Zendesk QA: How AI-powered quality reviews help teams improve faster and work smarter

Quality assurance is critical for any support team that wants to scale without losing the personal, high-quality touch that customers expect. But traditional QA methods – manual reviews, random sampling, only post-interaction reviews – were never built for modern, omnichannel teams that include both human and AI agents. Zendesk QA changes that.

We sat down with Kevin Boyer, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Zendesk, to go deep on how Zendesk QA works, how it is different from other tools on the market, and how real customers are using it to improve service, reduce overhead, and build stronger teams.

Q&A with Kevin Boyer, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Zendesk

1. Why did Zendesk invest in building a QA product in the first place?

Because quality is no longer optional. Today’s customers have higher expectations, more choices, and shorter patience. Support teams are being asked to do more with less – resolve faster, across more channels, with a human touch. Additionally, with the rise of AI agents handling customer interactions, customers want the same level of support across both human and AI agents. According to our CX Trends 2025, 68% of people are more likely to trust AI if it has human-like traits, so quality assurance is essential to maintain that trust.

But most QA programs are still stuck in the past. They rely on sampling a tiny fraction of conversations and require time-consuming, manual effort from managers. That model simply does not scale, especially as AI agents handle thousands of interactions daily. We saw an opportunity to bring the power of AI and automation to this space – to help support leaders measure what matters and act quickly.

Moreover, post-interaction reviews alone aren’t enough to prevent issues from occurring. So, we took QA a step further by bringing quality insights into real time, helping agents and teams to address the most critical cases while the conversations are still open.

2. What is Zendesk QA, in practical terms?

Zendesk QA is an AI-powered quality assurance tool that automatically reviews 100% of your customer service conversations and provides actionable insights. It scores interactions based on your team’s quality standards – like empathy, accuracy, policy adherence, and more – and flags the ones that need coaching or escalation. It integrates directly into the Zendesk platform, which means you can start using it without adding new tools or changing your workflow, and real-time QA insights appear right in your Agent workspace. It’s designed to give you end-to-end visibility into the quality of your support, without adding more manual work.

3. How exactly does the AI in Zendesk QA evaluate conversations?

The AI is purpose-built for customer service interactions. It uses a combination of large language models (LLMs), rules-based criteria, and machine learning to review every ticket. Here’s what’s happening behind the scenes.

Zendesk QA pulls in all conversations, across AI, digital, and voice channels, and provides two main outputs:

• Automated quality scores: Every agent interaction is scored based on predefined or custom criteria you care about, like tone, accuracy, correct tagging, and issue resolution. This helps companies move from manually reviewing 2% of tickets to achieving 100% coverage with consistent scoring.
• Spotlights for risk and insight detection: Beyond scoring, Zendesk QA identifies risks and trends in both agent and customer messages. You can surface conversations with customer churn risk or flag those containing product feedback or competitor mentions. This goes beyond traditional QA by uncovering business insights valuable to product, revenue, and other teams.

This allows you to move from reviewing 2% of tickets to 100% coverage, with far more consistent scoring.

4. What kind of scorecards are available? Can teams customize them?

Yes – and that is a key differentiator. Zendesk QA comes with out-of-the-box scorecards that cover common support standards like readability, empathy, grammar, and tone.

You can also create entirely new categories by simply telling the AI what to look for and how to score interactions. For example, a retail brand might check if human and AI agents handle refund requests correctly.

You can:

• Create custom questions for different lines of business

• Use different scorecards and workspaces for different teams (e.g., technical support vs. billing)

• Assign weightings to criteria to reflect business priorities

• Mark some criteria as critical for passing

The customization is flexible enough for small teams and robust enough for large, global operations.

5. What makes Zendesk QA technically different from other QA tools in the market?

There are a few things that set it apart:

• Native integration: Because it’s built by Zendesk, QA works directly with your support environment – no API workarounds, no duplicate data management, no extra tabs, and is the only QA solution capable of delivering real-time QA insights directly in Agent workspace, and triggering workflows based on these insights That tight integration means faster setup, smoother workflows, and better data accuracy.
• AI tuned for service: Our models are trained specifically on customer service language, not just generic conversation data. That makes a big difference when it comes to detecting nuance – tone, deflection, policy language, etc.
• End-to-end visibility: You get both macro- and micro-level insights – from organization-wide trends (e.g., which types of issues drive lower quality) down to individual agent coaching opportunities.
• Automated workflows: Route flagged conversations in real-time to the right teams, assign low-score or spotlighted conversations for human review, and analyze trends for CX leaders—all within Zendesk.

6. How do teams typically use Zendesk QA day-to-day?

In most cases, team leads or QA analysts start their day in the Zendesk QA dashboard. They see a snapshot of recent performance across teams, which interactions have been flagged for review, and where agents may need coaching. From there, they might:

• Review a conversation flagged for poor tone

• Add manual notes to AI-generated scores

• Pin conversations for training purposes

• Track quality scores over time by agent, team, or issue type

Agents can also see their own scores, view examples of what good looks like, and receive feedback directly in Zendesk. It makes quality a shared goal – not just a manager-driven task.

Additionally, real-time QA helps teams resolve live conversations. The agent workspace highlights critical interactions needing immediate attention. Real-time quality insights are used to trigger workflows, notifications, escalations, and routing to ensure high-risk conversations are handled promptly.

7. What are some real-world use cases where customers are getting value from Zendesk QA?

Here are a few strong examples:

• A fintech company uses Zendesk QA to ensure agents are complying with disclosure requirements in every chat and email. AI flags vulnerability and privacy concerns in real time, with automated quality scoring and spotlights customized to catch and highlight issues.

• A global retailer uses it to monitor AI agents during holiday spikes, reviewing 100% of conversations to quickly identify if AI agents offered the right discounts properly.

• A SaaS provider integrated Zendesk QA into their onboarding flow – they track new agents’ quality scores during their first 30 days and customize training modules based on individual gaps.

In every case, the common outcomes are faster time to resolution, more consistent customer experiences, and more confident teams.

8. What kinds of insights do QA leaders get from the reporting?

The reporting surfaces trends that are hard to see manually. For instance:

• Quality scores over time by human vs AI agents, team, or channel to spot inconsistencies

• The most common failure categories (e.g., empathy, tone)

• How QA scores correlate with CSAT

• This allows support leaders to move from anecdotal feedback to data-driven coaching, staffing, and AI agent instructions improvement.

9. Does Zendesk QA support voice interactions, or just text-based channels?

Yes – Zendesk QA supports email, chat, messaging, and voice. For voice conversations, the product first transcribes the call using automatic speech recognition (ASR), then runs the transcript through the same QA analysis pipeline. This enables teams to review phone support quality using the same standards as chat and email – creating consistency across channels.

10. What if the AI gets something wrong? Can humans override it?

Absolutely, and that’s a key advantage over competitors. Every AI review is auditable and editable by humans. Zendesk QA provides an Accuracy Score tracking the proportion of AI ratings adjusted, giving transparency into AI vs. human alignment.

If scores aren’t satisfactory, customers can refine AI scoring prompts and test them by manually scoring samples and comparing results, ensuring AI decisions match expectations.

You’re never locked into AI decisions – humans are always in the loop.

11. What kind of companies is Zendesk QA best suited for?

Zendesk QA works well for:

• Mid-sized to large support teams that want to scale without sacrificing quality

• Regulated industries where compliance is a concern

• Fast-growing companies onboarding new agents frequently

• Companies employing AI agents

• Teams facing inconsistent service quality across channels, teams, locations, or BPOs

• Any team trying to link QA to coaching and outcomes

It’s flexible enough for a 20-agent team and powerful enough for enterprise support centers handling thousands of conversations a day.

12. Final question – if someone is evaluating QA tools, what should they keep in mind?

Look for four things:

1. Coverage – Can the tool evaluate all your conversations, across channels, including AI agents and voice?
2. Customizability – Can it reflect your brand’s voice and standards? Can you surface custom risks and insights in both agent and customer messages?
3. Workflow integration – Does it fit into how your team already works, directly within your helpdesk?
4. Actionability – Does it enable real-time intervention, coaching, escalation, reporting – without extra friction?

Zendesk QA checks all of those boxes. It gives you visibility, speed, and insight – so you can lead with confidence and continuously raise the bar for service.