13 best AI customer service tools in 2024 for business growth

The customer support landscape is evolving rapidly since companies are now utilising AI customer service tools to provide faster, more accurate, and personalised solutions to their prospects. 

In this blog post, we are about to discover different AI-based customer support tools in 2024. You can use the list to find your upgraded version of AI assistance or explore AI power for the first time. So, without wasting any time let’s explore the world of AI customer support. 

What are AI tools for customer service? 

AI customer support tools are a collection of software solutions that utilise the power of artificial intelligence to automate customer service interaction and boost productivity, efficiency, and personalisation. 

For example, AI chatbots and voice assistants can provide human-like conversations since they use Natural Language Processing. Automation can help in managing inquiries quickly while voice recognition can add a layer of convenience and understanding. These tools not only accelerate customer support but also make it personalised and empathetic so customers don’t feel awkward while communicating with a bot. 

Why use AI tools for customer service? 

The use of AI in customer service can help businesses in many different ways. Some of the benefits of using these tools include: 

Improved response time 

One of the main advantages of AI in customer service is that it helps in handling customer inquiries at a faster pace. These tools can handle automated routine questions and also provide simple tasks. The quick and right assistance helps in boosting customer satisfaction. 

💡Check here how Billink meets and exceeds response time expectations with Trengo.

Better accuracy 

AI tools with NLP and machine learning can provide accurate answers at a faster pace. They can also share relevant information with the support team so they can provide relevant responses through a better understanding of the context of the previous conversation. Moreover, these AI models can improve with time as they can learn from their past experiences. 

Actionable insights

Another important advantage of using AI in customer service is data analysis. An AI system can offer insightful data on consumer behaviour, preferences, and trends by analysing vast amounts of client interactions and doing in-depth analyses. Customer support employees can use this information to better troubleshoot typical difficulties, predict client desires, and remain responsive to their needs.

Customers get personalised experience 

Sender's survey shows, personalisation can cut customer acquisition costs upto 50%.

AI customer support tools can go one step ahead and add personalisation to their conversations. 

These tools can understand customer behaviour and preferences. This understanding helps in targeting individual needs. AI tools can also help the support team to use this data to maintain a positive relationship with the customers and improve brand reputation. 

Top 13 AI tools for customer support

In this guide, we will uncover 13 amazing AI customer support tools. 

1. Trengo 

Trengo is the best AI tool for customer service. It helps businesses to handle all conversations across different platforms from a single dashboard. 

The Chatbot Trengo uses is called AI HelpMate. It can help you automatically handle customer queries and boost your productivity. 

Features 

• AI & automation: Trengo's AI & automation capabilities include a powerful workflow builder that allows you to automate repetitive tasks and processes seamlessly, along with an AI HelpMate designed to handle routine conversations, automatically resolving simple questions without human intervention. These tools enhance efficiency, allowing your team to focus on more complex and value-added activities while ensuring consistent and prompt responses to common customer inquiries.

• Conversation handling: Trengo's conversation handling feature automatically resolves simple questions, leveraging AI to quickly provide accurate responses to common customer inquiries. This reduces the need for human intervention, ensuring that customers receive timely assistance while freeing up your team to focus on more complex issues.

• Inbox organisation: tagging and prioritising
• Team support and templates: Trengo can also provide quick reply suggestions that your teammates can use exactly or edit depending on the situation. 

• Branding: Trengo’s AI is known for adapting brand tone and style in its messages. 

• Lead generation: Trengo’s lead generation feature automates the lead intake process, capturing and processing potential customer information efficiently. The AI-driven system ensures that every lead is logged, categorized, and followed up on, streamlining your sales funnel and enabling your team to focus on converting leads into customers.

• Data intelligence: detailed reporting on customer contact
• Multilingual: in 70+ languages
• ‍No-code setup: You don’t have to be tech-savvy to set up Trengo. You just need to follow a few steps to train the AI and you are good to go. Also, you get complete control of the tool so you can manage its behavior according to your needs. 

Pricing 

Trengo offers three affordable plans: 

Essential 99 Euros per month (5 seats)

Boost 149 Euros per month 

Pro 249 Euros per month 

You can also try Trengo’s 7-day free trial before utilising its premium features permanently. 

What’s best about Trengo? 

Trengo AI feels like one of your other teammate as it can collaborate with your support team to create the best answers for your customers, help them with bookings and much more. 

2. Hiver 

Hiver is a customer service tool that helps manage customer inquiries on a single dashboard. It also has an AI bot named Harvey that can improve the efficiency of customer support. 

Features  

• Integration With Gmail: Harvey offers a user-friendly design and connects with Gmail easily. This assures that support teams habituated to Gmail may begin working immediately and won't face a significant learning curve.
• Conversation Templates: Harvey removes the struggles of scrolling through multiple response templates. Since it can analyze the conversation and recommend suitable answers accordingly. 
• Thank You Detection: It can also detect ending messages like thank you which can prevent the reopening of resolved conversations. 
• AI Summarizer: Harvey can also summarize long emails so that agents can quickly understand the problem and respond immediately. 
• Transparency: You can track Harvey’s every action. Transparency helps in bringing improvement where necessary and keeping track of progress. 
• Continuous Learning: Like other AI tools Harvey can also learn and improve from errors and oversights. So, with time your AI assistant can grow and improve with your business. 

Pricing

Hiver has three pricing plans: 

Lite plan: $19/user/month

Pro plan: $49/user/month

Elite plan: $79/user/month (Harvey is available in this plan) 

However, it also offers a free 7-day trial.  

What’s best about Hiver? 

The easy integration of Hiver with Gmail makes it ideal for companies who don’t want to spend much time learning new tools. 

3. Freshdesk 

Freshdesk is another AI-based customer support software. It works alongside support teams to help them efficiently address incoming queries. It has an AI bot called Freddy which communicates with customers through email and chat. 

Features 

• Integration: You can integrate Freddy across different messaging platforms and easily connect with your customers. These platforms can include Facebook, LINE, Apple Business Chat, and WhatsApp. 
• Easy Tracking: Support agents can also utilize Freddy Copilot and easily track every conversation from all the platforms.
• Data Insights: It can also track the performance and find new methods to improve efficiency and highlight potential problems. Also, it can provide solutions along with methods to implement them. 
• Ordering and Scheduling: Using Freddy AI customers can easily check order statuses or book appointments without any trouble. 
• Smooth Send-Off: If the problem gets difficult Freddy can refer the customer to the relevant team according to the context of the chat.  

Pricing

Freshbot has four different pricing plans:

Free: It's a plan with limited features but allows unlimited agents. 

Pro: $51.43 per agent per month billed annually

Enterprise: $82.54 per agent per month billed annually

You can also try its 14-day free trial to test the premium features. 

What’s best about Freshdesk?

Apart from communication, it can also help customers to easily track orders and schedule new appointments. 

4. Tidio 

Tidio offers a suite of automation tools that leverage the power of AI to improve support processes. These tools are ideally designed for small and medium-sized businesses. 

Lyro is the AI conversation bot created by Tidio. Just like other bots Lyro uses AI and natural language processing to engage in human-like communication. 

Features 

• Enhances Productivity: Lyro is capable of addressing at least 70% of the common queries of customers which allows agents to work on more complex issues. For efficiency, Lyro can easily engage with multiple consumers simultaneously. 
• Natural Communication: Lyro can easily have human-like communication since Tidio leverages natural language processing (NLP). So no need to rely only on template-based conversation. 
• Provide Relevant Answers: Lyro can detect and understand the meaning of inquiries instantly and deliver correct answers accordingly. 
• Help for Support Team: It can also help your support to have efficient communication with its tools like Reply Assistant for smooth and professional replies. It also has a tool called Customer Intent that is used for sorting conversations by purpose. 

Pricing

Tidio has five pricing plans

Starter: $29/mo

Flows: $29/mo

Lyro AI: $39/mo

Growth: $59/mo

Tidio+: starts at $749/mo

It also has a free plan that you can access after creating an account. 

What’s best about Tidio? 

Tidio offers smooth and natural conversations with clients and can also help the customer team generate appropriate replies instantly. 

5. Zendesk 

Zendesk is one of the good AI applications in customer service. It utilises generative AI to create summaries of long queries, expand agent’s replies, and also help in writing held desk articles. These features can save a lot of time for your support team. 

Features

• Auto Ticket Detection: Zendesk can automatically detect the context of a ticket, its language, and also the sentiment of the message. You can utilize this information and redirect the ticket to the appropriate team. 
• Get Insights: The AI can also gather data about what type of tickets customers are submitting. Using this data you can improve your business and also prepare your support team accordingly. 
• AI Agents: Zendesk AI agents are the easiest to create and implement. You just need to connect your FAQ or knowledge base page with the bot and your AI agent is ready to go. The best part is it can solve your customer queries in multiple languages. 
• Personality: Zendesk also allows you to choose a certain personality for the bot according to your brand identity. 

Pricing

Zendesk has the following pricing plans: 

Professional: $55 per agent/month

Enterprise: $115 per agent/month

Note: All plans are billed annually.  

Before purchasing you can also try the 14-day free trial. 

What’s best about Zendesk 

Zendesk is a good tool for the CX businesses on a large budget. It is trained on a large data set related to the customer experience industry.  

6. Nextiva

Nextiva uses NLP and machine learning for natural conversation between customers and the bot. It is one of the best AI tools for customer service since it offers authentic two-way dialogues. 

Features

• Real-Time Voice Detection: Nextiva uses Google Dialog Flow and IBM Watson for real-time communication on call. So, because of NLP tools like the Dialog Flow, callers can easily describe their problems and easily get the solution without waiting for the human agent. 
• Improvement With Time: Nextiva’s communication can improve with time since it utilizes machine learning along with NLP. 
• Smooth Send-Off: This tool is smart enough to understand the conversation properly and redirect the calls to the appropriate agent or department when the situation gets too complex. 
• Intelligent Virtual Assistant: Nextivia can promptly guide consumers properly depending on their needs or problems. 

Pricing

You will find the following three pricing options in Nextiva’s plan: 

Essential: $18.95/user per month

Professional: $22.95/user per month

Enterprise: $32.95/user per month

However, before paying anything you can take their seven-day free trial and test the tool. 

What’s best about Nextiva? 

Nextiva offers smooth call features that are good for any business that gets a lot of calls daily.

7. Ozonetel

Ozonetel is an AI & digital suite that can help businesses make customer journeys smoother. However, unlike other bots, it does not use NLP, instead, it uses LLM (Large Language Model).

Features

• Customer Journey Builder: You can train Ozonetel’s bot according to your website’s data and FAQ. It is simple to use, so you can easily create customer journeys according to your needs. 
• Design Your Bot: Ozonetel also allows you to create and deploy your intelligent bot on different channels. It is a simple drag-and-drop experience so anyone can use it without any hurdles. And because of LLM features this bot can offer better human-like responses.
• WhatsApp Switchboard: Customers can connect with you anytime anywhere via Ozonetel. You can also easily connect the prospects with your agents via Whatsapp, allowing your team to be always available for them regardless of location. 
• Digital Engagement + Omnichannel: The tool allows your agents to seamlessly handle WhatsApp or other tasks while actively talking on a call. It can also help with immediate document exchange during calls. Hence your team can easily solve customer queries in a single interaction providing an overall boost of productivity. 

Pricing

Ozonetel offers customised pricing based on your business needs.  

What’s best about Ozonetel? 

Ozonetel is a nice tool for customer support and can provide better real-time communication since it uses LLM instead of NLP. 

8. Sprinklr AI+

Sprinkl combines the ability of Google’s Vertex AI and OpenAI’s GPT to bring you Sprinklr AI+. It is one of the practical AI tools for customer success since the combination makes it a strong AI generative tool. 

Features 

• Quick AI Assistance: Customer support agents can use this to optimize each response according to context and relevance. And also summarise large inquiries to understand the problem immediately. 
• Large Conversational Data Set: Sprinkl is one of the most powerful customer service AI companies since its AI consists of 750 AI models from 60+ industry vertices. The large data set not only increases speed but also ensures that it provides accurate answers according to the niche of your business. 
• Quality Insights: Sprinklr uses personalized AI grading to assess the quality of interactions across all consumer touchpoints, automating quality monitoring.
• Easy to Deploy: It is pretty simple to train and deploy Sprinkl. You don’t need to be a tech nerd to understand this tool. 

Pricing 

Its pricing starts from $199/user/month. 

It also offers a complete one-month free trial.  

What’s best about Sprinkle AI+? 

The large dataset is the best thing about this conversational AI tool. 

9. Intercom 

Intercom has created its own AI tool called Fin. It is a tool that leverages the combination of ChatGPT-4 and its technologies. 

Features 

• Customise AI Responses: You can either send automatically generated responses of LLM or select from predefined dialogs according to your support strategy. 
• Ongoing Optimisation: Fin also allows you to track and update responses directly in the inbox. This feature allows you to improve accuracy and eliminate any room for error. 
• Multilingual AI: The best feature of Fin is that it allows prospects to easily communicate in their native language since it can communicate in 43 languages. 
• Intuitive Design: It also allows agents to shift between light and dark modes so they can easily work on the screen without affecting their workflow. 
• Omnichannel: Fin also allows prospects to effortlessly communicate across different platforms including live chat, SMS, email, WhatsApp, and other social platforms. 

Pricing

Starts at $74 per month (2 seats)  

You can also try their 2 weeks free trial before jumping on the paid version. 

What’s best about Intercom Fin? 

The best feature of intercom Fin is the smooth transaction between boot conversation and human support. 

10. Yuma AI 

Yuma AI uses intelligent automation to transform customer service and retail experiences.  In order to increase customer happiness and loyalty, it expertly handles order-related inquiries, amends cancellations, and guides clients through refunds and swaps. 

Features 

• Best for E-commerce: Yuma is an AI trained for e-commerce operations. So, it can easily recognize and respond to customer queries on your store easily and efficiently. 
• Individual Customer Interaction: Autopilot features allow Yuma to handle individual customer interaction and execute tasks like order confirmation and subscription adjustments.  
• Handle Presale Questions: As an effective e-commerce assistant, Yuma can also handle presale queries and lead customers in their buying journey. 
• Handling Spam: It can also clean the spam messages and save a lot of time for your team. 

Pricing 

Yuma AI offers the following four plans: 

Starter+ $239/month Billed Annually

Pro $439/month Billed Annually

Evolve $639/month Billed Annually 

Enterprise Contact their team to know the price

They also offer a 7-day free trial. 

What’s best about Yuma AI? 

Yuma AI is an ideal tool for e-commerce owners since it can handle most of the order-related queries automatically. 

11. Help Scout 

Help Scout is a platform that helps businesses improve conversations with their prospects. It can also help in generating summaries, providing AI assistance, and creating AI drafts to boost the productivity of the support team. 

Features 

• Easy Send-Off: Help Scout can easily help team members understand the context of the conversation whenever there is a send-off. 
• Improved Support: The tool can also summarize long queries so that managers or support staff can easily understand the situation and make well-informed decisions quickly and efficiently. 
• AI Assist: Using AI Assist you can easily adjust the tone of the replies to make them formal or informal according to the context. You can also use this feature to adjust the length of the replies easily and check the grammar and spelling errors. 
• Multilingual Support: The tool can support multiple languages. 

Pricing

Help Scout offers 3 pricing plans. 

Standard: $22 Per user per month (limited to 25 users) 

Plus: $44 Per user per month 

Pro: $65 Per user per month (Starts for 10+ users)

You can try their free trial before selecting a package for your team. 

What’s best about Help Scout? 

Its AI summary feature can help agents easily understand long queries and respond quickly. So, this feature can enhance the overall productivity of a team. 

12. Zoho Desk 

Zoho is another worldwide-known software suite for businesses. The software is designed to enhance the productivity of different teams like finance and customer support. And to make things even better they have created an AI tool called Zia. 

Features 

• Smooth Communication: Customers can interact with Zia via a mobile app or website. This AI tool for customer service can understand their queries and provide accurate solutions according to the provided database. 
• Understanding Sentiments: Zia can also understand the emotions behind every incoming ticket. By adding the sentiment in the context your agents can easily prioritise queries and send possible responses immediately. 
• Tagging Tickets: After receiving a ticket, Zia processes it and tags it appropriately. Zia asks you when it's not sure which tags to put on a ticket. It learns from this, too, so the next time she can assist you more effectively.
• Data Insights: Zia also helps in collecting data insights. For example, it can notify your team when there is a surge of incoming tickets. 

Pricing

Zoho offers three different pricing plans: 

Standard $14 per user per month billed annually 

Professional $23 per user per month billed annually 

Enterprise $40 per user per month billed annually

You can opt for their 15-day free trial before paying for a package.  

What’s best about Zia? 

The best thing about Zia is that it can understand the sentiments of consumers and help them find appropriate solutions according to their needs. 

13. Kustomer 

Kustomer is a customer service CRM software that offers a single customer view and omnichannel communications to simplify the customer journey. Its AI-powered automations are offered as Kustomer IQ, or KIQ, a usage-based add-on.

Features 

• Quick AI Responses: Kustomer leverages different AI language models to resolve customers' queries with accurate, safe, and conversational answers based on your data set. 
• Simple Configuration: You can create and deploy chatbot workflows via an easy-to-use visual interface and templates. 
• Create Your Workflows: Kustomer also allows you to create dialogue flows to offer customized solutions and recommendations according to the customer inputs. 
• Intent Detection: Kustomer can detect different words or phrases and understand the intent of the customer. 

Pricing 

Kustomer offers two pricing plans: 

Enterprise $89 per month per user 

Ultimate $139 per month per user

It does not offer a free trial but you can still get a free demo. 

What’s best about Kustomer? 

The best feature of Kustomer is that it allows you to create customer dialogue flows for personalisation. 

Examples of AI tools in customer service

The use of AI is a good addition to customer service since it can help teams automate FAQs, provide on-spot assistance, and also free up time to focus on more complex interactions. Here are a few examples of AI tools you can use to improve customer service operations: 

AI chatbots

Chatbots with AI capabilities are becoming more and more popular as first-line customer service tools. They can respond quickly to frequently asked consumer questions, leverage conversational AI and natural language processing to improve their ability to communicate with customers and learn from previous experiences.

Your company can utilise AI chatbots to:  

• Manage large volumes of incoming requests without increasing the workload on your team
• Offer quick responses to customers that will reduce wait time and improve customer experience. 
• Allow your team to work on more complex tasks. 

Automate tasks and workflows 

AI significantly streamlines customer service operations by automating routine tasks like data entry and ticket creation. This automation reduces the likelihood of human error, accelerates processes for improved efficiency, and enhances the overall customer experience. 

AI writing assistants

AI tools have become smarter with advancements in language learning technology like LLMs and GPT-4. The AI assistance can now have better communication with customers since they can access and understand data from knowledge base articles and customer service tickets.   

AI sentiment analysis

With training with large data sets and improvements in algorithms, modern AI tools can now dissect human emotions. AI customer service tools can collect feedback at different points to make the customer journey smoother and better. The AI sentiment analysis can help to: 

• Quickly identify the needs and wants of a customer 
• Gather useful insights that you can use to improve your customer journey 
• Make sense out of disparate data 

Conversational knowledge bases 

The use of conversational knowledge bases is another way to utilise AI in customer support. This feature is similar to a chatbot but different in the application. The conversational knowledge base is a collection of surface-level articles. The AI uses this data to answer relevant queries and solve customer issues.

Generate reports   

Your support team can also utilise AI for internal matters. For example, your team can communicate with the AI in plain language and generate complex reports in real time. 

It can help your team in: 

• Generating reports that can take hours of manual work 
• Analysing customer data easily and efficiently 
• Making ad-hoc reporting more feasible

Challenges to implementing AI customer support software

Leveraging AI for customer support can uplift your productivity. However, there are some challenges you may face while incorporating AI into your work environment for the first time. Here are some hurdles you may stay aware of while adapting AI customer support software:  

• Training the AI: You will need to train your AI before you put it into action. And you will need someone to monitor the initial outputs of the tool and train it to reach perfection.  
• Training your team: You may need to dedicate a separate time and guide your team regarding the features and functions of the AI support tool. If you want to take it to the next level you can hire a subject matter expert to train the tool and also the staff. 
• Human collaboration: After you implement the new technology your support gets a chance to work on more complex and important tasks and be with your customers at the right time. So, keep in mind that AI power and human force are the ideal combination that will boost your customer support.  

Best practices for getting started with AI-based customer support

Implementing AI tools for customer success can always help you improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your support staff. Here’s how you can successfully deeply AI in your business: 

Understand your needs and goals 

Before you deploy an AI tool in your business you must understand your needs and requirements. Here are some questions you can ask yourself before making a decision: 

• What are the challenges you are looking to address with the help of AI? 
• What do you want to achieve with AI customer support tools? 
• How do you want to measure your success? 

Select the right platform

There are many AI tools for customer support. However, each of them varies in functionality and use cases. To select the best option you can consider the following factors: 

• Features: Consider the capabilities of every tool and how well they match your objectives. Sentiment analysis, automatic ticket routing, and AI-driven chatbots are a few features that may be important to you.
• Integration: Verify that the AI tool either works naturally with the software you intend to employ or integrates easily with the customer care software you now use. 
• Scalability: Select a system that will grow with you. The tool must grow with the growth of your company. 
• Cost: You can compare the cost of different tools which can include subscription charges, setup fees, and hidden charges. 
• Customer Support and Training: It will be better for you if you can find such AI customer service companies that promise to provide ongoing customer support along with necessary training. 
• Customer Needs: The AI customer support tool you choose must align with your business’s support philosophy. 

Integrating the tool into your business

After you have selected the right tool for your business it is time to deploy it within your current workflows. Here some some tops you can use to complete this step: 

• Gradual deployment: Don’t rush the deployment. Start by using the tool for specific tasks and smoothly expand its use with important areas of customer support. This approach will help you to easily get used to the change without affecting your workflows.  

• Train Your Team: Allocate separate time slots and train your support team so that they can effectively utilize the AI and make the customer journey better. 

• Monitor Performance: Make sure the AI tool is performing up to your standards by checking in on it frequently. Monitor important indicators that are in line with your objectives and make the required corrections to enhance outcomes.

• Feedback: Use micro surveys and feedback forms to ask customers and your customer care staff about their experiences using your AI solution. 

Trengo: The future of customer service AI

The AI customer service tools are here to stay in the long run. Technology is advancing every day and making the customer support experience better regularly. 

Trengo is one of the best AI customer service tools since it can help your team get more products and provide accurate solutions for your customers. Your team can use Trengo just like their teammate and ask it to take on the action whenever they want to. Also, our tool can call in your teammates whenever the situation demands a human touch. 

So, what are you waiting for? Sign up for the trial today and find out the power of our AI-powered customer support tool.