Modern customer expectations are at an all-time high. But does your customer service match it measure for measure?
Or, can one assume that your customer service team is overwhelmed by the volume of inquiries—which is often an omen that agents are stretched thin and desperately need more support?
In such a scenario, as with other operational segments of the brand, your customer support can benefit by tapping into artificial intelligence (AI), specifically AI chatbots.
AI customer service bots can improve your customer experience and take the support team’s efficiency to the next level, creating better customer relationships and achieving faster growth.
This guide covers the advantages of AI chatbots for customer service and the best conversational AI chatbots to choose from. If you’re looking for more reasons to implement an AI support bot, you are in the right place.
10 best AI chatbots for customer service
1. Plivo CX
Best for a simple, no-code chatbot that offers reliable, first-line of support
Plivo CX is an omnichannel customer service platform built with advanced features and functionality, including AI customer service bots and live chat.
Plivo CX’s no-code, AI-powered self-service chatbot is one of the most versatile solutions for agile customer service teams. Driven by OpenAI’s latest GPT model, It offers 24/7 self-service support for quick, accurate, and seamless query resolution. The AI chatbot acts as a reliable first line of defense for your customer support team, designed to answer common customer queries swiftly.
Key features
- Allows customers to quickly navigate issues and find the solution they were looking for
- Integrate the chatbot with custom knowledge bases for more accuracy
- The in-app customer service enables customers to send and receive photos and documents easily, making issue resolution faster
- Offers fast handoff whenever customers want to escalate to a live agent
- Comes with a unified agent desktop for omnichannel support, as agents can quickly switch between channels with complete visibility of the customers’ issues
- Besides chatbots, you can further personalize first interactions with the Voice IVR
- Offers seamless integrations with top marketing platforms like HubSpot, Help Scout, Zendesk, and even home-grown systems
- Build custom workflow, trigger them remotely and automatically hand over issues to the most apt agent available
- Investigate customer interactions and gather feedback in real time via Metrics and Reporting
Limitations
- Lacks quality assurance and workforce management features needed for customer support teams
- No mobile version is available for support agents
- It is not ideal for transactional ticket-based customer support interactions
Pricing
- Omnichannel plan: starts at $29 per user per month
- Voice-only plan: starts at $25 per user per month
- Chat-only plan: starts at $15 per use per month
Plivo CX Ratings and Reviews
2. CoSupport.AI
Best for delivering fast and secure customer support
CoSupport.AI is a generative AI chatbot for customer service teams. It is great for delivering instant answers to customer queries with context-based responses.
CoSupport.AI leverages unique AI models, including a cutting-edge LLM, to help customers based on external databases and client issues. If you’re looking for a solution offering fast and secure support, you should explore CoSupport.AI.
Key features
- Delivers instant, context-based answers to customer queries
- Integrates with your existing CRM platforms and communication channels
- Automates routine tasks, enabling more cost savings and easily scalable support
Limitations (Trust Radius)
- It takes time to synchronize workflows between teams.
CoSupport.AI Ratings and Reviews
Pricing
Available on request
3. Zoho SalesIQ
Best for offering support and capturing website leads
Zoho SalesIQ offers an AI chatbot that’s built for cross-functional purposes, catering to the customer engagement needs of sales, marketing, and customer support teams. It interacts with every site visitor on the go. When it comes to the customer support use case, this chatbot helps agents in easily handling customer support tickets.
Key Features:
- Offers instant responses to common customer questions
- Delivers answers in the customers’ preferred language
- Helps automate your live chat operations without having to input a single line of code
Limitations (Trust Radius)
- Integration with 3rd party ticketing systems not in the Zoho family of products
- The time it takes to acquire the results of an inquiry might be a bit excessive at times
Zoho Sales IQ Ratings and Reviews
Pricing
- BASIC: $4.27 per month
- PROFESSIONAL: $9.15 per month
- ENTERPRISE: $14.63 per month
4. Intercom
Best for advanced AI features
Intercom presents a conversational AI for customer service with a view to backing your support team in handling large volumes of queries. The great part about using this platform is that it requires minimal effort to activate the chatbot—no complex configurations and no coding is required to get started.
Features:
- Resolves customer issues with safe, accurate, and conversational responses
- Provides a visual automation builder with no-code building blocks like bots, triggers, rules, and conditions
- Intercom passes these conversations on to your support team for queries that fall beyond the chatbot's bandwidth
Limitations (Capterra)
- Limited voice call features and capabilities
- Inadequate tools for agent performance tracking and quality control
- Lack of compatibility with custom-built systems.
Intercom rating and reviews
Pricing
- Essential: $39 per seat per month
- Advanced: $99 per seat per month
- Expert: $139 per seat per month
5. Zendesk
Best for managing high-frequency, minimal human touch tickets
Zendesk comes with impressive AI customer service bots that make it easier for customers to reach you and get instant, personalized responses. Known as the Zendesk Answer Bot, this intelligent chatbot directly derives information from your business’s knowledge base to respond to customer questions.
Key Features
- Trains itself with every customer interaction, delivering increasingly relevant and specialized content with each solved ticket
- Responds to customer queries across different channels without delay
- Handles complex interactions with minimal involvement from human agents
Limitations (Trust Radius)
- The support platform does not enable businesses to provide a conversational support experience
- Everything requires creating tickets, resulting in a transactional experience
Zendesk rating and reviews
Pricing
- Suite Team: $55 per month for one agent
- Suite Growth: $89 per month for one agent
- Suite Professional: $1150 per month for one agent
6. Ada
Best for proactive, human-like responses
Ada is one of the industry’s leading Natural Language Understanding (NLU) platforms. It enables you to build a scripted chatbot. Using the Ada Reasoning Engine, you can use an AI chatbot that imitates human reasoning and understanding.
Key features:
- Delivers logical responses to customer queries, enabling a smooth and seamless customer experience every time
- Captures customer intent and responds rationally with human-like answers
- Provides extraordinary customer experiences swiftly and at a lower cost than human agents
Limitations (G2)
- The messenger flow isn't as nice as the regular flow.
Ada rating and reviews
Pricing
Available on request
7. Einstein GPT by Salesforce
Best for Salesforce users
Einstein GPT by Salesforce is an AI-powered chatbot built directly into the Salesforce CRM that suggests AI-generated answers to customer questions and queries. It offers multilingual, multi-channel bots that help customer service teams resolve queries faster.
Key features
- Create customer service bots using templates built with pre-loaded intent data, conversational flows, and design
- Allows customers and support agents to converse in the language they are most comfortable in
- Deploys workflow automation for simple as well as complex tasks
Limitations (Capterra)
- NLU may fail to accurately interpret free text input despite adequate training data
Einstein GPT by Salesforce rating and reviews
- Capterra: 4/ 5 (3 reviews)
Pricing
$50 per month
8. Netomi
Best for contextual and efficient response to customers
Netomi is a conversational AI platform that taps into AI-powered automation by using supervised and unsupervised learning to proactively engage with customers. An advantage of using this platform is that it goes through the complete user context, history, etc., to offer a fool-proof experience.
Key features
- Offers easy handoff and navigation across different channels and systems for a well-connected experience
- Directs customers to achieve specific outcomes in a personalized and interactive journey
- The co-pilot assists agents in real-time in responding to customer requests
Limitations (G2)
- Improvements could be made to the AI Chat studio
Netomi rating and reviews
Pricing
Available on request
9. Zoom Virtual Agent
Best for customer communications within the Zoom ecosystem
The Zoom Virtual Agent is built with the purpose of resolving customer issues quickly and at scale. The Zoom Virtual Agent serves as an ‘always on’ chatbot that is designed to offer personalized journeys. It creates customized workflows and messages catering to unique segments based on their profiles or data attributes.
Key features
- Provides the best possible answers by detecting user needs and preferences using NLP
- Intelligent hand-off where every human agent has ample context on the customer’s issue, ensuring seamless customer support
- Directs agents to the correct channel or support agents
Limitations (G2)
- Lacks additional language support for global customers.
- There's a learning curve to understanding actions that should be taken based on your reports. Further, some of the actionable insights are separated (if you have multiple personas).
Zoom Virtual Agent rating and reviews
- G2: 4.5/ 5 (180+ reviews)
Pricing
Available on request
10. Tidio
Best for tracking real-time performance
Tidio is another AI chatbot for customer service that helps answer the more commonly asked
questions. Tidio’s AI chatbot for service, Lyro, responds with all the recurring and repetitive resolutions so that human agents can get down to more important business.
Key features
- Delivers resolutions rooted in your knowledge base and support content
- Gives real-time analysis of your customer experience
- Tracks your real-time performance so that you can course-correct for better results
Limitations (Capterra)
- Limited export capability and some granular metrics seem to be missing
- Their add-on/upgrade structure also feels uneven and confusing
Tidio rating and reviews
Pricing
- Starter: $29 per month
- Growth: $59 per month
- Tidio+: $749 per month
- Enterprise: $2999 per month
Advantages of AI chatbots for customer service
Here’s why adopting an AI chatbot can be more than just a technical upgrade:
1. Round-the-clock availability
The best way to win over your customers is by offering support exactly when they need it—even if these queries come outside your business hours. The AI customer service bot offers 24/7 assistance to customers even if agents are unavailable, leading to a positive brand perception and increased sales.
2. Easy scalability
AI chatbots remove the pains associated with scaling your business and operations. As you scale up, you will witness a growing influx of queries. Instead of waiting to hire more agents, you can set up an AI chatbot to cater to simple queries and offer consistent and continuous support at all times.
3. Cost-effectiveness
An AI support bot can handle a large portion of your customer service queries and simpler tasks like answering FAQs, sharing order status, and so on. This saves you the cost of hiring additional staff for your customer service team without compromising the quality of support you deliver to customers.
4. Swift resolution
One of the most significant advantages of an AI chatbot is the speedy resolution it can offer to inbound customers. They incorporate natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning to provide intuitive and efficient responses within seconds.
How to choose the best AI chatbot for customer service
Chatbots have been shown to speed up response times by an average of 3X. A good AI chatbot can automate all the routine, repetitive work while your human agents deal with the more complex issues.
Here’s a quick guide on which key features you should look out for:
1. Workflow builder
A workflow builder does not require extensive coding knowledge. It helps you build and customize your chatbots’ behavior and workflows for easy automation. With these ready-to-use workflows, you can automate multiple tasks, such as escalating to a live agent or dropping emails after a conversation.
2. Reporting and analytics
Chatbot reporting and analytics help you be more strategic with your support. They help you find your peak hours when customers are most active and spot patterns, such as the most repetitive queries. Further, tracking your average engagement allows you to improve and deliver better chatbot support.
3. Chatbot AI
AI chatbots incorporating NLP (Natural Language Processing) and machine learning capabilities ensure more natural, engaging, and efficient responses. Every chatbot conversation should be as smooth and engaging as interacting with a live agent.
4. Omnichannel support
What if your customers want to connect to live agents on calls or more preferred channels like WhatsApp? Opt for an AI chatbot that provides unified support across different channels, including but not limited to live chat, voice, SMS, email, and WhatsApp
5. Use case
Consider the use case and pain points of the end user, i.e., your customer service team. To cater to customers across diverse time zones, you need a 24/7 AI chatbot. It is equally important that it is easy to set up and use so that there are no disruptions in the support delivery. The best conversational AI platforms are highly scalable and should handle large volumes of queries without compromising response quality or time.
6. Key features
Work with your customer service team to identify priority features such as no-code AI chatbots requiring minimal tech intervention in setup and usage. An AI chatbot with an integrated knowledge base and smooth hand-offs are also essential to simplify query resolution.
7. Integration with other support tools
Customer service is not a stand-alone function focused on answering customer queries. It also involves sending follow-ups and emails, logging customer interactions, etc. Look for an AI chatbot that integrates with platforms like CRM and help desk solutions and is compatible with other tools in your existing tech stack.
8. Quality of support
Consider the quality of support you receive from the provider in case of any issues, as it can amount to downtime and a potential loss of customers. Easy access to troubleshooting assistance is essential to avoid any interruptions in the service. Additionally, there should be appropriate measures to ensure your chatbot has the latest capabilities to deliver optimum customer support.
The final verdict: Choosing the best AI service bot for customer support
When it comes to selecting an AI chatbot for customer service, Plivo CX undoubtedly ticks all the boxes. With a comprehensive suite of features and seamless integration capabilities, it helps you offer the right balance of agent support and AI-powered responses.
The AI chatbot offered by Plivo CX helps you deliver an always-on, personalized customer experience with minimal human intervention. You can manage large volumes of queries, deliver prompt resolutions, and deliver exceptional experiences to customers.
Ready to elevate your customer experience? Book a demo to learn more.
