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Hand off customers to live agents using the Zendesk Live Agent block

Overview

After you've configured your AI Agent with Zendesk Chat, the next step is to add the Zendesk Live Agent block to your handoff answer.

For a refresher on how to configure your AI Agent with Zendesk Chat, see Configure Zendesk Chat.

Limitations

  • If your Zendesk instance has chat triggers configured, those triggers won't work for customers in Ada. If the conditions for a trigger are met, the trigger will be visible in Zendesk and will be visible to the agent when they pick up the ticket. However, any content associated with the trigger won't appear in Ada conversation transcripts or to customers.

  • After customers have been handed off to a live agent, they can only upload files that follow your file upload configuration in your Zendesk settings, rather than your Ada settings. For more information, see File Transfer.

Add the Zendesk Live Agent Block to a handoff

  1. On the Ada dashboard, go to AI Agent profile > Handoffs, then create or select a handoff to edit. For more information, see Manage how your AI Agent hands customers off to live agents.

  2. [Optional] In the handoff content, add Capture blocks configured to capture the customer's name, email address, and phone number.

    note

    In order for the customer's information to map to the correct fields on the Zendesk ticket, the variables you use to capture their name, email address, and phone number must be named exactly as they appear below:

    • name

    • email

    • phone

  3. From the block bar on the right side of the screen, drag and drop the Zendesk Live Agent block into your handoff content.

  4. In the Zendesk Live Agent block, fill in the fields with the information required to complete your handoff.

    1. In the Department list, select the department to route your customer to. Make sure it's an active department that has agents assigned to it!

      If you are using Zendesk Agent Workspace, the list contains the groups you have configured in Zendesk, rather than departments.

      note

      If you are able to see a department in the block but are not able to change the department, you have an issue with your Zendesk Chat credentials. See Configure Zendesk Live Chat in Ada to learn how you can refresh your credentials.

    2. In the Tags field, add tags to attach to the Zendesk ticket (e.g., billing, tech support, etc.). We suggest at least adding ada as a tag, so you can differentiate where the chat and ticket came from, if you have live chat available in channels other than Ada.

    3. In the Off-Hours section, click Edit response to edit your off-hours content. This will appear to your customers if they try to speak with a live agent outside of your support hours.

  5. If you have Zendesk Authentication configured, enable it in your AI Agent, so agents can identify authenticated customers with a green checkmark overlay on the customer’s Zendesk avatar.

    1. Toggle on Enable Authentication.

    2. In the event of an authentication error, the AI Agent will route your chatter to the Error Fallback content.