Customer service has come a long way—more and more businesses are swapping call centers and traditional customer support methods for AI-powered chatbots.
According to a Gartner survey in early 2022, 54% of businesses are jumping on the AI chatbot bandwagon for handling some or all of their customer inquiries. If you’re reading this article, it’s likely that you’re considering implementing an AI chatbot for your business as well.
In this Chatling guide, we introduce you to five AI customer support chatbots with the potential to transform your customer service game. From Chatling to Intercom’s Fin AI, we’ll help you choose the right chatbot for your business needs.
What Are AI Chatbots for Customer Service?
AI customer service chatbots are tools that use AI technologies (NLP and ML) to respond to customer inquiries without human input.
Most of these chatbots train on data that you provide—like your FAQs, knowledge base, website, and internal documents. They then use that information to answer customer questions conversationally and accurately.
Take Chatling, for example.
Our chatbots train themselves on documents, websites, sitemaps, and more. You can easily embed them on any website to provide quick, accurate support to your customers.
Why Listen to Us?
At Chatling, we've helped 2,000+ businesses implement effective AI chatbots. Chatling has facilitated over a million conversations and reduced resolution times by an impressive 250%.
The bottom line? We know AI chatbots—and in this guide, we'll share that expertise with you.
Benefits of Using AI Chatbots for Customer Service
24/7 Customer Service
AI chatbots let you offer 24/7 customer support. This makes them ideal for global businesses with customers spanning multiple time zones. Customers can reach out for support whenever an issue arises, and receive instant assistance from the chatbot.
Scalable Support
Scaling support has traditionally been a very costly process. With AI chatbots, this isn’t an issue—one chatbot can serve an essentially limitless number of customers without skipping a beat. This translates into immediate cost savings, but also fewer errors and faster response times.
Personalized Customer Experiences
AI chatbots can use collected personal data to provide more tailored experiences in real time. From recommending products based on previous purchases to providing personalized messaging and support, AI chatbots can make customers feel valued and understood.
Criteria for Choosing the Right AI Chatbot for Customer Service
Ease of Integration
The chatbot should be easy to integrate with every channel you need it to work on. This includes your website, social media platforms, messaging apps, and more. It should also be easy to integrate with your existing customer service tools and systems.
For example, Chatling makes it easy to integrate with any website—just add the code snippet and start automating customer conversations.
Scalability
The chatbot should scale alongside business growth—easily adapting to increased volumes of customer interactions.
Einstein GPT from Salesforce is a scalable solution that can handle large volumes of customer conversations and provide personalized responses based on the context of the conversation.
Security
For handling personal information or engaging with international customers, the chatbot needs to adhere to privacy regulations to ensure data security. Look for chatbots that are compliant with regulations like GDPR and CCPA.
5 Best AI Chatbots for Customer Service
- Chatling
- Netomi
- Intercom’s Fin AI
- Einstein GPT by Salesforce
- Ada
1. Chatling
Chatling is an AI chatbot that trains on your data to provide fast, accurate, round-the-clock customer support.
The setup process is incredibly simple—just connect the data sources (websites, knowledge bases, documents, etc.) you want Chatling to learn from, customize the chatbots look and personality, and add the code snippet to your website.
Chatling has helped 2,000+ businesses improve their resolution rates by an average of 53% and decrease resolution times by an average of 250%.
Key Features
- Customizable Training: Train your chatbot on websites, documents, knowledge bases, FAQs, and more.
- Easy Setup: Add the code snippet to any website or integrate with platforms like WordPress, Shopify, and PrestaShop to get up and running in minutes.
- 24/7 Availability: Offer round-the-clock support to your customers with Chatling's chatbot available anytime, anywhere.
- Multi-Language Support: With support for any language, Chatling can communicate with customers from all around the world.
- Analytics and Reporting: Track chatbot performance, customer interactions, and collect valuable insights to continuously improve your chatbot's effectiveness.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Easy to set up and deploy chatbots without any coding expertise
- Provides instant responses
- Automates customer support
- Quick in answering questions and releasing new features
- Integrates with Zapier for added functionality
Cons
- Limited features for filtering or searching conversations
2. Netomi
Netomi provides effortless and conversational support across multiple channels.
Netomi's AI is trained with distinct customer intents, historical context, and current sentiment, contributing to heightened customer satisfaction. Additionally, it seamlessly integrates with live agents and other business systems.
Key Features
- Predictive Analytics: Use predictive analytics to anticipate customer needs and provide proactive support.
- Omnichannel Support: Netomi's AI can handle inquiries across various channels, including email, chat, social media, and more.
- Advanced Natural Language Understanding (NLU) Engine: Enables the chatbot to grasp contextual meaning from unstructured textual data, providing valuable insights.
Pricing
Contact sales for a quote.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Great contextual understanding
- Proprietary AI model
- Omnichannel support
Cons
- No publicly available pricing
- Reports aren’t customizable
3. Intercom’s Fin AI
Intercom's Fin AI is an extension of Intercom’s well-known customer service platform.
Fin AI is designed to understand and respond to customer inquiries conversationally, route inquiries to the appropriate team or individual, and provide insights on customer behavior.
Key Features
- Intent Analysis: Detect customer intent and communicate it with human agents during the routing process to speed up resolutions.
- Instant Answers from Multiple Sources: Provides instant answers sourced from various platforms, including Intercom articles, Zendesk help center, public URLs, PDFs, and text-based snippets. This helps agents respond quickly and accurately to inquiries.
- Conversation Insights: Analyze customer conversations to identify trends, recurring issues, and other insights that can inform business decisions.
Pricing
Intercom offers three pricing plans—Essential ($39/user/month), Advanced ($99/user/month), and Expert ($139/user/month).Fin AI costs $0.99 per resolution per month.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Excels at comprehending and engaging with complex queries
- Allows precise content targeting for relevant information delivery
- Efficiently triages and transitions complex problems to the support team
- Integrates with teammates' tools
Cons
- Limited complex query handling
- Dependent on existing content
- Requires some time for information ingestion from existing Intercom or Zendesk help center
4. Einstein GPT by Salesforce
Einstein GPT by Salesforce is an AI chatbot that integrates Salesforce's proprietary AI with OpenAI's popular GPT language model.
This powerful combination allows for highly accurate and natural language understanding, making it an ideal solution for businesses that deal with complex customer inquiries.
Key Features
- Article Recommendations: Suggests relevant articles from a company's knowledge base to help customers find answers quickly.
- Case Classification and Routing: Efficiently categorize and direct customer cases to the right channels or support staff.
- Prediction Builder: Use AI to predict conversation outcomes and provide personalized responses for a more human-like interaction.
Pricing
There are four plans available for Einstein GPT for Service—Essentials ($25/user/month), Professional ($75/user/month), Enterprise ($150/user/month), and Unlimited ($300/user/month).
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Fully integrated into the Salesforce platform
- Combines proprietary and third-party AI models
- Ensures sensitive customer data isn't retained by the AI models
Cons
- Requires technical expertise for setup
- Lacks pre-trained models
5. Ada
Ada is known for its capability to automate and deflect routine customer service tickets.
It recommends self-service solutions that allow customers to manage account information, schedule appointments, and make payments without increasing the workload of our support team.
Key Features
- AI Training Insights: Provides analytics and suggestions to enhance the chatbot's performance and customer interactions.
- Ticket Automation: Automates ticket creation and seamless handoff of complex issues to human agents when required.
- No-Code Bot Builder: Allows easy creation and customization of the chatbot without programming expertise.
Pricing
Contact sales for a quote.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Praised for user-friendliness
- Supportive team
- Continually updated with new features
- Advanced AI capabilities
- Requires minimal technical intervention
Cons
- Limited analytics dashboard
- Difficulties in sending images and videos properly
Conclusion
AI chatbots are changing the way businesses deliver personalized support at scale. You don’t need to respond to every single routine FAQ question that comes your way—your chatbot can handle it for you.
At Chatling, we offer businesses a powerful AI chatbot solution designed to streamline support with minimal setup and maintenance. You can train and embed your bot on any website in minutes, and free up your team to focus on bigger issues.
Get started for free and see what Chatling can do.