Zendesk Chat Handoff setup

Overview

After you’ve configured Ada Glass with Zendesk Chat, the next step is to add the Zendesk Live Agent block to your Handoff answer. This enables your AI Agent to seamlessly transfer end users to live agents in Zendesk.

For a refresher on how to configure Ada Glass with Zendesk Chat, see Configure Zendesk Chat.

Limitations

• If your Zendesk instance has chat triggers configured, those triggers won’t work for end users 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 end users.

• After end users 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.

Quick start

Complete these steps to set up the Zendesk Chat Handoff. See Implementation & usage for detailed instructions.

Implementation & usage

Set up the Zendesk Live Agent block in your Handoff answer by completing the following steps.

Add the Zendesk Live Agent block

Add and configure the Zendesk Live Agent block to route end users to live agents.

To add the Zendesk Live Agent block to a Handoff:

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

2. Optional. In the Handoff content, add Capture blocks for the fields you want to populate on the Zendesk ticket.

   • To ensure the end user’s information maps to the correct Zendesk ticket fields, these variables must be named exactly as follows:

     Data to capture	Variable name
     Name	name
     Email address	email
     Phone number	phone

   • When capturing an email address, the email variable must also be validated as an Email type in the Capture block.

     If a Capture block originally used Email validation and is later changed to Text validation at the global variable level, Zendesk may still retain the original Email-validated value during Handoff. Ensuring the variable is saved using Email validation prevents mismatches and guarantees the email is passed correctly to Zendesk.

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 end user 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.

      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.). Adding ada as a tag helps 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 end users 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 end users with a green checkmark overlay on the end user’s Zendesk avatar.

   1. Toggle on Enable Authentication.

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