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AI tools for customer service have become increasingly commonplace in recent years. As customer expectations evolve, and businesses struggle to find ways of personalizing interactions at scale, reducing response times, and increasing efficiency, AI is emerging as a powerhouse.
Intelligent software solutions are revolutionizing everything from customer service text messaging strategies to task automation and data analytics.
As AI solutions grow more advanced, their use cases for customer service teams will only continue to expand. Here, we’ll introduce you to some of the biggest benefits of leveraging AI customer support software, review some of the best tools on the market, and help you decide which solutions you should be using for smarter customer service.
In this article:
What are AI Tools for Customer Service?
Customer service AI tools are software solutions that use artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing algorithms to enhance customer support interactions. They help businesses to reduce customer service response times, deliver 24/7 personalized assistance to customers at scale, and improve business efficiency.
In the customer service world, AI tools come in many different forms and serve various use cases. Some solutions are designed to interact directly with customers and address common problems (like chatbots), while others help boost data analytics or automate customer service tasks.
These solutions also draw on different types of AI, such as conversational AI (natural language processing and understanding), generative AI, and deep learning models.
Schedule a demo with Clerk Chat, a unique combination of performance, compliance, security, and ease of use.
Common Types of Customer Service AI Tools
The number and variety of AI tools for customer service available to companies today is constantly growing. But there are some common options that have become increasingly popular among customer-focused teams, such as:
Chatbots and Virtual Assistants
Chatbots have been common in customer service for some time. However, if you know anything about the chatbot vs conversational AI debate, you’ll know that traditional bots were typically rule-based solutions that didn’t actually leverage AI technologies.
Modern chatbots and virtual assistants use generative and conversational AI for customer service, to understand customer queries and deliver creative responses. They can have full conversations with customers and even handle tasks like processing returns and refunds.
AI Automation Tools
AI customer service software can allow companies to automate numerous routine tasks. You can use AI in mass texting software solutions like Clerk Chat to automatically send personalized messages to customers based on specific trigger actions or schedules.
AI can automate the process of routing customers to agents based on their intent or specific requests, and even organize request tickets based on priority. AI can even automate the process of transcribing calls and updating customer profiles or CRM data.
AI Content Creation Tools
Thanks to innovations in generative AI and conversational messaging apps, companies can now use AI tools to create all kinds of content for customer service needs. Tools like ChatGPT and other writing assistants can create knowledge base articles and FAQ pages for customers.
AI assistants built into messaging tools and conversational apps can also suggest responses to agents based on customer needs or sentiment or craft responses automatically to common questions.
Voice Recognition Tools
Voice recognition tools, powered by natural language processing, can understand and respond to verbal human input. For instance, an intelligent IVR system can recognize the words a customer says and help them resolve an issue or route them to an appropriate team member.
Advanced recognition tools can even detect patterns and tone in a customer’s voice or language, to identify “sentiment” insights. This can help businesses learn more about which factors improve or degrade a customer support experience.
AI Analytical Tools
Analytical solutions are some of the most valuable AI tools for customer service. With AI, companies can immediately transcribe conversations into written text and surface insights that can help them to personalize or improve customer interactions.
AI tools built into a business texting platform can help companies segment consumers into groups based on behavioral or demographic data, and even offer insights into the right times to send messages. AI tools can also provide summaries of all kinds of customer service metrics and insights, alongside suggestions companies can use to improve results.
The Benefits of AI Tools for Customer Support
AI tools for customer support don’t eliminate the need for human agents to manage interactions with customers. There are risks to relying too heavily on AI, and there will always be a need for human beings to handle sensitive and empathy-driven conversations.
However, using AI for customer service does give companies access to a lot of benefits. The most significant advantages of AI in the customer support landscape include:
- 24/7 Support: 75% of business leaders say AI has helped them improve their customer response times and deliver 24/7 assistance to customers. Unlike human agents, AI tools can answer customer queries around the clock, minimizing wait times for consumers.
- Cost efficiency: With AI customer service software automating repetitive, time-consuming tasks, agents can focus their attention on more complex tasks, and businesses can accomplish more with less. AI tools can even reduce the number of agents you need to hire.
- Improved personalization: AI tools can analyze a user’s history, behavior, preferences, and sentiment, to give them a more tailored experience. AI tools can even recommend products to customers based on their purchases, increasing conversion rates.
- Enhanced business insights: AI solutions help customer service teams extract more data from their conversations with customers. The right tools can help you map customer journeys, plan customer service strategies, improve resource allocation and more.
- Scalability: AI-driven systems for customer service can handle endless queries simultaneously. As your business grows, you can scale up your AI usage, and even offer service to customers in different languages without a huge increase in costs.
On top of that, AI tools with built-in machine learning capabilities can learn and improve over time. That means the more data you give to your systems, the more valuable they’ll become.
The Top AI Customer Service Software Options
As demand for AI solutions continues to grow in the customer service industry, the number of software options available to businesses is evolving. There are now dozens of apps and tools that feature generative and conversational artificial intelligence, automation and analytical capabilities, and even machine learning functions.
Here are just some of the top AI tools for customer support worth considering this year.
1. Clerk Chat: AI-Powered SMS
Clerk Chat is a world-leading messaging platform, with powerful AI capabilities. With this service, companies get an intuitive way to take advantage of some of the most popular mediums for customer communications: SMS, WhatsApp, and RCS.
Teams can upgrade their conversational marketing strategy, with an intelligent chatbot that can instantly respond to consumers and personalize messages based on their data. They can use AI-powered suggestions to upgrade two-way SMS conversations, and they can automate complex tasks, like scheduling SMS campaigns, with AI workflows.
Clerk Chat even embeds AI into its analytical features, making it easier to draw in-depth insights from conversations with customers. On top of all that, Clerk Chat integrates with your company’s existing tech stack, working alongside business platforms, CRMs, and eDiscovery tools.
This means you can easily embed AI into your entire communication workflow, and use it for everything from lead qualification to appointment scheduling and marketing.
Top Features:
- Comprehensive message automation workflows
- In-depth analytics and insights, powered by AI
- Integrations with dozens of business apps and tools
- Flexible chatbots and sophisticated AI agents
- Customer segmentation and management features
Schedule a demo with Clerk Chat, a unique combination of performance, compliance, security, and ease of use.
2. Sprinklr AI+
Powered by proprietary models, Google Cloud’s Vertex AI, and OpenAI GPT models, Sprinklr AI+ is an end-to-end tool for companies in search of AI customer support software. The platform offers access to intelligent insights, article summaries, and reports, to upgrade your service strategy.
You can even leverage agent assistant tools that give agents instant access to knowledge base articles and customer details during calls. This helps to speed up issue resolution and improve the accuracy and personalization of each interaction.
Sprinklr AI+ also allows companies to create their own custom AI bots that can adapt to different business niches and industries, replicate your brand’s tone of voice, and work on a range of communication channels. Plus, the AI tool can generate content for marketing campaigns or brainstorm ideas for conversational SMS marketing in seconds.
Top Features:
- Flexible agent assistance tools
- Instant generative AI content creation
- Customizable conversational AI bots
- Conversation transcription and summaries
- In-depth AI analytics
3. Freshdesk Freddy AI
Freddy AI from Freshdesk gives companies access to a suite of AI tools for customer support. Alongside a dedicated AI agent, that can have conversations with customers on your behalf, and resolve issues 24/7, you also get a “Copilot” to assist agents, and AI-powered insights.
Freddy AI can personalize interactions with customers, drawing on your business data and real-time sentiment analysis insights. It can also route customers to specific team members based on their skill sets, and assign tickets to certain groups. Freddy AI can also create content for your marketing campaigns, using your tone of voice and industry data.
Plus, when you use Freshdesk to power your AI bots, you can have conversations with customers on multiple channels, such as WhatsApp and Facebook. Unfortunately, there’s no option to use AI for text messages with Freshdesk, however.
Top Features:
- Real-time sentiment analysis
- Intelligent routing and support ticket assignment
- Omnichannel messaging capabilities
- Intuitive analytics and insights
- Agent assistance tools for team members
4. Zendesk AI
Zendesk offers companies a huge selection of tools for enhancing customer service. Alongside a robust CRM system, you also get solutions for automating marketing campaigns, managing support requests and tickets, and improving team productivity.
Zendesk’s AI customer service software gives companies everything they need to revolutionize efficiency and customer satisfaction. There’s a proactive copilot that can coach employees through discussions with customers, and AI bots that can resolve customer issues with ease.
You even get AI tools that help you dig into customer sentiment, understand customer preferences, and build automated workflows that improve team productivity. Even better? Zendesk also integrates with platforms like Clerk Chat, so you can use its AI tools in your texting strategy too.
Top Features
- Intelligent triage and routing capabilities
- Contextual intelligence for agents
- AI-powered messaging support
- Integrations with a range of business tools
- End-to-end automation solutions
5. Kustomer IQ
Another CRM solution offering AI for customer experience enhancements, Kustomer is a world-leading platform that helps businesses combine data, AI, and automation in their support strategies. The company actually offers organizations various types of AI tools for customer service.
For instance, you can use pre-built AI bots to manage common customer questions, or design your own intelligent assistant with the “AI agent studio.” Business leaders can also leverage AI assistants for reps, which provide real-time coaching, guidance, and support throughout service tasks.
Plus, you can use Kustomer AI to dive deeper into your data, surfacing information about common questions, pain points, and customer preferences. Kustomer even has an AI solution specifically designed for voice interactions, with natural language processing capabilities.
Top Features
- Pre-built and customizable chatbots
- Intelligent agent assistance solutions
- AI capabilities for voice interactions
- In-depth data analytics and reporting
- AI-enabled summaries and transcriptions
- Content creation for knowledge bases and FAQs
6. Zoho Zia
Zoho is one of the most versatile and flexible software platforms for businesses, offering access to a huge range of tools. There are solutions for automating marketing campaigns, handling human resources, strengthening project management, and managing customer relationships.
Zia, Zoho’s intelligent business assistant, supports sales, marketing, and customer service teams with intelligent insights. It can recommend products or services to customers based on their history, equip agents with analytical insights, and automate tasks like data entry.
Zia can also analyze when customers are most likely to respond to your messages or calls so you can optimize your automated texting service or schedule campaigns more effectively. Plus, Zoho’s AI for customer support solutions also come with real-time and historical analytics, automation options for creating workflows, and triaging solutions.
Zoho’s platform also integrates with Clerk Chat, so you can use both solutions to upgrade your conversational messaging strategy.
Top Features
- Instant note and content organization
- Personalized shopping recommendations
- Endless automation options
- Intelligent routing and triaging solutions
- Integrations with leading business tools
- In-depth analytics for customer journeys
7. Intercom Fin
Intercom promises companies the most “advanced” AI agent for customer service enhancements on the web today. Fin leverages the power of Intercom’s own proprietary AI technology, alongside OpenAI’s GPT-4, and other large language models.
With Intercom’s AI customer support software, companies can create intelligent agents that support employees with instant access to knowledge base resources, responses, and troubleshooting tips. It can even route tickets to the best agent based on contextual knowledge.
Fin can automatically respond to customer queries, with help desk articles and personalized responses, based on your business data. You can even use Fin across a range of communication channels, like social media and common messaging apps. Plus, Intercom integrates directly with Clerk Chat to enable AI-powered messaging for business teams.
Intercom also gives business leaders access to in-depth insights and reporting capabilities, and a no-code workflow builder for task automation.
Top Features
- Customizable AI responses for chat-based support
- Continuous optimization and machine learning
- Multi-lingual capabilities for remote teams
- AI-powered reporting and analytics
- No-code workflow automation
- Fin AI Copilot for agent assistance
8. Tidio AI
Tidio gives companies a comprehensive AI customer service software platform, with customizable bots that help you reduce response times and improve interactions. At the heart of the AI capabilities on the platform is “Lyro,” a unique conversational bot that uses natural language processing and in-depth business data to customize every discussion with your customers.
Beyond this, companies can also take advantage of AI tools to create conversation flows and workflows, send automatic text reply messages to customers over messaging apps, and uncover opportunities with an AI journey tracker.
Agents can also use Tidio AI to get recommendations on how to personalize responses or surface smart views of customer data. There are even tools for tracking customer satisfaction across channels.
Top Features
- Intelligent, customizable chatbots
- Smart views for insights into opportunities
- In-depth analytics and reporting
- Streamlined FAQ creation
- Conversation booster tool for agents
9. Hiver Harvey
Hiver might be the best option for your team if you’re looking for AI tools for customer service that help you manage interactions across email, phone, and live chat. The “Harvey” AI assistant in the platform uses natural language processing to surface intelligent insights from customer conversations and summarizes discussions into notes for agents.
Harvey can suggest templates for your email marketing and customer support campaigns, automatically “sign off” email threads for your teams, and generate content. It can also help you extract insights from multi-channel conversations for customer journey mapping.
One of the great things about Harvey is that it allows companies to track every instance of AI being used in conversations, making it ideal for compliance.
Top Features
- Intelligent template suggestions
- Email summarization
- Powerful insights enhanced by NLP
- Instant content generation
- End-to-end compliance controls
10. Help Scout
Help Scout is a holistic customer support platform, offering companies a shared inbox for multi-channel messaging campaigns, help center creation tools, and proactive messaging options. Unfortunately, you can’t use Help Scout to send automated promotional and transactional SMS messages to customers, but you can automate messaging across other channels.
The AI tools built into Help Scout help team members save time and respond to customer queries more efficiently. For instance, there’s an AI summarization tool that can deliver instant summaries of email threads to agents, helping them catch up with an issue before a call.
The AI assist tools can also suggest responses and replies to customers, help you modify message tone, length, and languages, and even support you in creating knowledgebase articles.
Top Features
- Support for omnichannel messaging campaigns
- Intelligent summarization capabilities
- Instant proactive messaging tools
- Insightful analytics and reporting capabilities
- End-to-end AI-powered automation
11. Salesforce Einstein
Salesforce is one of the world’s leading CRM providers for a good reason. The company provides organizations of all sizes with intuitive tools for managing leads, automating marketing campaigns, and enhancing customer interactions.
Salesforce Einstein is one of the top AI tools for customer service, offering businesses access to in-depth customer insights, journey mapping capabilities, and content generation tools. There’s even an Einstein Copilot for end-to-end agent support and coaching.
The predictive analytics capabilities of Salesforce Einstein are particularly impressive. They can help businesses anticipate customer needs and address issues ahead of time, improving workplace efficiency and enhancing customer satisfaction. Plus, there are tons of ways to automate tasks and data management with Einstein too.
On top of that, you can integrate Salesforce seamlessly with countless other data management tools and communication platforms, like Clerk Chat.
Top Features
- Impressive predictive analytics
- AI-powered Copilot for agent assistance
- In-depth insights, reporting, and analytics
- Powerful content creation capabilities
- Customizable bots for 24/7 service
- Intelligent routing and ticket management
- Conversational intelligence
12. HubSpot
Finally, HubSpot offers a broad range of AI tools for all kinds of customer-facing teams. The HubSpot Service Hub is the ultimate option if you’re looking for AI for customer support solutions. It gives you access to an automated ticketing system that uses AI to prioritize, triage, and route support requests to specific employees.
There’s also an AI-powered tool companies can use to create comprehensive knowledge base articles and FAQs for self-service support. You even get an AI-powered chatbot you can customize with your brand’s data and tone of voice, for 24/7 customer assistance.
On top of all that, HubSpot gives companies endless access to reports and analytics, as well as numerous ways to expand AI into their sales and marketing strategies. Plus, HubSpot also integrates with SMS platforms like Clerk Chat. So if you want to add SMS to conversational AI for finance, retail, healthcare, or any other niche, you can do it with a couple of clicks.
Top Features
- AI-powered FAQ and article generation
- AI-enhanced insights for sales, service, and marketing teams
- Automated ticketing and triaging
- Customizable AI-powered chatbots
- Integrations with countless business tools
- Flexible agent support tools
How to Choose the Best AI Customer Support Software
Choosing between the dozens of AI tools for customer service available today can seem complex. There are a lot of different options out there, all with their own unique strengths and weaknesses.
Ultimately, the best way to ensure you’re making the right decision is to define your customer service goals, the pain points you want to overcome, and the features you need. Then start browsing through providers. Some of the key things to keep in mind when narrowing down your options include:
- Performance and accuracy: How effective is the AI tool at responding to customer and agent queries? Can it generate an automatic text reply to a question that’s accurate, personalized, and relevant based on conversational context?
- Compliance and governance: Any customer service AI tools you use comply with industry regulations. For instance, if you’re using conversational AI in insurance, finance, or healthcare, you may need to adhere to specific policies when it comes to managing how data is stored, retained, and shared.
- Data security: Check whether the AI solution leverages robust security measures to protect stored data, such as end-to-end encryption. Determine whether it integrates with common archiving tools for data governance.
- Integrations: Make sure your AI customer service software can integrate with the tools you already use for customer service, ticketing, data management, customer relationship management, and more. For instance, Clerk Chat offers one-click integrations with a wide range of critical business tools.
- Ease of Use: Ensure the features of the AI solution are easy to use. For instance, can you access customer service SMS templates within the platform to streamline responses to customer questions? Is it easy to customize bots and workflows?
Finally, ensure your AI solution can scale to match your business needs over time. As your organization grows, and you attract new customers, your AI tools will need to handle higher volumes of data and requests, without compromising on performance.
The Future of AI Tools for Customer Service
We’re just beginning to scratch the surface of what’s possible with the best AI tools for customer support and service. Although there are still challenges to overcome, like managing data privacy, security, and compliance in an AI-driven world, the opportunities for teams are endless.
With customer service AI tools, companies can transform productivity, enhance customer satisfaction, and unlock additional sales. Generative AI solutions and conversational AI tools in particular are becoming particularly valuable for CX leaders. They’re allowing companies to create more comprehensive chatbots that can deliver a more human-like experience at speed.
AI won’t eliminate the need for human beings in customer service. Businesses will still need to employ agents to monitor AI solutions, and deliver creative, empathetic support to customers. However, AI systems will make it easier for companies to scale their service strategies, make intelligent decisions, and deliver support to customers on a wider range of channels.
Dive into the Era of Smart Customer Support
AI tools for customer service are taking the world by storm, helping businesses to reduce costs, personalize interactions with buyers, increase sales, and enhance retention rates. If you want to discover the impact AI can have on your customer service strategy, one of the best ways to get started is with a platform like Clerk Chat.
Clerk Chat not only gives you one of the most comprehensive business messaging platforms available, but it offers a range of powerful AI tools for automating text campaigns, enhancing 24/7 customer service, and unlocking insights into business opportunities.
Discover how you can take your SMS customer service strategy to the next level, optimize your marketing ROI and improve business efficiency, contact Clerk Chat to get your free demo of our world-leading AI-powered platform.
