Businesses in all industries and sizes are tapping into AI to deliver a better customer experience. If you’re looking for new ways to raise the bar for customer care, keep reading to learn more about how AI can help—and which tools are worth checking out.
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How can AI be used for customer success?
You can use AI business solutions to expand customer service options, increase engagement levels, and improve your customer communication. More than eight in ten (86%) business owners surveyed in the US Chamber of Commerce’s 2023 Impact of Technology on Small Business Report report said AI improved their customer communications.
Here’s how you can use AI to make customers happier:
- Give customers 24/7 support with AI-powered digital agents. Chatbots can answer questions, share product information, and help book appointments.
- Personalize your customers’ experiences using AI customer analytics solutions. Get insights on customers’ preferences and their interactions with your business so you can tailor your messaging and communication methods.
- Respond to customer requests faster with AI-powered customer service platforms. These tools can triage customer requests, summarize tickets, and automate responses.
- Gather and analyze customer feedback using AI customer service solutions. Find out what your customers love about your business—and what they don’t like—so you can make adjustments to your products/services, communication, and brand experience.
- Improve your overall website experience with AI-powered customer analytics solutions. Find out which pages customers visit (and for how long), what they skip, and what they click on, so you can create a more engaging online experience.
Want other ways to use AI? Here are eight practical applications for AI across your entire business.
7 AI tools to improve your customer experience
Below, we’ve compiled an assortment of helpful tools—from AI-powered chatbots and ticket assistants to customer service systems and customer intelligence platforms with built-in AI capabilities.
The good news is that most customer-related AI solutions are multi-pronged, so they’re set up to offer valuable insights and give you more service options. Win-win.
1. Help Scout
Help Scout is a popular help desk software platform (and Certified B Corporation) with AI functionality. Whether you’re in ecommerce, manufacturing, healthcare, professional services, or property management, Help Scout makes it easy to manage your customer communications in one place.
With Help Scout’s AI features, you can summarize long email threads into digestible bullet points, automatically draft replies to customer requests, and use the AI writing assistant to improve the clarity and tone of your responses.
Along with the AI features, you also get insights into customer sentiment and feedback, custom reports, and access to real-time messaging support.
Cost: The Plus plan is $40 a month per user.
Help Scout is a good option if: You regularly correspond via email with customers, clients, or patients—and want a faster, smarter way to address their concerns and questions.
2. Freshdesk
Freshdesk is a customer support platform designed for small businesses and enterprise companies alike. The Freshworks Customer Service Suite takes your customer service options up a notch with AI-powered automations and AI-driven insights.
You can create chatbots that operate across channels; connect directly with customers through text, email, and social media; automate ticketing for faster response times; automate workflows; and get insights into customer interactions and pain points.
Cost: The Growth plan is $29 a month per agent; the Pro plan is $69 a month per agent.
Freshdesk’s Freshworks Customer Service Suite is a good option if: You want an all-in-one customer support platform that you can customize and scale with your business.
3. Tidio
Tidio is a customer service software solution designed to help you grow your customer base. With Tidio, you get a comprehensive help desk, live chatbots, multichannel support, and customer analytics.
Not only can you reduce repetitive questions and handle customer inquiries faster with Tidio’s Lyro AI Chatbot, you can also engage customers more easily with plug-and-play Flows that let you recommend products, offer discounts, and recover abandoned carts.
Cost: The Lyro AI Chatbot is $39 a month, and the Flows are $29 a month.
Tidio is a good option if: You want a customer service platform that can also help you nurture leads and make more sales.
4. Ultimate
Ultimate is a customer support automation platform powered by conversational and generative AI. The company’s UltimateGPT offering lets you create a custom chatbot in just a few minutes by connecting your website’s FAQ page. The chatbot can then answer questions, summarize information, and resolve customer problems—all while sounding like your business.
You can also review your bot’s performance and get real-time insights into the chat logs to find out what your customers are asking and how they feel about your customer service.
Cost: You can try it for free; after a trial, you’ll need to contact sales for pricing.
Ultimate is a good option if: You want to experiment with a custom chatbot, but don’t want to have to code or train the bot yourself.
5. Zowie
Zowie is a customer support automation platform designed specifically for ecommerce companies. Zowie uses generative AI to assist you with every aspect of customer support, from responding to service tickets to answering customer questions during the purchasing journey. With Zowie, you can take advantage of their chatbot, emailbot, inbox automation system, salesbot, and proactive chats.
You can also sign up for Zowie X2, the company’s ecommerce-specific large language model (LLM) trained on thousands of ecommerce customer interactions. All you have to do is share your FAQ URL, and Zowie X2 will comb through all the data to get up to speed on your company’s business knowledge and tone of voice.
Cost: Reach out for pricing.
Zowie is a good option if: You run an ecommerce business and want specialized support for your customers.
6. Dialpad
An AI-powered customer intelligence platform, Dialpad combines customer support with sales intelligence to foster customer loyalty and boost your bottom line. With Dialpad, all your company’s external and internal communications—including phone calls, messaging, video meetings, and customer requests—are all in one central location.
Dialpad’s AI Contact Center uses AI to analyze customer sentiment and share insights, coach live agents, and offer real-time recommendations.
Cost: The AI Contact Center plan is $115 a month per user.
Diapad is a good option if: You want a software solution that streamlines company-wide communication while giving you more tools to communicate with customers and resolve issues.
7. Asknicely
AskNicely is a customer experience platform that specializes in gathering and analyzing customer feedback. Instead of having to sort through hundreds of customer survey responses one by one to identify patterns and trends, Asknicely’s AI will do it for you.
The software analyzes the data from your customer feedback forms, categorizes it into relevant themes, then shares it in a dashboard that’s updated in real time, so you always know what your customers’ pain points and sources of satisfaction are—and can act fast to implement changes.
Asknicely also uses AI to suggest new themes to start tracking, so you can prevent problems before they crop up.
Cost: Contact sales for pricing.
Asknicely is a good option if: You want a more efficient way to understand and implement large amounts of customer feedback.
How to choose the right customer service tool for your business
Picking an AI customer service tool comes down to a handful of different factors:
- Your customer experience challenges: What aspects of customer service or customer success do you currently struggle with? If your business gets a lot of requests for quotes, you might want a custom chatbot that can respond to inquiries. If you have a lot of patient emails in your healthcare practice, you might benefit from a help desk platform that uses AI to automate email responses and draft messages.
- Your support volume/customer request volume: How many customer service tickets, calls, and messages do you receive a day? If you don’t have a high number of consistent customer requests or returns, you might not get a substantial ROI from using help desk software.
- Your website: What’s your current web setup like, and how integral is your site to your customers’ buying journey? If you run an ecommerce business, for example, or require customers to book appointments through your website, it’s a good idea to make sure your interface and overall website experience are as seamless as they can be. AI-powered chatbots can help support your customers, and customer service platforms that analyze customer interactions with your business can give you insights into their online movements.
- Your customer communication methods: Where do you correspond most with customers? If you’re juggling Google messages, social media DMs, and emails, you might want to invest in a customer success platform that streamlines communication across platforms.
- Your resources: Do you have the time and budget necessary to invest in a customer success tool? If you don’t have a lot of technical knowledge or time to devote to learning, prioritize plug-and-play tools that let you take advantage of AI instantly.
- Your current tech stack: If you already use other tools for customer relationship management, like CRM software, make sure you’re choosing a customer service platform that can integrate with your existing technology.
3 tips for using an AI customer service tool successfully
To get the most out of your AI-powered customer service tool, keep these three tips in mind:
- Know where your customers’ data is going—and keep them informed: Verify the security certifications of the provider you choose. Ask about your provider’s privacy policy and check to see that they’re SOC 2 compliant. It’s also a good idea to set up parameters for protecting the sensitive data your customers supply to AI tools like chatbots, and to create your own data policy that informs customers how, when, and where their information is being used.
- Use AI tools in moderation: Even the friendliest and best trained chatbots are no match for human expertise and kindness. It’s important to use your AI customer tools as a supplement to your customer service team, not a total replacement. Always maintain a direct line of contact with your customers, whether that involves making yourself available via phone call or instructing your website chatbot to give customers the option of talking to one of your team members right away.
- Act on your customer insights: Customer data is only valuable if you use it to grow or improve your operation. If you rely on AI tools to get insights on customer sentiment and purchase patterns, make sure you take the time to follow up on that feedback and enact positive changes.
Using AI tools to get ahead
The right AI tool can give your business the boost it needs to save time or make smarter decisions. Check out these tools for small business marketing and better business productivity.
