Zendesk has announced a major expansion of its AI portfolio, introducing a series of new capabilities that bring more automation, intelligence, and flexibility to its Resolution Platform.
Revealed at the company’s AI Summit, the upgrades span across contact center, employee service, and platform administration.
Among the slew of releases, the headline-grabbers are with the launch of fully autonomous Voice AI Agents, new low/no-code building tools, and powerful analytics through its HyperArc acquisition.
The announcement signals Zendesk’s ongoing commitment to accelerating service resolution at scale and deepening its AI leadership.
But as Matthias Goehler, Zendesk CTO for EMEA, explained in an exclusive interview with CX Today, this is also about “closing the loop between AI and human service, and bringing everything together in one place.”
Voice AI Comes to the Fore
For those of you who have ever had the misfortune of getting stuck in a mind-numbing, seemingly never-ending IVR loop, the promise of Voice AI Agents will be music to your ears.
Equipped with fully autonomous AI-powered voice capabilities, Zendesk’ Voice AI Agents are designed to handle complex queries without the clunky IVR trees that have tested the patience of even the most Zen customers.
“Our AI agents already work across messaging, chat, and email,” Goehler explained.
We’re now bringing them to the voice channel so that a customer can call a company, talk as they would to a human, and the AI will guide them through the process.
From a technological standpoint, the new solutions benefit from advanced LLMs (including GPT-5), which are used to process speech and text simultaneously, reducing latency and improving comprehension.
According to Goehler, that opens the door to far more natural, fluid customer experiences.
Interestingly, Zendesk’s latest venture into voice reflects a broader trend of renewed investment in the channel, after years where it was often deprioritized in favor of digital solutions.
Goehler admits that the industry was too quick to discount voice, describing it as short-sighted and stating that Zendesk’s current position is that the company “fundamentally believes the voice channel is here to stay.
“If automation fails or the issue is too complex, customers often want to talk to someone.
“Voice will remain a critical channel, and now we can bring the same intelligence and automation to it that we’ve already delivered elsewhere.”
Empowering the Back Office with Admin Co-Pilot
Utilizing its agent co-pilot technology, Zendesk’s Admin Co-Pilot uses AI to recommend, automate, and even implement configuration changes to optimize workflows behind the scenes.
On the surface, the idea of an Admin Co-Pilot might not sound particularly customer experience/service-focused, but Goehler details how it could actually have a significant operational impact.
“Think of an admin who sees handling times increasing for a particular type of ticket,” he explained.
The co-pilot will analyze it, suggest setting up a new routing rule, and if the admin approves, it just does it. You don’t need to do the manual setup yourself anymore.
Indeed, when Zendesk rolled out co-pilot for agents, the company saw considerable improvements in resolution times and CSAT scores.
Goehler expects similar benefits on the administrative side, particularly around system maintenance and onboarding new teams.
“It’s about making life easier for admins,” he said. “You can prompt it with what you want, or it can proactively make suggestions. That’s a big step forward.”
HyperArc: AI Analytics for Real-Time Insight
As a self-confessed tech enthusiast, Goehler admits that HyperArc is the solution that excites him the most.
Moreover, there is an argument to be made that it will also prove to be the most strategically significant announcement.
Having acquired the company back in July, the new release will see HyperArc’s AI analytics platform sit on top of Zendesk Explore.
Instead of manually drilling into dashboards, users can prompt HyperArc to investigate issues and surface root causes – complete with tables, graphs, and narrative summaries.
In outlining where this tech could be deployed in a real-life scenario, Goehler posited a situation where a company’s average handle time spikes. Without a platform like HyperArc, this would typically result in the company having to slice the data by team, brand, or timeframe.
However, with HyperArc, “you just ask the question, and it builds the analysis for you.”
The system can also recommend corrective actions, giving CX leaders the ability to respond to emerging issues more quickly and confidently.
“It’s really powerful for BPO environments where reporting is business-critical,” Goehler added.
Rounding Out the Platform
Alongside these major updates, Zendesk also announced:
- Video calling and screen sharing in its contact center, enabling richer, high-touch support interactions.
- IT Asset Management for employee service, providing end-to-end visibility into hardware and service catalogues.
- Deeper Microsoft 365 integration, bringing AI-powered Zendesk support directly into everyday productivity tools.
- AI-powered Knowledge Builder and Connectors, automatically generating and maintaining help content while federating existing knowledge from platforms like Confluence, SharePoint, and Google Drive.
- Low/no-code Action and App Builders, enabling teams to create workflows and custom apps with simple natural language prompts instead of complex development work.
This expanding ecosystem reflects Zendesk’s growing ambitions to be more than a CX platform, positioning itself as a complete, AI-first service platform.
