Plan requirement
| Subscription | Suite Team or higher, Support Team or higher |
| Access | Admin |
Making an AI agent the first responder in a conversation. Three consequences are larger than the setting looks: it applies to all configured messaging channels at once, it reverts any previously connected AI agent or default response configuration to Draft, and it claims every messaging channel you add afterwards.
Set it
- In Admin Center, click AI, then AI agents and AI agents.
- Go to the Advanced section and open AI agents - Advanced.
- From the agent's options menu, choose Set as default for all channels.
- Confirm the handover path, tell your agents what changes, and watch the first day closely.
One wrinkle about availability. The agentic capabilities themselves are now included across Suite and Support plans, but Zendesk's guidance on this particular setting applies to accounts that bought the AI agents - Advanced add-on before 10 March 2026. So if the option is not there, that is the first thing to check rather than a fault.
It is not one channel, and not one click back
The label covers all configured messaging channels, and any new channel added to your instance is automatically assigned to the agent holding it. To undo it you assign the default label to a different agent, or disable or delete the routing rules that let it respond. There is no single switch that puts everything back.
The part that surprises people: whatever was connected to those channels before is reverted to Draft. If somebody built a configuration there, check it survived before you consider this reversible.
What changes
Everything arriving on those channels meets the AI agent first, including the questions you did not anticipate. Until now it handled what it recognised; now it is the front door.
The prerequisite
Transcripts showing it already handles your common cases well, and a handover that works reliably. Making an agent the default before both are true converts a limited problem into a general one.
Volume changes the arithmetic
A behaviour that occurs in one conversation in fifty is invisible at low volume and constant as the default responder. Check the transcripts specifically for the rare wrong answers, because those become frequent.
Tell the team
Agents will see fewer, harder tickets, each arriving with a transcript. That changes their day, and it is worth saying rather than letting them discover it.
Keep the exit obvious
As the default responder, the agent is now between every customer and your team. The route to a person has to be immediate and unmissable, or the automation reads as a barrier.
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