Zendesk

Mixed feelings — some praise AI-driven ticket triage cutting escalations, but others argue Zendesk is more exposed to AI disruption than systems-of-record competitors.

“I'm pretty sure everyone at my company saw this article and now they all think we're in an AI crisis. We're not in an AI crisis. We use Claude to summarize Slack threads. But here's what's actually interesting: this whole panic reveals something nobody wants to admit. Every company in America has been bullshitting about their "AI strategy" for two years. We all saw the hype. We all knew we had to say something. So we rebranded our existing automation as "AI-powered" and called it a day. My company isn't special. We're all doing the same thing. The problem is now the executives actually believe their own bullshit. They think we have "significant AI exposure" because they've been telling investors we're "AI-first." I just got pulled into an emergency meeting. Six executives asking me to explain our "AI dependency matrix." There is no AI dependency matrix. There's Claude for meeting summaries, there's some sentiment analysis in our support tickets that came free with Zendesk, and there's whatever Gmail is doing when it autocompletes my sentences. But I can't say that in a room full of people who told their boards we're "transforming the business through AI." So I said we have "distributed AI touchpoints across multiple vendors with no single point of failure." Which is technically true. We use a bunch of different services that all have AI features we mostly ignore. The CFO asked if we should "hedge our AI exposure." I have no idea what that means. Neither does he. What am I going to do: nothing. Because in three weeks, Anthropic will say something reassuring, the stocks will recover, and everyone will forget this happened. But I'll have documentation showing I recommended a "risk assessment" that mysteriously never got prioritized. The funniest part is that half these executives probably don't even know what Anthropic is. They just saw "AI" and "crash" in the same headline. We're all pretending. The whole industry is pretending. And articles like this just remind everyone how fragile the pretending is.”— @it_unprofession on X

Users want deeper API access to plug Zendesk into agentic workflows; some say the lack of it is pushing teams toward alternatives.

“The "death of SaaS" could well be the "death of SaaS that is not API-first" A story on how 30-person startup @craftdocs is moving off Zendesk after they built much better internal AI workflows (with a tool they open sourced, Craft Agents) Full: https://t.co/81teUBEuKO https://t.co/LrhYbrXVrc”— @GergelyOrosz on X

Zendesk is increasingly framed as the incumbent under threat from cheaper open-source tools and AI-native support startups.

“Gokul explains why outcome-based software companies like Zendesk are more exposed to AI than systems of record like NetSuite, and why public markets are not distinguishing between the two. He argues that the only way AI-native startups can disrupt systems of record is by spending 1-2 years building migration tools to get data off of incumbent platforms. "The software companies that should be the most worried right now is where they are pricing the product based on utility. Zendesk is a good example. Instead of paying for 50 Zendesk seats, you can pay for 20 and I can have 30 AI agents sitting next to Zendesk. For these companies you need to change your pricing model to be based on outcome. It's going to be hard for them to stay public. The companies that are less exposed are ones based on data that has been collected and captured over a period of time. ERP is a great example. There is no compelling reason for someone to put their career at stake by ripping out NetSuite. NetSuite has more time to build AI agents on top of it because they have the data, they can train the AI agent on top of it and bundle it. I think the public markets do not distinguish between these two types of companies."”— @patrick_oshag on X

Experiences are split — some long-time users report smooth reliability, others hit friction like blocked API access for AI agents.

“At Ramp we ship a new major feature every day - it's impossible for leaders stay up to speed. To keep a high bar without slowing folks down, teams can ship to early access tier whenever they want but need review for general release. Crazy fact: 10% of customers opt into early access because they can't get enough. That's 5000+ businesses. Plenty to work with. To release to general public, teams need to prove this product works and get sign off for heads of eng, product and design. Here is our template: 1. What did we build and why 2. What's the demo in < 3mn (loom) 3. Did we meet our goals in early access (hex dash) 4. Are customers raving about this (LLM on Zendesk tickets, Sprig surveys, and Gong transcripts) 5. Will customers easily discover and start using it (first time user journey) 6. Is sales ready to sell, AM ready to activate, and support ready to troubleshoot 7. Do we have a clear rollout plan (launch tier, pricing, coms) This helps us document decisions, serves as a strong checklist, and feeds our release notes. Most importantly, it keeps the bar high (we expect at least 1 rev of feedback). The best part: most of this template is automated using AI connected to the rest of our business sytems. Leadership has 48h to review or it ships. We think it's a great way to balance speed & empowerment with process and quality.”— @geoffintech on X

Heavily negative — Zendesk-hosted support environments have been at the center of major breaches, including incidents tied to Discord and Crunchyroll.

“Chat, we are cooked Discord is being extorted by the people who compromised their Zendesk instance They've got 1.5TB of age verification related photos. 2,185,151 photos tl;dr 2.1m Discord users drivers license and/or passport might be leaked. Unknown number of e-mails”— @vxunderground on X

Price is a major pain point, with six-figure annual contracts cited as a reason teams look to cheaper or open-source alternatives.

“just met a guy who canceled a $8.4M/year Zendesk contract because someone from HR vibecoded an app in @Replit that basically replaced it overnight we’re cooked yall”— @RubyBrewsday on X

Commentary ranges from SEO dominance praise to skepticism about Zendesk's readiness for an API-first, AI-driven future.

“Zendesk is having trouble with AI because they want to keep customers using a slow UI, but AI-native companies just want an API to plug into their agentic workflow Zendesk hasn’t built this API so customers move to the likes of Plaid or others (I have no affiliation btw)”— @GergelyOrosz on X

Light mentions frame Zendesk as generic corporate tooling associated with rote support-job jargon.

“mingyu never have to know zendesk and salesforce and never have to hear "let's circle back" and "low hanging fruit" 😭😭 and i love that for him, i wish me too 😭😭”— @hoshieverytime on X