Best Egg uses Zendesk AI to automate 80% of chat inquiries

Managing your own finances isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. But Best Egg, a fintech platform that provides personal lending and money-management tools, helps people from all walks of life find a clear path to financial progress.

Founded in 2013, the company’s digital financial platform offers simple, accessible, and personalized financial solutions including personal loans and Best Egg Financial Health, a platform for customers to access free financial health tools.

Empowering financial confidence

“We’re in the business of empowering people to feel more confident about their finances,” explains Corrine Porcaro, Senior Director of Service Quality at Best Egg. “That means every interaction has to be human, simple, and supportive—on any channel, at any time.”

Best Egg—a nod to the idea of building a “nest egg”—has funded millions of loans for thousands of different needs.

“Our customers come to us to help cover medical bills, pay down high-interest debt, or even get the necessary funding to adopt a child,” Porcaro says. “We want to give people the support they need, when they need it—and our platform helps customers when they just can’t swing it on their own.”

Demand for Best Egg’s services has only accelerated in recent years.

“When we started over a decade ago, our office was in one room with about ten people,” Porcaro recalls. “Now, we’re in a three-story building in one of the country’s most influential banking hubs.”




AI turns overload into opportunity

Before launching Zendesk AI, Porcaro’s team of U.S.-based agents was stretched thin.

“When agents have to spend their time answering endless simple questions, they can’t focus on having those thoughtful and sensitive conversations that really matter to our customers,” she says.

So when Best Egg launched its mobile app and modernized its digital experience, Porcaro saw the perfect moment to bring AI into the workflow.

“To get our app up and running, we needed to get with the times,” Porcaro laughs. “Implementing Zendesk AI agents was a no-brainer.”

And human agents have a hand in shaping the AI itself.

“Our agents talk about it all the time,” says Porcaro. “They’ll say, ‘Hey, we’re seeing this come up a lot—can we do an AI agent response?’ They really enjoy being part of that journey.”

A momentary bump in the road

Best Egg was all-in on AI from the beginning—but they had a brief detour with a third-party chatbot and automation platform.

“We tried another chatbot, but it really wasn’t that easy to work with—there was a lot of training required,” Porcaro explains. “It took almost an entire full-time person to get trained and maintain the platform.”

The platform offered scripted, dry flows that weren’t in Best Egg’s brand voice. Getting approvals for different verbiage used was a long, complicated process. And it also meant Porcaro and her team needed to juggle two systems instead of one consolidated stack.

“We knew we needed a change, and Zendesk obviously was first of mind because we already use Zendesk Suite,” says Porcaro. “So it was like, ‘let’s go back home—let’s go back to Zendesk.’”

Zendesk AI a “game changer”

Results were immediate. After launching Zendesk’s AI-generated responses, Best Egg’s email automation rate jumped from about one percent to about 20 percent, and chat automation hit roughly 80 percent—with no backend integrations.

That shift means Best Egg can support email tickets with just three people—instead of the roughly ten they would otherwise need. With Zendesk AI, agents now have more time to focus on delivering an exceptional customer experience. And with this increased productivity, Best Egg saves about $500,000 annually.

“Honestly, Zendesk AI agents are a game changer,” Porcaro said. “It has turned our agents from widget movers into problem solvers.”




A need for speed amid regulatory guardrails

With such rapid growth, Best Egg also needed a way to scale efficiently while operating within strict regulatory frameworks.

“As a financial company, we’re in the world of compliance and risk, so when you are publishing something customer-facing like an article—there’s a bunch of different levels of approvals,” says Porcaro. “Partnering with Zendesk and implementing their AI tools meant we could move quickly without compromising on those guardrails.”

During a recent U. S. government shutdown, Best Egg saw a surge of anxious customers reaching out at all hours—many worried about their pay, their loans, and their immediate financial stability. Before AI agents, creating a new help center article with vetted, customer-facing language would have taken days, if not weeks.

“It probably would have taken until the shutdown was over,” Porcaro notes.

Quickly meeting customer needs while remaining compliant

Zendesk AI changed that. With AI agents, Best Egg was able to put pre-approved, specific content into a conversation flow. Now, they can instantly provide timely, contextual support when customers need it most—without having to wait for a new help center article to be green-lit.

“I’m no coder,” Porcaro says. “But the fact that I can create these flows with no real training—it just shows how simple and intuitive the Zendesk platform is.”

The AI stays strictly within Best Egg’s content rails, ensuring accuracy and compliance.

“Knowing our AI agent can only use approved content has helped tremendously,” says Porcaro. “We probably spend an hour a week spot-checking, versus the 40 hours a week before.”

As a result, customers nowreceive empathetic, fully compliant guidance instantly—whether they reach out to Best Egg at 2 p.m. or 2 a.m.




Building a future propelled by technology

Next, Best Egg plans to deepen its integrations so AI agents can authenticate customers, process requests end-to-end, and resolve even more inquiries automatically. The team is also exploring Zendesk QA to expand quality coverage from a manual one percent review rate to near-full visibility.

“AI gives us the ability to deliver a connected, consistent experience—no matter how our customers reach out,” Porcaro says.

As Best Egg continues to scale, Zendesk will help the company move faster, stay compliant, and meet customers where they are—so customers can build the financial nest egg they’ve always hoped for.