Zendesk extends AI agents to ChatGPT, Gemini, voice and messaging

Zendesk AI Agents Expand to Third-Party Platforms, Including AI Chatbots
New framework ensures consistent context across all customer channels
Voice AI agents now support over 60 languages and language switching

In addition to its MCP efforts also announced at its annual Relate conference, Zendesk has expanded its agentic AI capabilities to more environments, including ChatGPT and Gemini, marking a fundamental shift not only in its own business model, but that of other companies as well.

We are currently experiencing an industry shift towards platform-agnostic experiences, where businesses are now expected to meet their customers where they are.

Rather than forcing customers to use first-party apps or support channels, companies are now looking for AI solutions that can work cohesively across third-party ecosystems, including messaging apps, voice assistants, and AI chatbots.

Meet customers where they are

This need is driven by changing consumer behavior, as President of Product, Engineering and AI Shashi Upadhyay noted: “You’re just going to go to Perplexity or Gemini… you’re not going to go to a website and search for it.

The updates are designed to enable Zendesk AI agents to maintain context and continuity in customer interactions, regardless of where conversations begin.

This shift reflects how customer service is rapidly evolving beyond traditional support tickets and standalone chatbots. Instead, businesses are preparing for AI agents to track customers seamlessly across channels, devices and platforms, retaining memory, delivering high-quality personalization and leveraging organizational knowledge bases.

At the same time, the customer service giant announced expanded support for Voice AI agents, including support for more than 60 languages and switching languages mid-conversation without loss of context.

We already know that consumers are turning to chat interfaces like ChatGPT and Gemini as their primary discovery interfaces, hence OpenAI and Google’s ongoing work to integrate product discovery and sales channels directly into the interfaces. Today, support is also emerging as a major use case for chatbots, and businesses face increasing pressure to ensure their services are accessible through these third parties while maintaining governance and brand consistency.

While providers meeting customers in these third-party ecosystems is new in and of itself, the biggest win here is the underlying framework that allows these companies to bring interactions together, regardless of platform, for constant context, helping to avoid repetitive conversations and poor support experiences.

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