AI customer service software

Three-quarters of business leaders understand the importance of investing in artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the customer experience (CX), according to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2023. Even so, 62 percent say their businesses are falling behind when effectively leveraging AI in customer service.

As customers increasingly state their desire to see more AI in daily support interactions, businesses must modernize. So, to help businesses stay competitive, we’re giving you the 411 on some popular AI-powered support tools. Read on to learn more.

• What is AI customer service software?
• AI customer service software comparison chart
• The 12 best AI customer service software
• Features of AI customer service solutions
• Benefits of using AI customer support tools
• How to choose the right AI customer service solution
• Frequently asked questions about AI customer service
• Automate customer service with Zendesk AI

AI customer service software refers to tools like intelligent routing, chatbots, and automated workflows that use artificial intelligence, machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), and natural language understanding (NLU) to enhance and automate support interactions.

Here’s a quick overview of 12 AI customer service companies of 2023.

All solutions made our roundup based on user reviews, affordability, and functionality. For more insights about your favorites, jump to the vendor profiles below.

Here’s another look at the AI customer service software vendors we will discuss in this roundup.

1. Zendesk

Zendesk is an invaluable tool for businesses with its built-in artificial intelligence features and partnership with OpenAI. Generative AI for agents can help summarize long tickets, aid in creating help desk articles and macros, and expand agent replies, giving your team valuable time back.

Zendesk is especially useful for those looking to optimize omnichannel support processes with AI built specifically for CX. It's trained on the world’s largest CX dataset, including trillions of data points from real service interactions. Zendesk AI customer service software works immediately (out of the box), saving teams hours on configuration and accelerating time to implementation. When coupled with our software’s click-to-configure capabilities, there’s no need to worry about hiring programmers or overburdening your in-house team with work.

Our AI can automatically detect what a ticket is about (its intent), what language it's written in, and whether the customer's message is positive or negative (its sentiment). You can use this information to automatically route tickets to the right agents, equip agents with key insights, and report on trends in the types of tickets your customers submit. Utilizing AI-powered tools like intelligent triage, Zendesk has proven its ability to reduce support time by 30 to 60 seconds per ticket.

As part of our AI offerings, customers also gain access to Zendesk chatbots. Businesses can easily customize them using our no-code bot builder and the 1,600+ integrations available on the Zendesk Marketplace.

Features:

• Intent, sentiment, and language detection
• Chatbots and email bots
• Intelligent routing and triage
• AI-powered knowledge base
• AI-powered insights and reporting
• Agent assistance
• Ticket response suggestions
• Intelligence in the context panel

Pricing:

• Team: $19 per agent/month
• Professional: $55 per agent/month
• Enterprise: $115 per agent/month

  *All plans are billed annually.

• Start a free trial
• View pricing
• Request a demo
• Take a product tour
• Evaluate the ROI of Zendesk

Free trial:

14 days

2. Chatfuel AI

Chatfuel AI offers a bot builder developed using OpenAI’s API (application programming interface) and the GPT-4 model. With the bot builder, businesses can create bots capable of answering basic questions about the business and recommending products. Businesses can use ChatFuel’s features for marketing, sales, or support. However, since it isn’t built for a specific set of circumstances, the features may be limiting to support teams

The AI customer service bot also has basic omnichannel communication capabilities and integrates with chat platforms.

Features:

• Intuitive flow builder
• Ready-made bot templates
• Communication automation
• Knowledge bases

Pricing:

• Start: $29 per month
• Grow: $79 per month
• Pro: $149 per month

Free trial:

7 days

3. Fin

Intercom’s AI customer service chatbot—Fin—can be renamed and personalized to better align with a business’ branding. The bot requires minimal configuration and integrates with more than 400 apps.

Like many bots in 2023, Fin is powered by OpenAI, which enables it to solve problems and provide accurate answers. It accomplishes this by accessing existing support content from public URLs and through content syncing. Business leaders and management teams can also leverage this tool to ease agent workloads through agent handoffs and automated follow-ups.

Features:

• Customizable bot
• Web, mobile, and app ready
• Bot preview
• Inbox view for AI conversations
• Bot and agent handoff
• Automated content sync

Pricing:

• Resolution: $0.99 each

  *Fin’s pricing is usage-based and measured in Resolutions.

Free trial:

14 days

4. Tidio

Tidio AI offers AI customer service software and a bot called Lyro AI. The AI platform comes with the ability to detect frequently asked questions, automate replies, identify support opportunities, and recognize user behavior to make relevant sales recommendations.

Tidio’s bot, Lyro, comes with 35+ predefined templates, and it can intelligently triage and route tickets and automatically recommend products and discounts. Lyro can answer customer queries with relative accuracy by pulling from a business’s catalog of published support content or by manually adding inputs and outputs. All Tidio users can access Lyro, which comes with 50 free conversations.

Features:

• Reply assistant
• Smart views
• 24/7 customer service

Pricing:

• Free: $0 per month
• Communicator: $25 per seat/month
• Starter: $29 per month
• Chatbots: $29 per month
• Tidio+: $394 per month

  *Users must have a Tidio plan to access Lyro AI. Pricing for Lyro AI conversations varies as it’s an add-on.

Free trial:

7 days

5. Freddy AI

Freshwork’s AI-driven customer service tool is named Freddy, and it’s built into every FreshChat and Enterprise plan. Freddy AI is a generative AI solution that enables automations, self-service, and ticket deflection.

One of its key features is Freddy Copilot. Billed as a 24/7 AI collaborator, Freddy Copilot provides employees with context and insights regarding team productivity. However, since it's designed for various teams, businesses may find that it lacks the extensive features that comes with a customer service-first solution.

Features:

• Bot templates
• Agent handover
• Change management
• Smart recommendations
• Workflow automation

Pricing:

• Free: $0 per month (up to 10 agents)
• Growth: $19 per agent/month
• Pro: $49 per agent/month
• Enterprise: $79 per agent/month

  *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

21 days

6. Kustomer IQ

Kustomer IQ offers an AI customer service solution for businesses. Its tools can assess data and generate self-service suggestions, largely with the help of its chatbots. Users can use its bots across live chat, social media, and popular messaging apps.

It provides intelligent triage and recommendations rooted in conversation data and intent recognition. Kustomer also offers conversational assistants to automate agent research, processes, and workflows as a paid add-on.

Features:

• Custom bots
• Code-free configuration
• Agent suggestions
• Sentiment analysis
• Natural language detection

Pricing:

• Enterprise: $89 per user/month
• Ultimate: $139 per user/month

Free trial:

Unavailable

7. HappyFox Assist AI

Assist AI is a functionality of HappyFox’s support software. The platform is designed for IT, HR, and customer service teams and integrates with Slack and Microsoft Teams.

HappyFox’s objective is to integrate with internal knowledge bases and automatically answer repetitive questions. It aims to help with tasks like creating support tickets and maintaining a log of audits, and continuously improves the AI backend to better carry out customer service duties.

Features:

• Knowledge base recommendations
• AI responses
• Integrations with third-party systems
• Location-based AI responses
• Conversational ticketing

Pricing:

• Free: $0 per month
• Pro: $1 per user/month
• Enterprise: $2 per user/month

Free trial:

Unavailable

8. ChatSpot

ChatSpot by HubSpot is primarily a marketing assistant for growing businesses, though businesses may use it for sales and support. Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3 and Dall-E (used for generating images and art), the chatbot enhances productivity and streamlines common tasks such as writing copy for social media captions, articles, and emails.

It can also assist with content planning by generating topics for blogs. Or, the bot can help with reporting by capturing data and insights.

Features:

• Data cleansing
• Email data capture
• Call recording and transcription
• Contact information imports

Pricing:

• Free: $0 per month

Free trial:

Unavailable

9. Balto

Balto is an AI-powered platform for customer service agents. Balto’s Agent App is displayed on agent screens while they work, coaching them while interacting with customers and surfacing information and context as needed.

Balto’s AI can also understand audio, transcribe support interactions, and sync notes to the platform instantaneously so management can review them if needed. It also has a performance dashboard that allows agents to monitor their successes.

Features:

• Real-time guidance
• Coaching opportunity alerts
• Automated note-taking
• Dynamic response prompts
• Triggers and alerts

Pricing:

• Contact sales

Free trial:

Unavailable

10. Drift Conversational AI

Drift is an AI-powered platform with a conversational chatbot that integrates with chat, email, and video. The sales-first software is customizable, so businesses can make adjustments and add integrations for customer service functionality.

Right away, Drift’s bot can adopt your brand’s voice and learn from past conversations and content on your website or blog to customize its outputs. Even though it was pretrained on millions of business-to-business (B2B) sales conversations, the tool can still help support teams carry out standard tasks.

Features:

• AI bot deflection
• Self-service
• Customer service metrics dashboard
• Video messaging
• GPT suggested replies
• Language translation
• AI engagement scores

Pricing:

• Premium: $2,500 per month (billed annually)
• Advanced: Contact Drift
• Enterprise: Contact Drift

Free trial:

Available

11. Custify

Custify is a support platform for software as a service (SaaS) companies that are attempting to increase customer retention and revenue. While you can use it for customer service, it’s more accurate to define it as a platform for customer success since it aids in tracking customer life cycles, product adoption, and sales opportunity identification.

It can automate email communications, monitor the health of individual accounts, track agent performance, and integrate with third-party platforms.

Features:

• 360 view of customer data
• Customer life cycle metrics and insights
• Automation playbooks
• Automated workflows
• Dashboards and reports
• Tools and integrations

Pricing:

• Contact for a custom quote

Free trial:

Unavailable

12. Replicant

Replicant is an automation software for contact center support teams. With an emphasis on voice calls and messaging, Replicant aims to streamline repetitive tasks across channels. Agents can also use it to bypass language barriers and provide excellent support to customers worldwide.

The tool is a supplementary resource for businesses with existing interactive voice response (IVR), contact center as a service (CCaaS), customer relationship management (CRM), and telephony software—especially those that struggle to predict call volumes and staffing needs. It also has an analytics dashboard so agents and management can keep track of performance.

Features:

• Omnichannel customer service
• Real-time analytics dashboard
• Contact center automation
• Conversational AI
• Ticket escalation with full context
• Call disposition auto-logging

Pricing:

• Request pricing

Free trial:

Available upon request

Here are a few of the top features you should look out for when searching for the best AI customer service solution.

70 percent of customer service agents don’t feel empowered to do their jobs well. However, you can give your agents more confidence by offering access to high-grade AI customer service software.

Here are a few examples of how this software can help agents, customers, and businesses:

• Improve agent efficiency: Speed up support request resolutions with contextual insights and reply suggestions.
  
• Better understand customers: AI-powered reports, analytics, and insights allow agents to understand customer needs and expectations.
  
• Boost customer satisfaction: AI customer service software enables 24/7 support, greater personalization, proactive care, and more, leading to higher CSAT scores.
  
• Fewer expenses: AI customer service software enables multilingual support and around-the-clock care without additional headcount and helps agents resolve tickets faster, keeping support costs down.
  
• More sales: Traditionally, businesses treated support teams as an expense because they weren’t generating revenue. However, with insights and guidance from AI, agents can identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities, boosting revenue.

There are several nuances to consider when deciding on an AI customer service solution. It’s important to find software with your required capabilities and consider the potential return on investment (ROI). With this in mind, follow these best practices to pick the best solution.

Use data to understand software needs

Data can illuminate a need for automation and self-service. Review the data closely to determine which type of software you need and how you will incorporate it into existing workflows.

Some vendor products have a chatbot and generative AI for agents, but not all do. So, be sure to verify if the vendor of your choice offers the tools you need.

Assess time to value (TTV)

TTV references the time it takes a business to see value from new software. Talk to your sales rep about TTV to ensure you aren’t looking at a slow implementation that results in a loss of revenue.

Consider your budget

Before committing to a purchase, assess the total cost of ownership (TCO). This includes everything from purchasing and configuring the product to maintaining and retiring it. To keep costs low, consider purchasing a solution that the average employee without technical expertise can configure and maintain.

Here are a few answers to the most common questions about using artificial intelligence for customer service.