Chances are you’ve already used a chatbot in a customer service context. A survey from chatbot company Tidio found that 88% of consumers had a conversation with a chatbot in 2022.
Generative artificial intelligence is transforming how businesses approach customer service. The same survey found that three in four companies are satisfied with their chatbot results. AI chatbots can enhance your customer service team’s efficiency by freeing up their time for more complex tasks.
Here’s what AI chatbots can do and how companies use them, along with 10 of the best AI chatbots for customer service teams.
What is an AI chatbot?
An AI chatbot is software that uses artificial intelligence (AI) systems to mimic human speech and simulate how a human would behave in conversation.
AI chatbots use various technologies, such as large language models, natural language processing (NLP), natural language understanding (NLU), and machine learning, to understand and interpret user questions and provide relevant responses. They can also learn from their conversations and adapt their responses to different patterns and new situations over time.
AI chatbots provide value in various situations and applications, from customer service and sales to content creation and analytics. They are also found across most communication channels, from voice assistants to pop-up chatbots on websites.
How to use AI chatbots in customer service
- Free up human agents
- Provide multilingual support
- Offer personalized recommendations
- Better understand the customer journey
- Support conversational commerce
Customer service is one of the most common uses for chatbots, and survey data from Tidio suggests chatbots will become the primary customer service tool for 25% of businesses by 2027.
What can AI chatbots bring to customer service? While they cannot replace human customer service agents entirely, there are a few impactful ways AI chatbots can benefit customers and businesses alike:
Free up human agents
AI chatbots can be serious multitaskers, handling common queries from multiple customers simultaneously. Not only that, but they can automate tasks such as order processing, account management, or password resets. Human agents can then focus on more complex issues or customer inquiries requiring a human touch.
Provide multilingual support
By using natural language processing and neural machine translation engines, AI chatbots can support customers in their preferred language while helping businesses expand their global reach. The number of supported languages varies by platform or provider, though most support dozens of languages and regularly add more.
Offer personalized recommendations
AI chatbots can provide personalized product recommendations based on a customer’s shopping history, interests, and interactions with the bot. They can access customer information such as browsing and conversation history while simultaneously analyzing real-time voice or text input to provide relevant product information and personalized suggestions. They can even cross-sell or upsell when appropriate.
Better understand the customer journey
With every interaction, an AI chatbot gathers valuable information about your customers and their journeys. Not only can they collect and access information on a user’s browsing history or previous interactions across multiple channels, but chatbots can use this data to understand your customers’ preferences, shopping behavior, and pain points. These actionable insights can better support their journey and improve the customer experience.
Support conversational commerce
You can deploy AI chatbot solutions across multiple channels, including messaging apps such as Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, and WeChat. AI chatbots can support conversational commerce by meeting consumers where they are online and offering a seamless experience.
Benefits of using an AI customer service chatbot
- Omnichannel support
- 24/7 availability
- Reduced wait times
- Improved self-service options
- Consistent user experience
ChatGPT may be the AI chatbot that introduced the general public to the capabilities of generative AI, but business leaders have known about the potential for some time. According to customer service software provider Zendesk, 72% of business leaders said expanding AI and chatbots across the customer experience is a priority.
AI chatbots can offer several benefits in a customer service context, such as:
Omnichannel support
You can deploy AI chatbots across websites, social media platforms, mobile apps, messaging apps, and even voice assistants to support your customers wherever they need it. This allows you to have unified customer support for your omnichannel ecommerce strategy.
24/7 availability
AI chatbots can provide round-the-clock support, allowing customers to get help at any time of the day or night. If human support is needed outside of regular business hours, the chatbot can gather contact information and have a human agent respond when they return.
Reduced wait times
According to research commissioned by Zoom, 85% of customers say short wait times should be part of the customer experience, but only 51% experience them. AI chatbots can provide instant resolution to many common and repetitive customer queries without human intervention.
Improved self-service options
According to an article in Harvard Business Review, 81% of consumers try to solve issues for themselves before contacting a support team. By integrating self-service options such as an FAQ or knowledge base articles with your chatbot, your bot can help customers more quickly and easily find the information they’re looking for.
Consistent user experience
Customizing the bot to embody your brand’s tone and voice can offer consistent support and on-brand experiences across customers, channels, and interactions.
10 best AI chatbots for customer service
Chatbots have been used in customer service for decades. Still, AI has drastically expanded chatbots’ usefulness, and there is a quickly growing selection of AI bots and all-in-one, AI-powered customer service platforms. Here are 10 of the best customer service chatbots designed to support your team and help your customers:
1. Zowie
Model(s): Proprietary
Features: AI chatbot, automated email management, upselling, personal shopper
Price: Contact for pricing
Zowie is an AI-powered customer service platform offering an AI chatbot designed specifically for ecommerce brands. Zowie’s AI chatbot pulls customer data such as location, behavior, and purchase history to deliver personalized experiences across channels. It has add-on features, such as a shopping assistant, designed to increase conversions and average order value.
Zowie’s bot has access to more than 75 specific use cases for ecommerce and can be customized for your brand’s tone and voice. It also integrates seamlessly with Shopify stores.
2. Botsonic
Model(s): GPT-4
Features: No-code AI chatbot builder, multichannel deployment, multilingual
Price: Free version available; paid plans start at $49 per month
The makers of the AI-powered writing platform Writesonic designed Botsonic, a customizable no-code AI chatbot builder that you can build, train, and deploy across multiple digital channels. Botsonic’s AI chatbot can handle more than 1,000 chats simultaneously and features built-in safeguards to eliminate off-topic conversations and misleading responses when resolving customer service inquiries. It can also offer personalized product recommendations.
3. Botsify
Model(s): GPT-3.5 and GPT-4
Features: No-code AI chatbot builder, multichannel deployment, multilingual
Price: Paid plans starting at $49/month
Botsify is a no-code bot-builder that supports conversational commerce in 95 languages across websites, Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, and Telegram. You can sync Botsify with Shopify stores so customers can browse your product catalog and even check out within the messaging app.
4. Ada
Model(s): GPT-3.5 and GPT-4
Features: No-code automation builder, multichannel deployment, multilingual, proprietary safety checks
Price: Contact for pricing
Ada is an AI-powered customer experience platform that has automated more than four billion conversations with its AI chatbot. It features voice AI and seamless bot-to-agent handoffs. Ada’s platform is backed by enterprise-grade global security and privacy standards, and when integrated with your Shopify store, its chatbot can provide customers with shipping updates and other order details.
5. Giosg
Model(s): GPT-4
Features: No-code chatbot builder, 20+ setup templates, visualized performance reporting, design and integration support
Price: Contact for pricing
Giosg is a sales acceleration platform that aims to help businesses create exceptional customer experiences through live chat, AI chatbots, and interactive content. Its AI chatbot offers features for customizing when and where customers see the bot and built-in A/B testing to compare different bot design configurations. It also offers optimization and design support to ensure the bot fits your website’s aesthetic. You can integrate Giosg’s chatbot with your Shopify store, and they offer open application programming interfaces (APIs) for custom integrations.
6. Netomi
Model(s): GPT-3.5
Features: Multilingual, multichannel supporting email, chat, voice, and social, sentiment analysis
Price: Contact for pricing
Netomi’s AI-powered customer experience platform helps companies resolve customer service tickets via email, chat, messaging, and voice. With an advanced analytics dashboard, you can access real-time performance data to tweak and optimize your bot as needed. Its AI-powered discovery engine can help you pinpoint the highest impact areas for chatbot automation. You can also integrate Netomi with your Shopify store.
7. Drift
Model(s): GPT-4
Features: No-code bot builder, customized bot training, multilingual
Price: Plans start at $2,500 per month
With patented AI and GPT-powered features, business-to-business (B2B) marketing platform Drift trained its AI chatbot on more than 100 million B2B sales and marketing conversations. You can customize its chatbot with additional training from your conversation history, website, and other content or knowledge bases. It can also quickly learn your brand’s voice and tone, offering more customer engagement than traditional, non-AI chatbots.
8. Intercom
Model(s): GPT-4
Features: Custom performance reporting, multichannel, multilingual, live chat transfer
Price: Free trial; contact for pricing
Intercom is a software solution that combines an AI chatbot, help desk, and proactive support to streamline customer communications across email, SMS, and more. Intercom’s AI chatbot, Fin, works natively with Intercom’s inbox, ticketing, messenger, reporting, and other features to provide an AI-enhanced, all-in-one customer service platform that you can integrate with your Shopify store.
9. Zendesk
Model(s): Proprietary
Features: No-code bot builder, omnichannel deployment, integrations, live chat transfer
Price: Starting at $55/agent/month
Customer service software provider Zendesk has trained its AI chatbot, Zendesk AI, on billions of customer service conversations. Its no-code bot-builder can handle a variety of customer queries on its own, and it can prepare your human agents with valuable insight on customer sentiment when a handoff occurs. Zendesk AI offers enterprise-grade security and privacy that you can sync with Shopify to pull pertinent data from your ecommerce store.
10. Certainly
Model(s): Proprietary
Features: Multilingual, custom performance reporting, live chat transfer, multichannel
Price: Contact for pricing
Certainly aims to provide an all-in-one chatbot platform for ecommerce. Built from the ground up with Shopify merchants in mind, Certainly offers deep industry knowledge, ecommerce-focused AI, and bespoke industry data to help you create better customer relationships. Offering support in over 100 languages, it can seamlessly integrate with Shopify and the rest of your tech stack.
A real-world example of an AI chatbot for customer service
Electric bike maker Cowboy uses an AI chatbot widget to support customers on its store. Present on the bottom right-hand corner of any page on the site, the chatbot is always visible and easy to find, meaning website visitors can seek out the support they need quickly.
The bot offers multilingual support and immediately enables customers to self-serve by alerting them to the company’s extensive FAQ knowledge base. The chatbot also has full access to the knowledge in the FAQ, meaning it can quickly surface information for customers who don’t want to read through it.
Cowboy’s bot also offers the option to connect to a live agent after each question, making it easy for customers to speak with a human representative if they need to.
AI chatbot customer service FAQ
Can AI be used for customer service?
Yes, AI can help customer service teams in a variety of ways. You can use AI chatbots, for example, as a customer-facing tool that offers 24/7 multilingual support. It can significantly reduce the number of simple, repetitive questions that human support agents must field. AI can also automate routine tasks, streamline workflows, and provide valuable insights into your customer service operation.
How do you choose an AI chatbot for your business?
AI chatbots have many use cases for business, so start by thinking about why you need one and your goals for using it. Next, consider the chatbot’s readiness. Some chatbots can be built without coding knowledge or other technical support, whereas others are more custom-built solutions. Consider also the features, total investment needed, and available integrations of any chatbot you consider.
What is the best AI chatbot for customer service?
The best AI chatbot for customer service will depend on the nature of your business. Various AI chatbots are available for customer service, and some have been built with specific industries or use cases in mind. Some of the most popular chatbots offer no-code bot-building capabilities, multilingual support, multichannel deployment, and business system integrations. When comparing options, explore the features, readiness, and investment needed as three top-level considerations.
