Zendesk Messaging

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Coming soon

The Zendesk Messaging integration is rolling out soon and is not visible in dashboards yet. This page is a preview of how it will work, so you can plan ahead.

If your website chat runs on the Zendesk messaging widget, Ayro can be the AI responder inside it. Visitors keep chatting in the widget they already know, Ayro answers instantly from your knowledge, and when a human is needed the conversation lands in your Zendesk Agent Workspace - no new tools for your team, no new widget for your customers.

Like every channel, Zendesk Messaging needs an active agent trained on your content. If you have not built one yet, start with Create your first agent.

How it works

1. Open Distribute > Channels > Zendesk Messaging and select Connect, then authorize with your Zendesk account.
2. Finish setup in Zendesk: in Zendesk Admin Center, go to AI agents > Marketplace bots and assign the Lyro bot to your messaging channel (for example, your Web Widget). This step lives in Zendesk because only your Zendesk admin can decide who answers your channels - until a channel is assigned, nothing changes for your visitors.
3. Done - Ayro answers new conversations on the assigned channels.

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Requirements

Your Zendesk account needs Messaging and Agent Workspace enabled, on a compatible plan (Zendesk Suite Professional or higher, or standalone Sunshine Conversations). One Zendesk account connects to one messaging distribution.

Talking to your customers

Visitors write in your Zendesk widget as usual - the replies just come from your Ayro agent. Each conversation maps to one visitor, so returning customers keep their history and context.

To stop Ayro from answering a channel, unassign the Ayro bot in Zendesk Admin Center > AI agents > Marketplace bots - channel routing always stays under your Zendesk admin's control, so there is no separate on/off switch in Ayro.

Handoff to your team

When a customer asks for a human - or your escalation rules decide it is time - Ayro passes the conversation to your Agent Workspace, where your team picks it up natively. The visitor stays in the same widget the whole time; Ayro goes quiet for the rest of the handoff. The same happens when Ayro runs into a technical problem: it apologizes to the customer and hands the conversation to your team on its own, so nobody is left waiting on a silent bot.

If your escalation procedure names the tags Ayro should apply, they are attached to the ticket Zendesk creates for the conversation, so your team can filter and route on them.

When your team closes the conversation in Zendesk, control returns to Ayro - the next message from that visitor gets an AI answer again, and the agent knows a human conversation happened in between.

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Solved is not Closed

By default, marking a ticket Solved does not close it - Zendesk closes solved tickets on its own a few days later, and only then does the conversation return to Ayro. To hand conversations back as soon as your team solves them, add a trigger in Zendesk (Admin Center > Objects and rules > Triggers): when Status is changed to Solved, set Status to Closed.

Business hours

Ayro hands a conversation to your team live only when someone can actually take it. Before a handoff it checks two things, the same two Zendesk's own widget uses to show your team as online:

• Your business hours. The conversation is inside the Zendesk schedule this distribution follows, and today is not one of the schedule's holidays.
• Someone is online. At least one agent in your Agent Workspace is Online for messaging.

When both are true, Ayro passes the conversation to your Agent Workspace as described above. When either is false, nobody would pick the conversation up, so Ayro does not leave the customer waiting in an empty queue. It asks for the customer's email address, creates a follow-up ticket in Zendesk, and tells the customer your team will reply by email. Ayro keeps answering in the chat in the meantime. If the check cannot be completed (for example, Zendesk does not respond), Ayro plays it safe and treats your team as unavailable.

Setting it up

1. Authorize Ayro in Zendesk. When you connect Zendesk Messaging, Ayro takes you to Zendesk's consent screen as the last step. Ayro asks for read access to your account because Zendesk only shares business-hours schedules with that permission. If the consent was cancelled, the Business hours section of the distribution shows a warning with Finish Zendesk authorization.
2. Check the schedule. Open Distribute > Channels > Zendesk Messaging, select your distribution and find Business hours. It shows the schedule Ayro follows as a week, in the schedule's time zone. If your Zendesk account has several schedules, pick the one that applies to this channel. To change the hours or add holidays, edit the schedule in Zendesk Admin Center > Objects and rules > Business rules > Schedules; Ayro reads it live, so there is nothing to sync.
3. Use the escalation procedure. In your agent's Escalation tab, select Escalate here on Zendesk Messaging. Ayro adds the procedure Escalate to Zendesk Messaging (live or ticket), which checks availability with the built-in tool Is live support available, hands off live when your team is available and creates a follow-up ticket when it is not. You can adjust its wording like any other procedure.

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No schedule in Zendesk

If your Zendesk account has no business-hours schedule, Ayro goes by agent status alone: live handoff when someone is online for messaging, a follow-up ticket when nobody is. Without the Zendesk authorization, Ayro cannot read schedules or agent status and always hands off live.

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Zendesk's own offline message

Zendesk has a trigger, Request email for continuous conversations, that sends its own "We're offline" message and asks the customer for an email when a conversation reaches an offline team. Ayro already collects the email before it hands off out of hours, so the customer may be asked twice. Review the trigger in Admin Center > Objects and rules > Triggers and turn it off for the channels Ayro answers if you do not want the second request.

WhatsApp and the 24-hour reply window

If your WhatsApp number is connected to Zendesk Messaging, WhatsApp conversations reach Ayro the same way as your web chat. WhatsApp adds one rule: a business can reply freely only within 24 hours of the customer's last message. After that, a normal reply can no longer be sent.

Turn on WhatsApp conversations in the Business hours section to make Ayro follow that rule:

• A WhatsApp conversation is always handed off to your queue, also outside business hours, and stays on WhatsApp. No separate email ticket is created. A customer on WhatsApp is not waiting in an open chat window: they get your team's reply as a WhatsApp notification.
• Ayro asks for an email only when your team may not reply in time: during the last hour before a closure longer than 24 hours, and during such a closure when your team reopens on a later day (for example, a weekend). Ayro explains why it asks, and the customer can decline.
• The email lands on the ticket's requester, so after the window closes your team can still reply by email from the same ticket.
• Ayro remembers the email. A customer who gave an address once is not asked again when they write from the same number later; the hand-off uses the address Ayro already has.
• When Ayro resolves the question itself, it never asks for an email.

Ayro works this out from the same schedule, including its holidays, so changing your hours in Zendesk is all it takes. Web chat conversations are not affected by this setting.

Every WhatsApp hand-off tags the Zendesk ticket with lyro_handoff, plus lyro_whatsapp_offhours when it was handed off outside business hours and lyro_whatsapp_window_at_risk when the 24-hour window may close before your team is back. Use them for a view like "WhatsApp, reply before the window expires" in your Agent Workspace. Zendesk applies them when it creates the ticket; when your team has solved the ticket and the customer writes again, the next hand-off opens a new ticket with the tags of that hand-off.

Telling WhatsApp from the web chat

In the Ayro inbox, a WhatsApp conversation reads Zendesk Messaging · WhatsApp, while the web chat stays Zendesk Messaging. A custom view can filter on Messaging channel to list WhatsApp conversations only. In Analytics, the Conversations, Resolution rate and AI failure rate charts can be broken down by Messaging channel to compare the two. Conversations from before this was recorded show no messaging channel.

Disconnecting

Disconnecting starts on the Zendesk side - bot installation always stays under your Zendesk admin's control. Uninstall the Ayro bot under Admin Center > AI agents > Marketplace bots; the distribution in Ayro then shows as disconnected, and you can remove it from your list.

Where to go next

• Train your agent before going live - see Knowledge.
• Decide when conversations should reach a human in Escalation.
• See every surface Ayro supports in Channels.