Do you recall the countless hours you spend answering repeated customer queries and the frustration your customers face while spending hours on calls with your support team - and that too just for a minor issue that could have taken a few minutes?
Well, how do you say goodbye to ‘hold music’ sessions and the never-ending loop of calls?
By transforming traditional support into innovative solutions. With an AI customer service chatbot, you can turn a tedious customer support experience into a piece of cake.
But how? This blog post covers the 12 best chatbots for customer support that could help you redefine the customer experience.
But before we dive into the incredible world of AI chatbots, let's take a moment to understand what exactly AI chatbots are.
What are customer service chatbots?
Customer service chatbots are software applications trained to offer instant online support to your consumer. AI-powered customer service chatbots are trained on your customer service data, use machine learning techniques, and have natural language processing capabilities to offer human-like responses to your consumer queries.🧠
They are specifically designed to automate routine tasks and cater to the users’ needs without the need for human operators.
Have a look at how AI chatbots can help the customer support team. Also, check out the different types of chatbots available and see which one is best for your business.
Now that you understand what customer service chatbots actually are let’s quickly jump to the benefits of chatbots in customer support.
Top 6 benefits of using customer service chatbots
- Faster response times: No more waiting on hold! AI customer service chatbots provide instant assistance, addressing customers' needs quickly. They significantly reduce response times, leading to happier customers. ⏱️
- 24/7 availability: Chatbots never sleep! They can offer round-the-clock support, ensuring that customers receive help whenever they need it, no matter the time zone. This, in turn, enhances customer satisfaction.
- Cost-effective: Implementing AI chatbots for customer support can help your businesses save on operational costs. You can reduce the manpower needed to handle routine inquiries. This helps companies to improve overall efficiency 💸
- Scalability: As a business grows, AI-enabled bots for customer service can effortlessly handle increasing customer inquiries without a corresponding increase in support staff. This helps to scale the operations smoothly, regardless of the volume of inquiries. 📈
- Consistency: AI chatbot customer service tools maintain the same quality of support, ensuring that customers receive accurate and consistent information. Thus, using these support chatbots, you can maintain your brand reputation and reduce the risk of miscommunication or human errors. 📏
- Personalized Support: When it comes to AI-powered customer service chatbots, you can tailor them to provide personalized assistance to the users. They can offer contextually relevant responses and address unique consumer needs. Moreover, you can use multilingual chatbots to create a more engaging and satisfying customer experience. 💡
Want to add a customer support AI chatbot to your website? Check this guide on how to add live chat on a website in under 5 minutes.
12 best chatbots for customer service
1. Botsonic
Botsonic is the best customer service chatbot on our list. The AI chatbot can help you transform the customer experience and engagement. The hyper-intelligent and conversational AI chatbot for customer service harnesses the power of GPT-4 and NLP to interpret user queries, perform various tasks, and provide information to customers.
The customer support AI chatbot can easily enhance the user experience. You can implement them on your website to improve engagement and streamline various other customer support tasks. Eventually, it helps free the human agents to focus on more complex tasks.
Integrating Botsonic AI chatbot with the existing systems is super easy, simply by using an embedded script or an API key generated by Botsonic.
And guess what?
You don’t need to be a tech wizard to create a Botsonic customer service AI chatbot. With its user-friendly and intuitive interface, you can easily set up and create a customized AI chatbot. Moreover, it provides flexible branding options that help you customize the AI chatbot as per your brand identity.
Pros of using Botsonic:
- Provides top-notch customer support
- Solves a major portion of your customer queries
- Helps to cut costs with customer service automation
- Offers High customizability to uphold brand identity
- Comes with a user-friendly and intuitive interface
- Allows to build your AI chatbots powered by GPT-4 and NLP
- No-code bot creation makes it super easy to build and deploy
Here’s a 3-step process build a no-code custom AI ChatGPT chatbot that can transform your customer support:
Step 1: Gather your data trove 🎁
To build a hyper-intelligent and customized AI chatbot for customer support using Botsonic, you first need to gather all the necessary documents, URLs, files, and other information that can help create a reliable chatbot.
Moreover, you need to dive deep into past customer interactions and queries to get a better understanding of trends and questions. Then, arm your chatbot with the most relevant and valuable info for top-notch service. 📈
Step 2: Give it some personality 😎
Now that you've got your data, it's time to make your chatbot truly yours. Infuse it with your brand's colors, logos, contact details, and even a snazzy name!
Want a pro tip? Toss in some example queries to help your customers interact smoothly with your shiny new AI sidekick. 🦸
Step 3: Launch your chatbot to the world! 🌐
With your chatbot ready to go, Botsonic will magically whip up a widget that matches your branding. Just copy the given embed code and paste it into your website's backend to welcome your chatbot on board. 🛠️
2. Drift
Drift is an exceptional conversational AI chatbot. The customer support bot is specifically designed to elevate B2B interactions and help businesses connect with potential partners. It offers personalized user experiences and real-time engagement for buyers.
What's even more amazing?
Drift's ability to collect valuable data from interaction with users. It allows your business to understand consumer behavior better and connect with target buyers more effectively. 🎯
But that's not all!
This sales-savvy customer service chatbot excels at scheduling meetings with potential clients, helping you reach key decision-makers at lightning speed. ⚡
With Drift by your side, your B2B journey will be smoother, faster, and more efficient than ever before! Ready, set, succeed! 🌐
Drift’s AI-powered chatbot can provide great customer support and meeting scheduling options and can also integrate with tools like Google Analytics, Mailchimp, and more. But its reporting feature is difficult to use, plus sometimes it’s buggy, which affects the customer experience.
Key features:
- Lead routing: Drift's AI chatbots can intelligently route leads to the right team member, increasing efficiency.
- Meeting scheduling: The chatbots facilitate the scheduling of sales meetings directly through the conversation.
- Email campaign integration: Drift bots can follow up with leads through integrated email campaigns to nurture them through the sales funnel.
- Personalization: The platform uses visitor data to personalize conversations and improve engagement.
Pricing:
Drift offers three different plans. The Premium plan starts at $2500. To get the pricing details of other two plans you need to ask for a quote.
Free trial:
Drift does not offer a free trial.
3. Zendesk
Zendesk is a leading name among the best customer service platforms. The platform comes with a suite of AI-driven features tailor-made for customer service. It comes with industry-specific pre-trained bots. These bots come equipped with generative AI capabilities, giving them the edge to understand and respond to customer queries in a context that's unique to each industry.
While Zendesk Chat offers straightforward pricing, it's important to note that costs can escalate, especially when integrating additional Zendesk products. You may also need a developer to build and customize their chatbot, adding to the expense.
Apart from that, the Zendesk chatbot is best suited for businesses that are already a part of the Zendesk ecosystem. For those not heavily invested in Zendesk, it is worth considering other best chatbots for customer service that offer more focused chatbot customization options.
Key features:
- Industry-specific pre-trained bots: Zendesk bots come pre-trained with industry-specific customer service data.
- Unlocking additional capabilities: Zendesk's Advanced AI add-on unlocks additional AI features such as intelligent triage and macro suggestions.
- Natural, human-like language: The customer service AI chatbot uses generative AI to provide support with natural, human-like language, making interactions more engaging.
Pricing:
- Suite Team: $55 per agent/month
- Suite Growth: $89 per agent/month
- Suite Professional: $115 per agent/month
- Suite Enterprise: $169 per agent/month
- Suite Enterprise Plus: $249 per agent/month
Free trial:
14 days
4. Ada
Diving into the capabilities of Ada, it's clear why this platform is carving out a significant niche in the customer service automation space. It is an automated customer service chatbot powered by AI and Natural Language Processing (NLP). Ada's Reasoning Engine mimics human reasoning, providing a more intuitive customer service experience.
Designed to serve multiple industries effectively, Ada is versatile enough to handle the unique challenges and customer service needs of the Ecommerce, FinTech, SaaS, and Gaming sectors. The customer service tool comes with a no-code automation builder that empowers teams to create complex workflows without needing technical expertise.
Key features:
- Rich messaging: Provides engaging and interactive conversations.
- AI training insights and suggestions: Offers insights for improving bot performance.
- Ticket creation and handoff: Seamlessly transitions from bot to human support.
Pricing:
Contact for a quote
Free trial:
Unavailable
5. Intercom Fin
Intercom’s Fin chatbot, powered by OpenAI, is designed to provide swift and accurate support, making it one of the best chatbots for customer service. The customer service bot not only answers questions but also enhances the customer journey with its multilingual capabilities and thoughtful conversation design.
The chatbot software works natively with Intercom’s suite, including help desk, inbox, ticketing, messenger, and reporting tools. And, the best part?
Intercom Fin can handle full conversations and ask clarifying questions to understand customer needs better. Also, with conversation monitoring in the inbox, you can refine Fin’s responses.
Features:
- Easy installation: Offers a hassle-free installation process.
- Multilingual support: The chatbot can automatically detect and resolve issues in 43 languages.
- References existing knowledge base: Uses existing information to provide reliable answers.
- Performance metrics: Offers a range of metrics, including CSAT, usage, ROI, and content-level analytics.
Pricing:
- Starter: $74 per month
- Pro: Contact for a quote
- Premium: Contact for a quote
Free trial:
14 days
6. HubSpot
HubSpot Conversations is the integrated chatbot feature of HubSpot's all-in-one inbound marketing platform. Originally a product of Motion AI launched in 2015, HubSpot chatbot has evolved into a robust tool, reflecting HubSpot's commitment to enhancing customer service capabilities.
From sleek chat widget that integrates smoothly with websites to instant reply bots for quick customer responses, the HubSpot Conversations chatbot for support boasts a variety of features designed to streamline customer interactions.
Despite its robust feature set, the HubSpot chatbot does not qualify as an advanced customer service chatbot. It lacks advanced features such as automation, AI, NLP (Natural Language Processing), or NLU (Natural Language Understanding), which can limit its effectiveness in certain marketing channels. Additionally, keyword recognition and chatbot analytics are areas where the tool could use enhancement.
Key features:
- Lead qualification: Qualifies leads to identify potential customers.
- Scheduling: Allows customers to book meetings quickly.
- Support ticket generation: Generates support tickets for customer issues.
- No-code custom chatbots: Allows businesses to create custom chatbots without coding.
Pricing:
- Free tools: $0 per month (up to 5 users)
- Starter: $18 per month (2 paid users)
- Professional: $450 per month (5 paid users)
- Enterprise: $1,200 per month (10 paid users)
Free trial:
14 days
7. Einstein GPT by Salesforce
Einstein GPT fuses Salesforce's proprietary AI with OpenAI's tech to bring users this new one-of-a-kind chatbot for customer support. The platform's collaboration with OpenAI equips Salesforce customers with ready-to-use generative AI capabilities. This includes the innovative ChatGPT app for Slack.
It integrates OpenAI's advanced technology to offer conversation summaries, research assistance, and writing aid, streamlining communication and enhancing productivity.
Einstein GPT infuses Salesforce's proprietary AI models with cutting-edge generative AI technology from a wide ecosystem of partners. The use of natural-language prompts directly within the Salesforce CRM enables the generation of content that adapts in real-time to the ever-changing customer information and needs.
Key features:
- Article recommendations: Provides relevant article recommendations.
- Reply suggestions: Offers reply suggestions to customer queries.
- Case classification and routing: Classifies and routes customer cases effectively.
Pricing:
- Service Cloud Einstein: $50 per user/month
Free trial:
30 days
8. Zoho SalesIQ
As we explore the landscape of the best chatbots for customer service, Zoho SalesIQ emerges as a powerful live-chat app designed to engage and convert website visitors into satisfied customers.
Zoho SalesIQ offers a robust chatbot builder, Zobot. The feature stands out for its versatility, allowing users to configure chatbots to meet a wide range of specific requirements, from simple FAQs to complex transactional conversations.
Key features:
- Custom chatbots: Allows businesses to create custom chatbots catering to a wide array of industries such as ecommerce, education, financial services, manufacturing, real estate, restaurants, travel, and startups.
- Zia AI assistant: Provides support to customers and agents.
- Drag-and-drop chatbot builder: Simplifies the creation of chatbots.
Pricing:
- Basic: $7 per operator license/month
- Professional: $12.75 per operator license/month
- Enterprise: $20 per operator license/month
Free trial:
15 days
9. Certainly
Certainly is an intuitive bot-building platform designed to help e-commerce teams automate and personalize customer service conversations. The platform empowers users with a no-code chatbot builder, simplifying chatbots' creation and deployment process. The builder is complemented by a large database of premade content suitable for a variety of industries, ensuring a quick and tailored setup.
Besides that, Certainly comes with advanced AI capabilities. It utilizes Natural Language Processing and sentiment analysis to foster natural, informal conversations with users, making interactions feel more human-like and less robotic.
The ability to upsell, cross-sell, collect emails for marketing, add products to the cart, and guide visitors through the checkout process demonstrates Certainly's role in not just customer support but also in driving sales and marketing efforts.
Key features:
- Premade and build-your-own customizations: Offers ready-made templates and allows for custom chatbot creation.
- Omnichannel support: Provides a unified customer service experience across multiple channels.
- Built-in e-commerce knowledge: Equipped with knowledge specific to the e-commerce industry.
Pricing:
Contact for a quote
Free trial:
14 days
10. DialogFlow
DialogFlow is an open-source AI chatbot developed by none other than Google! 🚀 This versatile AI chatbot is designed to integrate seamlessly with various channels, such as websites, Android and iOS apps, and even Facebook Messenger. 📱
DialogFlow offers a visual flow builder, which helps cut down the development time and promotes easy collaboration across teams. In addition to that, you can seamlessly integrate it across various platforms.
And wait, there’s more - DialogFlow proudly harnesses Google's cutting-edge BERT-based natural language understanding (NLU) technology, making it a part of its powerful AI chatbot framework.
Get ready to provide your customers with more accurate and efficient support, even in the most complex scenarios! 💪
Say hello to an AI chatbot experience that's smarter, smoother, and simply unparalleled!
DialogFlow is an amazing AI chatbot, but it is difficult to customize and has no live agent when setting up the chatbot. Moreover, as per reviews, the NLP needs improvement.
Key Features:
- Advanced NLP: DialogFlow bots can comprehend user intent and manage intricate conversational flows.
- Cross-platform deployment: Bots built on DialogFlow can be deployed across websites, mobile apps, and various messaging platforms.
- Voice recognition and synthesis: Integrates with Google's Text-to-Speech and Speech-to-Text services to enable voice interactions.
- Integration with Google services: Easy integration with other Google services and APIs for enhanced functionality.
Pricing:
DialogFlow's pricing is usage-based, and they offer two editions:
DialogFlow ES: Aimed at small to medium businesses, with a free and paid usage tier based on the number of text or voice interactions.
DialogFlow CX: Geared towards larger enterprises with more complex needs, priced per session rather than per request, with a free trial available to get started.
Free Trial:
Google Cloud provides a free trial with $300 in credits for new users to explore DialogFlow's capabilities.
11. Netomi
Netomi chatbot, with its superior Natural Language Understanding (NLU) capabilities, is revolutionizing the customer service chatbot landscape. Netomi's AI platform was put to the test with 14 datasets that mirror real-world customer service queries.
The queries span across key consumer-facing industries such as retail, travel, gaming, and telecommunications. This extensive testing underscores Netomi's versatility and capability to cater to a wide range of business sizes and industry-specific use cases.
Netomi comes with a unique feature called Conversation OS that ensures fluid, natural conversations. Besides that, reinforcement learning allows for continuous improvement and optimization of chatbot interactions.
Features:
- Conversational AI: Provides accurate and swift responses to customer queries.
- Rich messaging: Offers interactive and engaging conversations.
- Sentiment analysis: Guides the chatbot to take the next best action based on the user's emotional tone.
- Proactive messaging: Sends proactive messages to customers.
- Omni-channel experience: Offers a consistent customer service bot experience across email, chat, messaging, and voice.
Pricing:
Contact for a quote
Free trial:
Available
12. Laiye
Laiye's Conversational AI Chatbot is a highly recommended solution. The platform delivers a customer service bot experience that is not only easy to use but also cost-effective and driven by tangible business impacts.
Laiye's chatbot platform is equipped with advanced NLP technology and is capable of handling thousands of use cases across multiple channels. This ensures a 24/7 customer service presence, taking over repetitive tasks and improving the overall customer service experience.
Laiye's chatbots can seamlessly connect with other automation components, such as Salesforce and Slack, to enhance process automation, making it a versatile tool for businesses looking to streamline their customer service workflow.
Key features:
- Insightful analytics: The platform provides insightful analytics to monitor bot metrics and continuously improve customer service processes.
- Advanced NLP Technology: Capable of handling thousands of use cases across multiple channels.
- Learning and adaptability: Algorithms designed to analyze and learn from customer requests.
Pricing:
Contact sales
Free trial:
30 days
Building a customer service chatbot: 6 key strategies to follow!
Chatbots are the vanguard of your customer service team and offer a blend of efficiency and personalized care to the users. However, you need to strategize the implementation process effectively to ensure the best result.
Want to craft a chatbot that resonates with users and streamlines your service?🤔
You must follow these key strategies:
1. Tailor chatbot greetings
Personalized greetings are more than a nicety—they're a business strategy. As McKinsey reports, personalization can lead to a 5-8 times ROI on marketing spending and can lift sales by 10% or more. As a part of personalized chatbot marketing, your customer support chatbot should greet customers by name and reference past interactions to create a warm, engaging experience.
You can use customer data to craft greetings that feel genuine and relevant. Also, try implementing dynamic tagging within your chatbot's script to pull user data from your CRM to ensure that there is a personal touch for each customer.
For example, if you are using Botsonic, you can integrate an AI-powered customer support chatbot with Zendesk or FreshDesk.
2. Evolve from basic scripts to dynamic dialogue
The State of Chatbots Report depicts that 64% of internet users say 24-hour service is the best feature of chatbots. Hence, your chatbot's ability to converse naturally can be the difference between a satisfied customer and a lost opportunity.
That's why mapping out potential conversation flows while anticipating the users' needs is essential. It will help you to create a more human-like interaction. Utilize NLP (Natural Language Processing) tools to help your chatbot understand and respond to a variety of customer inquiries.
NLP Chatbots like Botsonic can be trained on your own business data. Therefore whenever your customers come up with any quearies they get appropriate resolution instantly from the chatbot. Not only that but the chatbot can analyze and learn from the customer interaction to offer human like responses while understanding their emotions.
3. Build engaging and interactive FAQ systems
With AI chatbots having the capacity to handle 80% of routine questions, interactive FAQs can significantly offload your customer service team. To start with, identify the most common queries and distill them into a responsive, easy-to-navigate FAQ interface within your chatbot. Also, consider structuring your FAQ content in a decision tree format to guide users to the answers they need through a series of simple choices.
4. Expand chatbot presence across multiple platforms
With billions embracing mobile messaging, extending your chatbot's reach across multiple platforms can ensure you meet customers wherever they are. Analyze your customer demographics to choose the most impactful channels for your chatbot deployment.
Once you successfully identify the most effective communication channel for your business, integrate your chatbot with that platform. You can use APIs from popular messaging apps such as WhatsApp Business, Slack, or Facebook Messenger and integrate it with Botsonic to provide seamless multi-channel support.
Learn more about how to build an AI powered WhatsApp chatbot or Facebook messanger bot.
5. Enhance customer engagement with rich media
Using rich text and multimedia can significantly enhance the customer's journey. In fact, using rich media in chatbot services can increase engagement rates by up to 30%. By incorporating product information, interactive tutorials, and personalized recommendations, you can create a more immersive and informative experience. The goal is to tailor your chatbot service with content that provides value and educates the users at every step.
For example, detailed product information can help in decision-making, while interactive tutorials can guide users through your product's features effectively. Integrate your chatbot with platforms that support rich media, and use carousel layouts, images, and videos to convey information in an engaging way.
6. Automate processes through chatbots
Embedding process automation into your customer service bots can transform it from a simple conversational virtual agent to a powerful tool for efficiency. By automating data collection forms, appointment scheduling, customer feedback, and transaction processing, you can provide a seamless and convenient service. Identify the most time-consuming customer service processes and automate them to reduce workload and improve accuracy.
For instance, a chatbot that can schedule appointments or process transactions can save customers and staff considerable time. Use chatbot services that offer integration with your existing systems to enable functionalities like pulling or pushing data to and from your CRM or scheduling system.
By focusing on these strategies and leveraging the latest in chatbot technology, you can create a bot that not only communicates effectively but also serves as an extension of your customer service team, driving engagement and operational excellence.
Get your hands on Botsonic: The best AI chatbot for customer support
In conclusion, the era of frustrating customer support experiences is finally over!
AI chatbots are transforming how businesses interact with their customers, delivering swift, personalized, and efficient service without waiting or repetitive conversations. Learn more about conversational AI and see how it can help you enhance customer experience.
As a business owner, now's the perfect time to explore the power of AI chatbots and join the revolution! Don’t just settle for anything less than the best - give Botsonic a try and effortlessly create a custom, no-code AI ChatGPT chatbot tailored to your brand's needs.
The future of customer support is here – are you ready to embrace it? 🚀
FAQs
1. How do chatbots enhance the customer experience?
Chatbots can simulate human conversation by understanding and responding to customer queries, which can significantly boost customer satisfaction. They do so by providing quick, automated responses, which not only improve the customer service experience but also share the workload on human customer service agents.
2. Are chatbots an effective tool for customer service?
Yes, chatbots are an effective tool for customer service as they can handle routine tasks and serve as an additional support layer. This allows them to manage multiple customer inquiries at once, which helps customer service teams to assist a larger number of customers more efficiently.
3. What strategies can improve customer experience?
To improve customer experience, consider these strategies: actively listen to your customers, strive to understand them, map their journey with your brand, build and train a strong team, listen to your team's feedback, provide exceptional customer service, connect with your customers, and adopt an omnichannel approach to customer engagement.
4. Will chatbots eventually replace human customer service representatives?
Although AI-powered chatbots are becoming more advanced and are increasingly used in customer service, they are unlikely to replace human customer care representatives completely in the foreseeable future.
5. Which chatbot is considered the most intelligent?
Botsonic is often regarded as one of the most intelligent chatbots. It is a no-code chatbot platform that enables users to create chatbots for websites and on messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Slack, and Telegram without any coding experience.
