Comparison
Feb 17, 2025
Deepak Singla
IN this article
Fini and Zendesk AI differ in approach- Fini is an AI-first platform offering deep integration, proactive actions, and continuous learning, while Zendesk AI is a basic add-on limited to its ecosystem. Fini’s platform-agnostic design enables seamless scalability and automation, resolving up to 70% of tickets autonomously. If you need advanced AI capabilities that evolve with your business, Fini is the superior choice.
“Should I use Fini or Zendesk’s AI?” This is a common question we receive from prospective customers. If you're already using Zendesk for managing your customer support, you might wonder why you should consider Fini. In this article, we will dive into Fini and Zendesk AI agents, and help you decide what’s best for you.
The Core Difference: AI at the Heart
Imagine you’re building an autonomous vehicle. Would you trust Cruise or Waymo that focusses on data and latest AI technology to build the best self-driving tech or would you trust Ford to upgrade its vehicles?
Ford will always be 5 years behind. They will have the innovators dilemma. They would never be able to take the next step and be stuck in adding a cruise mode, while Waymo leaps ahead and makes technology using existing cars to self-driving cars safer than most advanced human-driven vehicles
That’s what Fini is doing for AI support agents. We are using existing Zendesk backend and upgrading it to self-sustain and provide 24*7 support using Agentic AI.
Zendesk’s AI capabilities are decent as an add-on, but they lack the depth and flexibility of Fini’s AI-first approach. Fini isn’t just a support tool built to answer simple questions from a knowledgebase — it’s a native Agentic AI platform that puts AI at the core of its design, to maximize user experience with AI agents by solving complex queries, ability to take actions on user accounts, and learning through every interaction.
Data: Beyond the Zendesk Ecosystem
Think of your customer support as a puzzle. Zendesk’s AI can only barely function when the data is within its own ecosystem: macros, knowledge bases, and past tickets. But what happens when the missing piece lies outside Zendesk’s ecosystem—in Confluence, Google Drive, or your app’s event logs? That’s where Zendesk’s AI COMPLETELY fails. (Cruise control in a car can only go so far)
Fini doesn’t just fit into the puzzle; it sees the whole picture. By connecting seamlessly to your internal databases, APIs, and third-party platforms, Fini creates a unified knowledge base. This holistic integration ensures that every customer query is addressed with accuracy, pulling information from wherever it resides. No more “sorry, I can’t help with that” moments.
Moving from Answers to Actions
Imagine a frustrated customer asking, “Where’s my refund?” Zendesk’s AI might respond with, “Let me check that for you.” But Fini’s AI takes it a step further: “Your refund has been processed and should appear in your account within 3-5 business days.” And if it hasn’t been processed yet, Fini’s AI can initiate the refund on the spot.
Fini’s action-oriented AI agents don’t just stop at responding. They fetch live order statuses, approve adjustments, or trigger workflows—all within controlled parameters you set. Zendesk’s AI, while great for conversations, lacks this agentic capability. Fini becomes not just an assistant but a proactive team member, resolving up to 70% of tickets end-to-end. (You can read how we helped an ecommerce company automate 88% of their tickets)
Knowledge That Evolves
Picture this: Your AI encounters a new question it can’t answer. Zendesk’s AI tries to answer - fails and forgets. Yes you read it right, it just completely forgets about it. Fini is built differently. It’s built to help you improve your knowledge over time autonomously using AI. It’s built to learn from every interaction. With Fini, unanswered questions lead to reinforcement learning, filling knowledge gaps for future and improving resolution rates over time.
Fini’s proactive insights also highlight missing documentation or conflicting information in your knowledge, empowering your team to optimize your support operations. Instead of being stuck with outdated macros or knowledge bases, you have a constantly evolving solution that grows with your business.
Scalability and Flexibility
In today’s ever evolving environment, with AI changing how software is created and used - adaptability is key. Remember how Klarna replaced Salesforce overnight?
You can now not be tied to one platform.
If you start using Zendesk AI you are stuck. If your needs change and you ever decide to move to Salesforce or Intercom or a new age ticketing tool? You lose all your AI progress. It’s gone overnight. And now you need to train another AI agent from scratch.
Fini is platform-agnostic. Whether you start with Zendesk or switch to another tool, Fini’s AI agent seamlessly migrates with you. This future-ready flexibility ensures you’re never locked into a single platform, providing the freedom to scale your operations as you grow.
Real-Life Impact: A Customer Story
One of our customers, a fast-growing e-commerce company, faced challenges with their Zendesk-based setup. They were using Zendesk AI which handled <30% of their basic queries, and struggled with nuanced queries like checking delivery statuses or processing returns. The manual workload on their agents was overwhelming.
When they switched to Fini, the results were transformative. Fini integrated with their live order logs, and payment gateways. Now, 75% of tickets are resolved automatically—including complex tasks like initiating refunds and tracking orders. Their agents can focus on high-priority cases, while Fini handles the rest. Customer satisfaction soared, and their team finally had breathing room.
More capabilities across all metrics than Zendesk AI:
Knowledge:
Features | Fini AI | Zendesk AI |
|---|---|---|
AI Knowledge Creation | ✔ | ✖ |
AI Knowledge Updates | ✔ | ✖ |
AI-driven Knowledge Conflicts summary | ✔ | ✖ |
AI-driven Knowledge Gaps | ✔ | ✖ |
Source - AI Knowledge items | ✔ | ✖ |
Source - Past tickets | ✔ | ✖ |
Source - URLs | ✔ | ✔ |
Source - Zendesk articles, macros | ✔ | ✔ |
Source - Zendesk attributes | ✔ | ✖ |
Source - APIs | ✔ | ✖ |
Source - G-drive | ✔ | ✖ |
Source - Notion | ✔ | ✖ |
Source - Confluence | ✔ | ✖ |
Source - File uploads | ✔ | ✖ |
Compatible Platforms:
Features | Fini AI | Zendesk AI |
|---|---|---|
Zendesk Email | ✔ | ✖ |
Zendesk Chat | ✔ | ✔ |
Slack | ✔ | ✖ |
Teams | ✔ | ✖ |
AI Search Bar | ✔ | ✖ |
Chrome extension | ✔ | ✖ |
APIs | ✔ | ✖ |
Self-Serve Configuration:
Features | Fini AI | Zendesk AI |
|---|---|---|
AI Prompt Builder | ✔ | ✖ |
AI Flows | ✔ | ✖ |
Agentic AI Steps | Allows to track every step taken by AI agent | Blackbox |
Zero code deployment configuration | ✔ | ✔ |
AI Guardrails | ✔ | ✖ |
AI Knowledge Items w/ instructions | ✔ | ✖ |
Agent QA tool | ✔ | ✖ |
Behaviour:
Features | Fini AI | Zendesk AI |
|---|---|---|
AI categorization | ✔ | ✔ |
Intelligent human handover | ✔ | ✔ |
AI workflows | ✔ | ✖ |
Multilingual | ✔ | ✔ |
Control tone of voice | ✔ | ✔ |
Actions | ✔ | ✖ |
Fetch personalized attributes via API | ✔ | ✖ |
Multiple chatbots | ✔ | ✔ |
Learning with feedback | ✔ | ✖ |
Complex queries | ✔ | ✖ |
Platform:
Features | Fini AI | Zendesk AI |
|---|---|---|
Accuracy | 95%+ | ~80% |
Resolution rate | 70%+ | ~30% |
Zero Code Setup | ✔ | ✔ |
Dedicated AI Engineer | ✔ | ✖ |
Model fine-tuning | ✔ | ✖ |
White glove onboarding | ✔ | ✖ |
Enterprise Grade Security (SOC2, ISO 27001, ISO 42001) | ✔ | ✔ |
Which Should You Choose?
If you’re looking for a lightweight AI solution within Zendesk’s ecosystem, their AI might suffice. But if you’re aiming for deeper integration, higher automation rates, and a truly AI-first approach, Fini is the clear choice.
Customer support isn’t just about answering questions—it’s about solving problems, building trust, and creating delightful experiences. That’s why Fini exists: to help you deliver exceptional support, powered by AI that’s as dynamic as your customers' needs.
AI Capabilities
1. What makes Fini's AI different from Zendesk AI?
Fini is an agentic AI platform built from the ground up with deep learning, action-taking, and real-time integrations. Unlike Zendesk AI, which is primarily an add-on, Fini handles complex workflows, learns from feedback, and performs actions like issuing refunds or checking order statuses autonomously.
2. Can Fini answer more complex queries than Zendesk AI?
Yes, Fini’s architecture supports multi-step reasoning, enabling it to break down complex customer questions into manageable components, execute logic, fetch live data, and deliver tailored, high-accuracy responses—something Zendesk AI struggles with.
3. Does Fini support reinforcement learning from customer feedback?
Absolutely. Fini continuously learns from failed or low-confidence responses through human feedback loops and agent QA reviews, helping it improve accuracy over time.
4. How does Fini handle ambiguous or multi-intent questions?
Fini uses advanced intent classification and fallback strategies to clarify user intent or disambiguate questions. It can request more information or split the query intelligently, unlike Zendesk AI, which often defaults to a generic response.
5. Is Fini able to suggest actions or take them autonomously?
Yes. Fini can fetch user-specific data from CRMs, trigger workflows, process refunds, and update user records. Zendesk AI currently lacks this action-execution capability.
Data & Integration Flexibility
6. Does Fini work only with Zendesk data?
No. Fini is platform-agnostic and integrates with APIs, CRMs, Confluence, Google Drive, Notion, and more. It builds a unified knowledge layer beyond just Zendesk tickets or articles.
7. Can Fini fetch real-time data from external systems?
Yes. Fini connects with your internal APIs or databases to fetch live data—be it delivery status, subscription status, or payment history—allowing real-time, personalized responses.
8. What if our knowledge lives across multiple tools?
Fini can extract and unify knowledge from tools like Zendesk, Confluence, Notion, web links, file uploads, and Google Drive to ensure comprehensive support coverage.
9. Can Zendesk AI pull from outside Zendesk content?
No. Zendesk AI is limited to its internal ecosystem and cannot natively retrieve data from third-party sources like internal APIs or external knowledge platforms.
10. Is Fini future-proof if we move away from Zendesk?
Yes. Fini works across Zendesk, Intercom, Salesforce, Slack, and more. If you ever switch platforms, Fini’s AI agent and knowledge remain intact without retraining.
Performance & Accuracy
11. What accuracy rate does Fini achieve compared to Zendesk AI?
Fini consistently achieves over 95% accuracy on supported queries through multi-LLM pipelines and agent QA, compared to Zendesk AI’s ~80% accuracy.
12. Can Fini handle a higher volume of queries autonomously?
Yes. Fini automates 60-70% of all queries end-to-end, including refunds and returns, while Zendesk AI is limited to basic categorization and FAQ-style responses.
13. Does Fini learn and evolve with every interaction?
It does. Fini’s continuous learning engine analyzes failure modes, fine-tunes models, and updates knowledge automatically, ensuring long-term improvement.
14. Can Zendesk AI learn from past mistakes?
No. Zendesk AI lacks a feedback training loop and does not update or correct its model based on customer interactions.
15. What tools does Fini offer to monitor and improve accuracy?
Fini includes an agent QA system, reinforcement feedback loops, and analytics dashboards to track resolution success, accuracy, and failure categories.
Knowledge Management
16. How does Fini build its knowledge base?
Fini uses past customer conversations, files, URLs, macros, and tickets to extract relevant Q&A pairs. You can review and approve this auto-generated knowledge before training.
17. Can Zendesk AI generate its own knowledge base?
No. Zendesk relies on manually authored articles and macros. Fini, by contrast, auto-generates knowledge items from raw data like chats and emails.
18. What happens when Fini encounters a knowledge gap?
Fini flags gaps automatically and provides insight into which topics need better coverage—then updates the KB with newly extracted information from relevant sources.
19. Can I assign metadata or categories to knowledge in Fini?
Yes. Fini supports rich metadata tagging, categories, and visibility control across teams and geographies.
20. Can Zendesk AI detect conflicting or outdated knowledge?
No. Fini provides AI-generated conflict summaries and knowledge suggestions. Zendesk lacks this kind of self-healing capability.
Security & Compliance
21. Is Fini compliant with enterprise security standards?
Yes. Fini is SOC2, ISO 27001, and ISO 42001 certified, with secure data handling, access control, and PII masking as defaults.
22. What privacy safeguards does Fini offer?
Fini includes features like PII redaction, role-based access controls, and custom data-retention policies to ensure compliance with GDPR and internal guidelines.
23. Does Fini have a data processing agreement with OpenAI?
Yes. Fini has a DPA with OpenAI, ensuring your data is not used to train foundation models and is securely handled at all times.
24. Can Fini be deployed in a private cloud or intranet?
Yes. Fini supports headless deployments via API, allowing you to run it inside your secure environments with full IT governance.
25. How often does Fini undergo audits?
Fini conducts regular third-party security audits and maintains audit logs internally for compliance purposes.
Deployment & Integration
26. What platforms does Fini support?
Fini integrates with Zendesk, Intercom, Salesforce, Front, Kustomer, Slack, Teams, Shopify, WhatsApp, and APIs—far more than Zendesk AI.
27. Can Fini respond across email, live chat, and Slack?
Yes. Fini can deploy its agents natively across Zendesk Chat, Zendesk Email, Intercom Chat, Slack, and more.
28. Does Fini offer a Chrome extension or internal search bar?
Yes. Fini provides Chrome extensions and an internal AI search bar for agent assistance or employee support.
29. How long does it take to deploy Fini?
Fini’s zero-code setup and white-glove onboarding help teams go live in under 2 weeks, even with custom workflows and integrations.
30. Is model fine-tuning included?
Yes. Fini continuously fine-tunes models on your domain data, supported by a dedicated AI engineer and QA feedback loops.
User Experience
31. How does Fini manage tone and personality?
You can fully customize tone, language, formality, and even emoji usage. Fini adapts to your brand voice across regions.
32. Is multilingual support available out-of-the-box?
Yes. Fini supports over 100 languages natively and can provide translations, detect language, and maintain tone consistency across locales.
33. Can I deploy multiple bots for different use cases?
Yes. Fini supports multiple AI agents across teams, languages, and support categories, all managed in one central dashboard.
34. Does Zendesk AI allow such flexibility?
No. Zendesk AI is limited to a single basic bot configuration without the ability to segment agents by region or function.
35. Can Fini simulate a human-like support experience?
Yes. Fini mimics human agent behavior closely with memory, empathy, fallback strategies, and seamless handovers.
Support & Success
36. Does Fini provide white-glove onboarding?
Yes. Every Fini customer is onboarded by a dedicated success manager and engineer to help configure, optimize, and fine-tune agents from day one.
37. How responsive is Fini’s support team?
Fini offers a dedicated Slack channel, 24/7 coverage, and ongoing AI performance monitoring to ensure success.
38. What kind of training does Fini offer?
Fini offers training for internal teams, documentation, live demos, and async video guides—tailored to different functions (support, product, CX, etc.).
39. Can I track Fini’s performance post-launch?
Yes. Fini provides detailed analytics, category-level performance, ticket deflection rates, resolution accuracy, and QA dashboards.
40. What results have Fini customers seen compared to Zendesk AI?
Customers switching from Zendesk AI to Fini have reported ticket resolution rates jump from <30% to over 70%, CSAT boosts, faster resolution times, and significant cost savings.
More in
Comparison
Co-founder
