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Customer service chatbots

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A guide to the best chatbots for customer service

Zuletzt aktualisiert: April 22, 2024

Today’s customers demand fast answers, 24/7 service, personalized conversations, proactive support, and self-service options. Fortunately, chatbots for customer service can help businesses meet—and exceed—these expectations.

In this guide, we’ll tell you more about some notable chatbots that are well-suited for customer service so you can make the best choice for your organization. If you already have a shortlist of preferred vendors, use the list below to jump ahead to the comparison chart or a collection of company profiles where you can review software pricing, features, and free trial details.

What are chatbots for customer service?

A customer service chatbot is a software application trained to provide instantaneous online assistance using customer service data, machine learning (ML), and natural language processing (NLP). These chatbots often answer simple, frequently asked questions or direct users to self-service resources like help center articles or videos.

Customers often use customer service chatbots on company websites, mobile apps, and social messaging platforms like Messenger and X (formerly Twitter) DMs to conveniently find answers to their questions.

At a glance: Top chatbots for customer support

Software
Starting price
Free trial
Features

Zendesk

$55 per agent/month (billed annually)

14 days

  • Purpose-built for CX
  • No-code bot builder
  • Omnichannel deployment
  • Flexible integrations
  • Intelligent routing
  • Reporting and insights

HubSpot

Free (up to 5 users)

14 days

  • No-code bot builder
  • Omnichannel deployment
  • Reporting and insights

Zoho SalesIQ

$7 per operator license/month (billed annually)

15 days

  • No-code bot builder
  • Omnichannel deployment
  • Flexible integrations
  • Intelligent routing
  • Reporting and insights

Netomi

Contact for a quote

Available

  • Omnichannel deployment
  • Flexible integrations
  • Intelligent routing
  • Reporting and insights

Intercom Fin

$74 per month (billed annually)

14 days

  • Omnichannel deployment
  • Flexible integrations
  • Reporting and insights

Einstein GPT by Salesforce

$50 per user/month (billed annually)

30 days

  • No-code bot builder
  • Flexible integrations
  • Reporting and insights

Ada

Contact for a quote

Unavailable

  • No-code bot builder
  • Omnichannel deployment
  • Flexible integrations
  • Intelligent routing
  • Reporting and insights

Certainly

Contact for a quote

14 days

  • No-code bot builder
  • Omnichannel deployment
  • Flexible integrations
  • Intelligent routing
  • Reporting and insights

Laiye

Contact sales

30 days

  • No-code bot builder
  • Omnichannel deployment

DeepConverse

Contact for pricing

14 days

  • No-code bot builder

Solvemate by Dixa

$1,038 per month

14 days

  • No-code bot builder
  • Omnichannel deployment
  • Flexible integrations
  • Reporting and insights

Zowie

Contact for a quote

Unavailable

  • No-code bot builder
  • Omnichannel deployment
  • Flexible integrations
  • Intelligent routing

UltimateGPT

Contact sales

Unavailable

  • No-code bot builder
  • Omnichannel deployment
  • Flexible integrations

Meya

$99 per month

14 days

  • No-code bot builder
  • Flexible integrations
  • Intelligent routing
  • Reporting and insights

Thankful

Contact for a quote

Unavailable

  • No-code bot builder
  • Omnichannel deployment
  • Flexible integrations
  • Intelligent routing
  • Reporting and insights

Haptik

Contact for a quote

Unavailable

  • No-code bot builder
  • Omnichannel deployment
  • Flexible integrations
  • Reporting and insights

ProProfs Chat

Free (1 operator)

15 days

  • No-code bot builder
  • Omnichannel deployment
  • Flexible integrations
  • Intelligent routing
  • Reporting and insights

boost.ai

Contact for a quote

Unavailable

  • No-code bot builder
  • Omnichannel deployment
  • Flexible integrations

Zoom Virtual Agent

Contact sales

Unavailable

  • Omnichannel deployment
  • Intelligent routing
  • Reporting and insights

Digital Genius

Contact for a quote

Available upon request

  • No-code bot builder
  • Omnichannel deployment
  • Flexible integrations
  • Reporting and insights

20 best customer service chatbots for 2023

Now, let’s take a look at some common chatbots for customer service. All vendors made this roundup based on chatbot features, user reviews, and functional efficiency.

Here is a list of the chatbots we will cover in this guide:

1. Zendesk

Zendesk

A customer service chatbot’s ability to understand and respond to customer needs is a key factor when assessing its intelligence, and Zendesk bots deliver on all fronts. Zendesk chatbots were built specifically for customer service. They come pre-trained based on trillions of data points from real service interactions, enabling the bots to understand the top customer issues within your industry.

Ultimately, this saves service teams the time and cost of manual setup, and makes it easier for your chatbot to provide accurate responses faster. You can deploy Zendesk bots across all your customers’ favorite channels, serving as a powerful extension of your team.

If you already have a help center and want to automate customer support, Zendesk bots can seamlessly direct customers to relevant articles.

For companies that want more control, our click-to-configure bot builder provides a user-friendly visual interface. This empowers businesses to design rich, interactive, customized conversation flows with no coding required. It’s also a great option for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises that need to create an AI chatbot without expending valuable resources. Any chatbot can also be integrated with the Zendesk industry leading ticketing system for seamless bot–to-human handoffs.

Beyond chatbots, Zendesk also offers generative AI tools for agents, such as suggestions for how to fix a customer’s issue and intelligent routing. Zendesk recently partnered with OpenAI, the private research laboratory that developed ChatGPT. By combining the power of OpenAI’s large language model (LLM) with the strength of our proprietary foundational models, we’ve created a bundle of powerful tools to help agents do their jobs more efficiently. You can learn more about our integration with OpenAI here.

Features:

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

    *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

14 days

2. HubSpot

HubSpot
Image source

HubSpot has a wide range of solutions across marketing, sales, content management, operations, and customer support. As a result, its AI software may not be as tailored to customer service as a best-in-breed CX solution.

It has a standard chatbot builder that enables you to automate live chat conversations. However, Hubspot notes that its “chat builder software doesn’t quite fall under the ‘AI chatbot’ category of ‘AI chatbot’ because it uses a rule-based system.”

HubSpot’s chatbot primarily enables:

  • Sales teams to qualify leads and book meetings
  • Service teams to deflect FAQs
  • Marketing teams to scale one-to-one conversations

It’s also worth noting that HubSpot’s more advanced chatbot features are only available in its Professional and Enterprise plans. In the free and Starter plans, the chatbot can only create tickets, qualify leads, and book meetings without custom branching logic (custom paths based on user responses and possible scenarios).

Features:

  • Lead qualification
  • Scheduling
  • Support ticket generation
  • No-code custom chatbots

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)

    *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

14 days

Learn more about HubSpot for Zendesk.

3. Zoho SalesIQ

Zoho SalesIQ
Image source

Zoho SalesIQ users can create a chatbot using Zoho’s enterprise-grade chatbot builder, Zobot. Zobot aims to help businesses that want to set up a customer service chatbot without hiring a programmer because it uses a drag-and-drop interface. Administrators can type in predefined responses or craft chatbot flows.

Still, to maximize efficiency, businesses must train the bot using articles, FAQ, and business terminology documentation. If the bot can't find an answer, someone from your business will need to train it further and update the knowledge base.

Zoho also offers Zia, a virtual assistant designed to help customers and agents. Agents can use Zia to write professional replies, surface the latest information about customer accounts, and recommend relevant tags for notes. The chatbot also offers support alternatives by replying to frequently asked questions and providing shopping recommendations.

Features:

  • Custom chatbots
  • Zia AI assistant
  • Drag-and-drop chatbot builder
  • SalesIQ scripts
  • Task automation
  • Operator handoffs
  • Intelligent routing

Pricing:

  • Basic: $7 per operator license/month
  • Professional: $12.75 per operator license/month
  • Enterprise: $20 per operator license/month

    *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

15 days

4. Netomi

Netomi
Image source

Netomi allows agents to resolve customer service tickets quickly. It integrates with existing backend systems like Zendesk for a simple self-service resolution that can increase customer satisfaction.

For instance, the platform can access customer and order information within your CRM system to determine and communicate the status of an order to your customer.

Netomi’s chatbot software also provides response recommendations and helps agents resolve tickets quickly.

Features:

  • Conversational AI
  • Rich messaging
  • Proactive messaging
  • Integrated knowledge search
  • Omnichannel
  • Multilingual experiences
  • Reinforcement learning

Pricing:

  • Contact for a quote

Free trial:

Available

Learn more about Netomi for Zendesk.

5. Intercom Fin

Intercom Fin
Image source

Fin is Intercom’s latest customer service AI chatbot and the program was built using OpenAI. It can understand complex questions, follow up with clarifying questions, and break down hard-to-understand topics.

Fin also pulls information exclusively from your business’s existing knowledge base to help prevent the “hallucinations”—made-up information that AI generates when it doesn’t have the correct answer readily available. This chatbot can also collect information and hand off more complex questions to trained staff members.

But one user noted that Intercom “lacks flexibility while building the chatbot flow” while another user said its chatbot assistant “lacks many features that we expected."

Features:

  • Easy installation
  • Conversational AI
  • References existing knowledge base
  • Zendesk help center integration
  • Public URLs
  • Intercom articles
  • No training needed
  • Handoff to support teams

Pricing:

  • Starter: $74 per month
  • Pro: Contact for a quote
  • Premium: Contact for a quote

    *Plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

14 days

Learn more about Intercom for Zendesk.

6. Einstein GPT by Salesforce

Einstein GPT by Salesforce
Image source

Einstein GPT fuses Salesforce’s proprietary AI with OpenAI’s tech to bring users a new chatbot. It is the latest iteration of Salesforce’s previous chatbot, Einstein.

Einstein GPT can help representatives fine-tune their emails, generate replies to simple frequently asked questions, and accelerate ticket resolutions. Various teams can use the tool to collect, streamline, and unify all customer data. Einstein GPT is also able to deliver content and support across various teams, including sales, IT, and marketing.

However, configuring Einstein GPT does require a high level of technical expertise and developer support which makes it difficult to deploy or execute change management. And since Salesforce doesn’t offer many pre-trained models, it’s difficult for the average user to assist with the initial setup process and future updates.

Features:

  • Article recommendations
  • Reply suggestions
  • Case classification and routing
  • Service analytics
  • Prediction builder

Pricing:

  • Service Cloud Einstein: $50 per user/month

    *Plan is billed annually and can be added on to any Service Cloud products.

Free trial:

30 days

7. Ada

Ada
Image source

Ada is an automated chatbot powered by AI and NLP. It deflects repetitive tickets with a self-serve solution that lets customers change their information, upgrade their accounts, schedule appointments, and make payments.

Ada’s automation platform acts on a customer’s information, intent, and interests with tailored answers, proactive discounts, and relevant recommendations in over 100 languages.

Features:

  • Rich messaging
  • AI training insights and suggestions
  • Ticket creation and handoff
  • Bot key performance indicators (KPIs)
  • Goal, event, and A/B testing
  • No-code bot builder
  • Predictive suggestions

Pricing:

  • Core: Contact for a quote
  • Advanced: Contact for a quote
  • Pro: Contact for a quote

Free trial:

Unavailable

Learn more about Ada for Zendesk.

8. Certainly

Certainly
Image source

Certainly is a bot-building platform made especially to help e-commerce teams automate and personalize customer service conversations.

The Certainly AI assistant can recommend products, upsell, guide users through checkout, and resolve customer queries related to complaints, product returns, refunds, and order tracking. It also gathers zero-party data—information deliberately provided by customers—from conversations with visitors, which agents can use to hyper-customize shopping experiences and increase customer lifetime value.

Plus, it has multiple APIs (application programming interfaces) and webhook (automated communication between two apps) options for reporting, data sharing, and more.

Features:

  • Premade and build-your-own customizations
  • Omnichannel support
  • Built-in e-commerce knowledge
  • Conversational web SDK (software development kit)
  • Pre-built integrations and templates
  • Ticket deflection

Pricing:

  • Starter: Contact for a quote
  • Pro: Contact for a quote
  • Premium: Contact for a quote

Free trial:

14 days

Learn more about Certainly for Zendesk.

9. Laiye

Laiye
Image source

Laiye, formerly Mindsay, enables companies to provide one-to-one customer care at scale through conversational AI. The company makes chatbot-enabled conversations simple for non-technical users thanks to its low- and no-code platform.

Laiye’s AI chatbots include robotic process automation (RPA) and intelligent document processing (IDP) capabilities. They utilize support integrations to allow human agents to easily enter and exit conversations via live chat and create tickets.

With the bots automatically handling the most common customer questions, agents can focus on solving the complex issues that require a human touch.

Features:

  • Flow builder
  • API integration
  • User feedback

Pricing:

  • Contact sales

Free trial:

30 days

Learn more about Laiye for Zendesk.

10. DeepConverse

DeepConverse
Image source

DeepConverse helps businesses deploy chatbots that can deflect tickets through multi-step resolution flows and provide precise answers based on user intent.

DeepConverse chatbots can acquire new skills with sample end-user utterances, and you can train them on new skills in less than 10 minutes. Its drag-and-drop conversation builder helps define how the chatbot should respond so users can leverage the customer service-enhancing benefits of AI.

Using DeepConverse and its integrations like Zendesk AI Chatbot, businesses can create chatbots capable of providing simple answers and executing multi-step conversations.

Features:

  • Automated follow-ups for multi-step conversations
  • 10-minute AI training
  • No-code platform
  • Ticket deflection
  • Complex interactive support
  • Multi-step conversations
  • Omnichannel support
  • Workflow automation

Pricing:

  • Basic: Contact for pricing
  • Professional: Contact for pricing
  • Enterprise: Contact for pricing

Free trial:

14 days

Learn more about DeepConverse for Zendesk.

11. Solvemate by Dixa

Solvemate by Dixa
Image source

Solvemate is Dixa’s chatbot for customer service, operations, and IT teams. Dixa bolsters support efforts in the retail, financial services, SaaS, travel, and telecommunications industries. Businesses can use Solvemate’s automation builder to streamline customer service processes such as routing tickets or answering common questions.

Solvemate also has a Contextual Conversation Engine which uses a combination of NLP and dynamic decision trees (DDT) to enable conversational AI and understand customers. The tool is also context-aware, meaning it can handle personalized support requests and offer a multilingual service experience.

To use Dixa’s tool, you will need to subscribe to Dixa and purchase the chatbot add-on for $999 per month which costs a minimum of $1,038 altogether. Businesses should also expect to pay an additional $75 for every 1,000 bot conversations.

Features:

  • Conversation history
  • Intelligent routing
  • Advanced search
  • Activity log
  • Integrations

Pricing:

  • Essential: $1,038 per month
  • Growth: $1,088 per month
  • Ultimate: $1,138 per month
  • Custom: Contact Sales

    *Prices include annual prices of base packages and the chatbot add-on.

Free trial:

14 days

Learn more about Solvemate for Zendesk.

12. Zowie

Zowie
Image source

Zowie is a self-learning AI that uses data to learn how to respond to customer questions, meaning it leverages machine learning to improve its responses over time. This solution is prevalent among e-commerce companies that offer consumer goods that fall under categories like cosmetics, apparel, appliances, and electronics.

Zowie’s customer service chatbot learns to address customer issues based on AI-powered learning rather than keywords. Zowie pulls information from several data points like historical conversations, knowledge bases, FAQ pages, and ongoing conversations. The better your knowledge base and the more extensive your customer service history, the better your Zowie implementation will be right out of the box.

Features:

  • Automation data reporting
  • Intelligent ticket distribution
  • A/B testing and service analytics
  • AI-powered learning
  • Intent recognition
  • E-commerce integrations
  • No manual training required

Pricing:

  • Contact for a quote

Free trial:

Unavailable

Learn more about Zowie for Zendesk.

13. UltimateGPT

UltimateGPT
Image source

Using NLP, UltimateGPT enables global brands to automate customer conversations and repetitive processes, providing support experiences around the clock via chat, email, and social. Built for an omnichannel CRM, Ultimate deploys in-platform, ensuring a unified customer experience.

It’s also well-adopted among companies in industries like health, tech, telecom, travel, financial services, and e-commerce.

When you start with UltimateGPT, the software builds an AI model unique to your business using historical data from your existing software. This helps you determine what processes to automate and allows the AI to learn how to speak in your brand tone and voice.

Features:

  • Language detection
  • Advanced conversation flows
  • Integrations
  • Omnichannel support
  • Multilingual reporting

Pricing:

  • Contact sales

Free trial:

14 days

Learn more about Ultimate for Zendesk.

14. Meya

Meya
Image source

Meya bills itself as an automation platform consisting of three components: Grid, Orb, and Console.

The Grid is Meya’s backend, where you can code conversational workflows in several languages. The Orb is essentially the pre-built chatbot that businesses can customize and configure to their needs and embed on their app, platform, or website. Finally, your team can design, create, and execute conversational experiences in the Console.

Meya enables businesses to build and host complex bots that connect to their back-end services. Meya provides a fully functional web IDE—an online integrated development environment—that makes bot-building easy.

You can also use integrations to improve team efficiency. Your bot will listen to all incoming messages connected to your CRM and respond when it knows the answer. You can set the bot to pause when a customer gets assigned to an agent and unpause when unassigned.

Features:

  • Visual flow editor
  • Chat UI customization
  • CRM and process integrations
  • Advanced analytics
  • Custom prompts

Pricing:

  • Dev: $99 per month (includes 2 team members; monthly pricing only)
  • Pro: $799 per month (includes 7 team members)
  • Partner: $2,500 per month (includes 10 team members)

    *Pro and Partner plans are billed annually.

Free trial:

14 days

15. Thankful

Thankful
Image source

Thankful is an AI-driven customer service solution for e-commerce businesses.

Through routing, agent assistance, and translation, the software can fully resolve high volumes of customer queries across channels, allowing customers to choose how they want to engage.

Thankful’s AI delivers personalized and brand-aligned service at scale with the ability to understand, respond to, and resolve over 50 common customer requests. Thankful can also automatically tag numerous tickets to help facilitate large-scale automation.

Features:

  • Natural language processing
  • Works within your help desk
  • Collects incoming support tickets and takes action
  • Personalized responses

Pricing:

  • Contact for a quote

Free trial:

Unavailable

Learn more about Thankful for Zendesk.

16. Haptik

Haptik
Image source

Haptik is designed specifically for CX professionals in the e-commerce, finance, insurance, and telecommunications industries, and uses intelligent virtual assistants (IVAs) for customer experiences.

In addition to streamlining customer service, Haptik helps service teams monitor support conversations in real time and extract data insights. Businesses can also use Haptik IVA to deflect inbound support requests away from agents, allowing them to focus on complex, high-value customer issues.

However, Haptik users do report that the chatbot has limited customization abilities and is often too complex for non-programmers to configure or maintain.

Features:

  • Omnichannel messaging
  • Buyer-focused commerce assistant
  • Behavioral data and reporting
  • Pre-built smart workflows
  • Chat transcript

Pricing:

  • Contact for a quote

Free trial:

Unavailable

Learn more about Haptik for Zendesk.

17. ProProfs Chat

ProProfs Chat
Image source

ProProfs improves customer service and sales by creating human-like conversations that help companies connect with customers. The software helps users build a custom bot from the ground up with drag-and drop-features, so they don’t need to hire a programmer to launch.

ProProfs prioritizes ease of use over advanced functionality, so while it’s simple to create no-code chatbots, more advanced features and sophisticated workflows may be out of reach.

The AI chatbots can provide automated answers and agent handoffs, collect lead information, and book meetings without human intervention.

Features:

  • Mobile access
  • Prewritten responses
  • White-label capabilities
  • Advanced reports and analytics

Pricing:

  • Free: $0 per month (1 operator)
  • Team: $19.99 per operator/month

    *Team plan is billed annually.

Free trial:

15 days

Learn more about ProProfs for Zendesk.

18. boost.ai

boost.ai
Image source

boost.ai offers a no-code chatbot conversation builder for customer service teams with the ability to process human speech patterns. It also uses NLU (natural language understanding), allowing chatbots to analyze the meaning of the messages it receives rather than just detecting words and language.

boost.ai has worked with over 200 companies, including over 100 public organizations and numerous financial institutions such as banks, credit unions, and insurance firms in Europe and North America. On top of its virtual agent functionality for external customer service teams, boost.ai features support bots for internal teams like IT and HR.

The software aims to make building, launching, and maintaining a virtual agent simple.

Features:

  • No-code builder
  • NLP and NLU
  • Conversation analytics
  • Advanced conversation analytics
  • Detailed message analysis
  • Omnichannel experience
  • Conversational interactive voice response (IVR)

Pricing:

  • Contact for a quote

Free trial:

Unavailable

19. Zoom Virtual Agent

Zoom Virtual Agent
Image source

Zoom Virtual Agent, formerly Solvvy, is an effortless next-gen chatbot and automation platform that powers good customer experiences. With advanced AI and NLP at its core, Zoom delivers intelligent self-service to resolve customer issues quickly, accurately, and at scale.

Zoom provides personalized, on-brand customer experiences across multiple channels. So wherever your customers encounter a Zoom-powered chatbot—whether on Messenger, your website, or anywhere else—the experience is consistent.

Zoom Virtual Assistant also has low maintenance costs, doesn’t require engineers, and learns and improves from interactions with your customers over time.

Features:

  • Intelligent natural language processing
  • Actionable analytics and reporting
  • Custom flows and messaging

Pricing:

  • Contact sales

Free trial:

Unavailable

Learn more about Zoom for Zendesk.

20. Digital Genius

Digital Genuis
Image source

Digital Genius gives you the power to make your customer's experience worthy of another visit with fast and accurate responses. Whether it's about their order, product availability, store location, or even sizing - they'll feel like they're speaking to a human.

We are an AI and Automation Platform built for E-Commerce. We help brands improve customer experience and dramatically reduce costs.

Features:

  • Full Automation: End-to-end resolution of support enquiries powered by conversational AI and process automation engine
  • Flow Platform: Plug and play visual process builder with a library of pre-built AI intents, process actions, integrations and code-free connectors into any external API
  • Analytics and reporting available in a built-in dashboard

    60+ pre-built use cases for eCommerce

  • Out-of-the-box eCommerce and carrier integrations
  • Fully customisable to your brand
  • Multilingual and cross-channel
  • AI image recognition and text recognition
  • Fully managed implementation and support with product expert

Pricing

Contact for a quote

Free trial

Available upon request

Learn more about Digital Genius for Zendesk.

Benefits of using AI chatbots for customer service

There are several benefits of AI chatbots, but our favorite is the way AI is transforming customer service by answering customer questions quickly and accurately without an agent ever getting involved.

But here are a few of the other top benefits of using AI bots for customer service anyway.


Features to look for in support bots

At the end of the day, AI chatbots are conversational tools built to make agents’ lives easier and ensure customers receive the high-quality support they deserve and expect. As you search for AI chatbot software that serves your business’s needs, consider purchasing bots with the following features.

No-code bot builder

Build better chatbot conversation flows to impress customers from the very start—no coding required (unless you want to, of course). While a no-code bot builder is a convenient tool, many solutions require the expertise of a developer, so it’s up to you to take stock of your needs and resources before settling on a bot.

Some benefits of no-code AI chatbot builders include:

  • Low setup and maintenance costs
  • Rapid change management capabilities
  • Easy integrations with third-party systems
  • Accessible to teams with limited knowledge and resources

Omnichannel customer service

Deliver exceptional customer support and boost sales across channels by deploying an omnichannel chatbot.

When you deploy an AI chatbot across multiple communication channels—such as SMS, your website, and social media—it can open and escalate tickets and even route them to the appropriate agent if it can’t resolve an issue independently.

The primary benefit of bots that support omnichannel deployment is that they can help provide a consistent customer experience on all channels. Many chatbots can gather customer context by conversing with them or accessing your business’s internal data to streamline service.

An omnichannel chatbot also creates a unified customer view, allowing for cross-functional collaboration among different departments within your organization. Your chatbot can collect customer information and document it in a centralized location so all teams can access it and provide faster service.

Flexible integrations

You can use an AI chatbot for live chat on your website and connect it with a third-party system so the bot can pull data for a conversation. So when a customer starts a conversation with your bot, it can guide them to the most relevant answer based on their query. Some examples of the data integrations can pull from other platforms include:

  • Order details and tracking
  • Payment history
  • User IDs
  • Support ticket updates
  • Location data

Ultimately, integrations play a key role in enabling support teams to offer personalized and proactive support experiences that drive valuable upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

Routing

When a customer submits a support request, AI chatbots can open a ticket, tag it to enhance routing rules, and forward it to the best agent for the job. Rather than just sending support requests to the first available agent, Zendesk bots can route tickets based on:

  • Agent skills
  • Activity status
  • Capacity
  • Conversation priority
  • Customer sentiment

Reporting and insights

Customer data is important for personalization and continued growth. Chatbots can help collect general customer service data that businesses can use for staffing decisions, resource allocation, and more.

When selecting software, look into its chatbot analytics. Some common analytics that can help improve agent efficiency and customer service include:

  • Peak times
  • Engagement metrics
  • Chat history data
  • Customer segment details
  • Sales opportunities
  • Ticket statuses
  • Total number of conversations
  • Human takeover and ticket escalation rates

What are some examples of companies using customer service chatbots?

Explore how real businesses use Zendesk bots to provide support that impresses customers and employees.

Photobucket: 24/7 support

Photobucket, a Colorado-based media hosting website, uses Zendesk bots to provide round-the-clock support to subscribers. By investing in our software, Photobucket ensured that there is never a lapse in service, even if their agents aren’t available.

“[Zendesk bots are] perfect for our users that need help when our agents are offline. They can interact with the bot to get answers quickly. Instead of sending us an email and waiting until the next day to hear from us, they can get answers to their questions right away.”

Trishia Mercado

Director of member engagement team at Photobucket

The Photobucket team reports that Zendesk bots have been a boon for business, ensuring that night owls and international users have access to immediate solutions.

Storage Scholars: Deflect basic questions

Storage Scholars is a moving and storage company specializing in moving college students on, off, and around campus. Since college students all tend to move around the same time, it’s not uncommon for the movers to get bombarded with support requests and questions all at once.

Because of this, Storage Scholars use Zendesk bots to deflect basic questions, allowing chatbots to respond to frequently asked questions and guide customers to their needed resources.

How to choose the best chatbot software for customer service

Here are a few questions and customer service best practices to consider before selecting customer service chatbot software.

1. What will I use it for and what tasks do I need to automate?

Not all chatbots come with the same features and functionalities. Before choosing one, consider what you will use the software for and which capabilities are non-negotiable.

Some tasks you may consider automating include:

  • Email and message replies
  • Ticket routing
  • Ticket status notifications

2. What goals will this chatbot help me achieve?

When choosing any software, you should consider broader company goals and agent needs. Take stock of your customer support goals and strategies—these may include speeding up ticket resolution rates, capitalizing on more cross-sell and upsell opportunities, or providing more comprehensive service when agents are off the clock.

Keep your goals in mind and verify that the chatbot you choose can support the tasks you must carry out to achieve them.

3. Does the solution integrate with my key business systems?

Your chatbot should integrate seamlessly with your CRM, customer service software, and any other tools your business uses.

If you’re using a chatbot from the vendor you use for those tools, there’s nothing to worry about. However, if you plan to integrate with a third-party system, check to make sure integrations are available.

Often, applications may be insufficient, so it’s important to know early on if you’ll need a developer to set up the integration and if you have the resources to make that possible.

4. What channels do I need to deploy on?

You should deploy a customer service chatbot on any channel where customers communicate digitally with your business. Channels will vary depending on your business and customer demographics.

However, it’s possible to deploy chatbots on:

5. Is the solution easy to set up, use, and train?

Finally, you should take stock of your resources and verify that you have what you need to configure, train, and maintain your customer service chatbot of choice.

For example, many solutions require developer expertise. However, if your team is working with a limited budget and coding knowledge, a click-to-configure bot may be a better fit. Also, since most chatbots aren’t made specifically for customer service, businesses will need to train the bots themselves, which can be expensive and time-consuming.

Luckily, Zendesk isn’t like most chatbot vendors. Our bots are pre-trained on real customer service interactions saving your team the time and hassle of manual training. We also invested in an agile and accessible solution, making it possible for anyone to build and deploy a chatbot with a no-code chatbot builder and easy-to-use integrations.

Frequently asked questions about chatbots for customer service

Read on for answers to commonly asked questions about using chatbots to provide outstanding customer service.

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