Zendesk puts its AI revenue near $400m, mostly from agents billed per resolved case

Tom Eggemeier made one phone call himself ^[10]. Meta's Muse, a personal assistant, did about 95% of the work ^[10]. It cut about $2,000 a year from his family's internet and TV package and about $1,000 a year from its mobile plan, he said ^[9]. "I saved over the last five days $3,105," the Zendesk chief executive said ^[11].

Within two years, he expects more than half of interactions to be one AI agent dealing with another, a person's own agent on one side and a company's on the other ^[12]. He said the prospect is a little scary ^[13]. People should always be able to reach a human, he said, and Zendesk tells its customers to offer that option ^[13].

Eggemeier made the case against seats on stage at HumanX in Amsterdam on 23 September ^[14]. Two different pricing changes sit under that case. The per-resolution fee on AI agents is the one producing revenue, by his account ^[2]. The seatless model bills every resolution, whether a person or an agent closed the case, and it is still in a test ^[4]. More than 80,000 companies use Zendesk ^[8], so the roughly 100 in that test are at most about one customer in 800 ^[15].

Zendesk's usage figures need the same separation. The more-than-50% share of tickets that AI solves or assists folds in self-service and copilots ^[6]. Under the agent fee, the billable event is a case an AI agent resolves ^[2], so the agent-only share is the figure a buyer can budget against. The 80% to 90% automation rates come from his best customers ^[7]. The interview does not split the $400m by product or give the agent-only share of tickets.

For a support lead deciding whether to opt in, two numbers settle most of it. One is the share of tickets an AI agent closes with no human involved. The other is whether ticket volume rose or held flat over the past year. A high agent share with flat volume fits the seatless model best, because the bill follows work the agent already does. With a high share and rising volume, every new case adds to the charge, so a cap belongs in the contract. Where the agent share is low and volume is flat, seats stay predictable and the agent fee bills only what the agent closes ^[2]. The hard quadrant is a low share with rising volume. There the seatless model charges per resolution for cases staff still close by hand ^[4], and the seat contract needs a side-by-side price before anyone signs.