Zendesk Introduces Specialized AI Agents Purpose-built for Your Business

Zendesk Introduces Specialized AI Agents Purpose-built for Your Business

September 14, 2026

New Industry and Custom Agents understand your business, and take action across the systems you use to move your business forward.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Today, Zendesk introduced Specialized AI Agents, purpose-built for the work that matters most to a specific business or industry. They combine industry expertise with each company's unique knowledge, workflows and connected systems to take action and automate up to 80% of workflows.

The launch includes Industry Agents, which come ready for common, high-value work in specific industries, and Custom Agents, which businesses build around their own processes, policies and expertise. Together, they help organizations trust AI with more complex work from start to finish.

"The era of generic, one-size-fits-all AI agents is over. The best agents are specialists: deeply grounded in the work, the industry, and the business they serve," said Shashi Upadhyay, President of Product, Engineering and AI, Zendesk. "Specialized Agents give organizations the expertise and context to take on more complex work, earn trust, and drive quantitative impact."

Specialized Agents are a key step toward Zendesk's Autonomous Service Workforce, first introduced at Relate 2026. The vision is simple: AI takes on more of the work while businesses remain in control of how that work gets done.

Industry Expertise Out of the Box
Industry Agents are built for the work businesses within a specific industry have in common. Zendesk is launching with commerce, where AI agents can help customers shop, manage orders, process returns and exchanges, resolve delivery issues, and handle refunds. Over time, Zendesk will expand Industry Agents to additional industries, including financial services, media, and technology, bringing the same industry-specific expertise to the work those businesses handle every day.

Industry Agents combine Zendesk AI with the systems, policies, and expertise required to complete high-value workflows from start to finish. In commerce, that means connecting to systems such as Shopify, Narvar, Stripe, and Riskified to understand the customer's request, retrieve the right information, and take action without requiring customers or service teams to move between multiple systems.

Zendesk is also working with Riskified to bring industry-leading risk intelligence directly into commerce workflows, helping retailers make smarter decisions about returns, refunds, and exchanges while reducing fraud and policy abuse.

"Zendesk Industry Agents are the AI-first platform redefining retail service at scale," said Jeff Otto, Chief Marketing Officer of Riskified. "We're excited to embed our specialist AI agents and Identity Risk Intelligence so that every agent, AI or human, confidently knows who they're actually engaging with, creating delightful experiences for good customers while protecting retailers from fraud and abuse losses."

Custom Agents for the Work Only Your Business Knows
Not every workflow can come out of the box.

Every business has its own policies, approvals and ways of operating. Using Agent Builder-Zendesk's no-code environment for creating, testing and deploying agents-businesses can now build Custom Agents attuned to how their business is run. Customers have already run more than 1 million Custom Agent executions within seven weeks of launch. Some are seeing automated resolution rates spike 10% post-deployment.

Businesses define the job an agent owns, the systems it can use, the actions it can take and where human approval is required. Agents can also run proactively in response to business events or on a schedule, extending automation beyond customer-initiated requests.

"We want to resolve issues from beginning to end so consumers can get back to using their machines every day," says Leora Machlis, Director of Global Customer Care at SodaStream. "Customizing our integrations helps us act quickly as customer needs change."

"When a Toniebox isn't working, it's not just a technical issue-it's a toddler waiting," says Lauren Cooper, Director of Global Customer Happiness at Tonies. "Parents want answers now, not another hold or a long conversation."

One Workforce. Any Service Platform.
Industry and Custom Agents can run in Zendesk or in service environments including Salesforce and ServiceNow, giving businesses specialized AI without requiring them to replace the systems they already use.

As agents complete more work, Zendesk continuously learns from the resulting outcomes, helping organizations understand what worked, where agents needed help and how future service can improve.

To learn more, read the announcement blog or visit zendesk.com/ai-agents/specialized-agents.

About Zendesk
Exceptional service means never having to repeat yourself, whether you are a customer seeking help or an employee looking for answers. Zendesk orchestrates every service experience-wherever work happens-by powering an autonomous service workforce of AI agents, automation, and human expertise so every moment feels continuous, personal, and focused on real resolution. The Zendesk Resolution Platform unifies your workforce into a single system that improves with every interaction. Our discipline is simple: AI is the means, outcomes are the identity and enduring relationships are the result.