Zendesk Handoffs
Ada integrates with Zendesk in several ways to support live agent and ticket-based handoffs across different channels. Whether your team operates in real-time or prefers asynchronous support, there’s a handoff method to match your customer service model.
This guide introduces each integration and helps you choose the best fit for your needs. It’s also a good starting point before exploring setup steps and in-depth guides.
Selecting the right handoff method depends on how your support experience is designed, the channels you support, and how you route customers to agents. The table below outlines available Zendesk-based handoff options and highlights key considerations to keep in mind.
Most of these methods can be combined within the same Ada instance. However, combining Zendesk Messaging and Zendesk Support requires following specific guidelines.
Zendesk Chat
Zendesk Chat lets you hand off customers to live agents for real-time conversations. As soon as the handoff happens, the customer is connected with an agent right away — perfect for teams that are actively online and ready to help.
Use this if you want quick, back-and-forth chat sessions during your business hours.
Zendesk Messaging
Zendesk Messaging allows customers to chat with your team through web and mobile chat experiences. These are asynchronous conversations — meaning customers can come and go, and agents can respond when they’re available.
Use this if you want to offer flexible, message-based support without needing agents to reply right away.
Zendesk Support
This integration creates or updates Zendesk Support tickets from within Ada. It’s great when an agent doesn’t need to reply immediately — for example, if you want to collect customer questions and follow up later by email.
Use this if your team works mostly through email or ticket queues, or if agents aren’t always online.
Zendesk Ticketing
This option lets you automatically create a Zendesk ticket without sending the customer to an agent. It’s a simple way to capture info and send it to your support team behind the scenes.
Use this if you just need to record the issue for follow-up — no live chat needed.
Compatibility considerations
Zendesk Messaging has specific limitations when used alongside other Zendesk Handoff integrations within the same AI Agent—but there are important exceptions based on how channels are configured.
Zendesk Messaging and Zendesk Support
These two integrations can only be used together under strict conditions:
- Zendesk Messaging must be dedicated to live chat or messaging conversations (e.g., web or mobile).
- Zendesk Support must be used exclusively for email-based support.
- Channel-specific rules must be configured on the handoffs to route conversations appropriately—for example, directing chat traffic to Zendesk Messaging and email-based inquiries to Zendesk Support.
This separation ensures that both integrations function correctly without conflicting within the same Ada instance.
Zendesk Messaging and Zendesk Ticketing
Zendesk Messaging is fully compatible with Zendesk Ticketing. In this configuration:
- Conversations may start in a live, messaging-based flow.
- When escalation is needed, Ada creates a ticket in Zendesk.
- A human agent replies to the ticket created through:
- Zendesk Messaging – the response is sent to the end user via messaging
- Zendesk Ticketing – the response is sent to the end user via email
This setup is ideal when you want to support real-time conversations but still allow seamless escalation into ticket-based resolution when necessary.
Zendesk Messaging and other messaging Handoffs
Zendesk Messaging is not compatible with other live chat or messaging handoff integrations, such as Salesforce Chat.
Use cases
Additional Zendesk integrations
In addition to handoffs, Ada also supports Zendesk as a knowledge source.
- Import articles from Zendesk Guide
Use Zendesk Guide as a content source for Ada’s AI Agent to automatically answer questions based on your knowledge base.