, only on messaging and email.

How do you turn on auto assist?

In Admin Center, under AI, then Agent copilot, then Auto assist, then Settings. There are only two decisions on this screen, and the second one is about who sees suggestions rather than what the suggestions say.

  1. Open the auto assist settings — In Admin Center, click AI in the sidebar, select Agent copilot, then Auto assist, then click Settings.
  2. Turn on the composer suggestions — Select the option to show auto assist replies and actions in the agent composer. This is what puts suggestions in front of an agent.
  3. Choose who has access — In the Who has access field, search for and select the groups that should see suggestions. All groups have access by default, so narrow it if you want a pilot team first.
  4. Save — Click Save. Nothing appears for your agents yet, and that is expected at this stage.
  5. Write a procedure before you go looking for results — Auto assist follows procedures you write. Without one there is nothing for it to suggest, which is the point most people give up at.

Why is auto assist not showing any suggestions?

The usual answer is the tag. Zendesk's documentation says tickets need the agent_copilot_enabled tag for auto assist to work, and that the tag is added through ticket triggers. Their setup article adds an important qualifier: the tag should only go on tickets you have actually written a procedure for.

That design is deliberate rather than awkward. Tagging everything would mean auto assist trying to help on tickets it has no guidance for, and a confident suggestion with no basis is worse for your agents than no suggestion. So the trigger conditions you write are how you scope the feature.

The second common answer is the group. If you narrowed the Who has access field during setup, agents outside those groups see nothing, and they will assume the feature is off rather than that they are outside it.

Either way, the thinking that produces a good procedure is the same thinking that produces a good brief. What is the situation, what should happen, and when should a person take over. Do that on paper before you open any tool and the tool part takes minutes.

How do you write a procedure for auto assist?

Procedures live in Knowledge admin, and Zendesk's setup guidance describes them as written instructions for the model to follow. The advice they give on picking your first one is good: look for the scenarios with repetitive back and forth between agents and customers, such as product advice, policy explanations or a troubleshooting sequence everyone types out by hand.

  1. Pick one repetitive scenario — Choose the question your team answers most often with the same three or four exchanges. Not the hardest one, the most repeated one.
  2. Write the procedure in Knowledge admin — Describe how the situation should be handled, in the order a good agent would handle it.
  3. Add the tag with a trigger — Build a ticket trigger that applies the agent_copilot_enabled tag to tickets matching that scenario, and only that scenario.
  4. Create a test ticket — Raise a ticket that should match, and check what auto assist suggests. This is faster than waiting for a real one.
  5. Refine, then widen — Adjust the wording of the procedure until the suggestions are right, then extend the trigger conditions. Refine before you widen, never the other way round.

Auto assist can suggest two kinds of thing according to their documentation: a reply for the agent to send, and an action for the agent to take. Independent write ups from practitioners describe writing manual steps into a procedure so an agent gets step by step guidance for work that no integration covers, such as a physical task, with the automated part of the procedure resuming afterwards.

How does auto assist relate to suggested first replies?

They are separate features that can both be on, and Zendesk's documentation is specific about what happens then: auto assist suggestions take precedence over suggested first replies and are offered first.

That is worth knowing before you evaluate either one. If you switch both on and judge the output, you are mostly judging auto assist, and if auto assist has no procedure for that ticket you may conclude both features are useless when only the pairing is misconfigured.

It is also a reasonable argument for the shape we chose at Sistava, which is one thing that handles the request rather than several assistive features layered over each other. Fewer moving parts means fewer questions about which part produced the answer you are unhappy with. Zendesk's approach gives you finer control, and if your team wants that control it is the better fit.

What should you measure once it is running?

Two things, and neither is the number of suggestions produced. The first is how often agents send a suggestion without editing it, because that tells you the procedure is written well. The second is handle time on tagged tickets against untagged ones, because that is the actual saving.

A feature that generates plenty of suggestions your agents rewrite every time is costing you time, not saving it. When that happens the fix is almost always the procedure, not the model.

FAQ

Why is Zendesk auto assist not showing suggestions to my agents?

Check three things in order. First, whether the tickets carry the agent_copilot_enabled tag, which Zendesk's documentation says is applied through ticket triggers and is required for the feature to work. Second, whether a procedure exists for that scenario. Third, whether the agent's group is included in the Who has access field, since narrowing it hides suggestions from everyone else.

Which channels does Zendesk auto assist work on?

Their documentation states that auto assist cannot be configured on chat or voice channels, and works on messaging and email. If you are testing on a live chat channel you will see nothing regardless of how the rest of the setup looks, which is an easy hour to lose.

What is the difference between auto assist and suggested first replies?

Suggested first replies proposes an opening response drawn from macros and help center articles. Auto assist reads the ticket with a large language model and suggests replies and actions based on procedures you have written. Zendesk's documentation says that when both are on, auto assist takes precedence and is offered first.

Do you need the Copilot add-on for Zendesk auto assist?

Zendesk's documentation presents agent copilot, including auto assist, as an add-on called Copilot. Since packaging and plan availability change, check your own account's plan page or ask your account contact rather than relying on any third party summary of what is included.

Where do you write procedures for Zendesk auto assist?

In Knowledge admin. Zendesk's setup guidance describes writing procedures there as instructions for the model to follow, and recommends starting with scenarios that involve repetitive back and forth, such as product advice, policy explanations or a standard troubleshooting path.

Should you tag every ticket with agent_copilot_enabled?

No. Zendesk's setup documentation says the tag should only be added to tickets for which you have created a procedure. Tagging broadly means auto assist tries to help where it has no guidance, which produces suggestions your agents have to check and discard, and that costs more time than it saves.

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