Zendesk debuts outcome-based pricing for AI agents

In a bold move to drive the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in customer support, Zendesk has announced a new outcome-based pricing model for its AI agent capabilities.

Maureen Chong, Zendesk’s regional vice-president for Asia, said the move aims to provide tangible benefits for customers as they transition from traditional human agents to AI-powered customer service.

“We believe AI agents will be the new way of doing customer experience,” Chong said. “A lot of customers are interested in embracing AI, but they want to see the real value and impact. That's why we're introducing outcome-based pricing.”

Under the new model, Zendesk customers will only pay for each successful query resolution handled by AI agents. If an AI agent is unable to fully address a query which has to be escalated to a human agent, the customer will not be charged.

Chong said this aligns Zendesk’s pricing directly with tangible outcomes for customers, particularly for those with seasonal needs.

“When you’re talking about shopping, whether it’s Black Friday or Christmas sales, you can never forecast the number of human agents you need. Having AI agents and outcome-based pricing helps you to scale during seasonal periods,” she added.

Zendesk’s confidence in its AI agents’ ability to close customer queries stems from the company's extensive training data and industry-specific expertise.

“We have a dataset of 19 billion tickets that we use to train our AI agents,” Chong explained. “And because our focus is solely on customer support, we have deep knowledge of the standard use cases across different industries, from fintech to retail.”

That said, Chong believes human agents will not go away as customers will still need some human interaction and that over time, Zendesk customers will maintain a hybrid pool of AI and human agents.

Zendesk includes AI agent resolutions with seat-based plans; customers can purchase more AI agent resolutions for $1.50 or more, depending on the plan, but larger volumes will have discounted options.

For those that are still determining their baseline usage or want the flexibility without commitment, the company offers a pay-as-you-go option for $2. These prices remain consistent globally but are translated to regional currencies.

Zendesk has been working closely with early adopter customers across the region to test the outcome-based pricing model, which Chong said will make AI-powered customer experience more accessible to small and medium-sized businesses. “Even those that buy two or three seats have the ability to turn on the AI agents.”

The new outcome-based pricing is part of Zendesk's broader strategy to integrate advanced AI capabilities into its customer experience platform. In the past year, it has acquired several complementary technologies, including quality assurance and workforce management capabilities, to enhance its AI-powered offerings.