Manisha Karn at Level AI outlines what to consider when evaluating AI customer service agents and how they differ from traditional chatbots.
Until recently, this was more a promise than a reality. Traditional customer support bots relied on rigid decision trees that forced customers through scripted menus, often frustrating users when their needs didn’t fit into predefined categories. You’ve probably seen it: “I see you have a question about returns. Press 1 for yes, 2 for no.”
But generative AI has changed the game. Modern AI customer service agents can now understand language more like a human, holding natural conversations, recognizing intent, and even responding with empathy when customers are confused or upset.
As a result, companies are rethinking how they use automation in customer service, and many are now actively searching for the right AI agent to deploy.
That said, not all AI agents are created equal. So in this article, we discuss what to look for when evaluating these platforms.
What to Look For in an AI Customer Service Agent?
1. It Delivers Fluid and Human-Like Conversations
Make sure the agent you’re considering uses real AI (not rule-based logic) to interact with customers. When conversations feel natural and responsive, customers are more likely to feel heard and understood, and get a better experience.
Unlike traditional bots that rely on decision trees or scripted menus, true AI-powered agents use NLP and generative AI to understand intent, detect sentiment, and respond appropriately, even when the conversation doesn’t follow a predictable path.
Such contact center automation tools can handle interruptions, switch topics midstream, and maintain a conversational tone that adapts to the customer’s mood and phrasing.
Many legacy bots try to mimic understanding by using rigid flows and keyword matching. But this often backfires.
For example, if a customer says, “I wasn’t expecting to pay that much. Is there anything you can do?” a basic bot may not register this as a billing concern simply because it doesn’t contain the exact keywords like “refund” or “return.”
This lack of contextual awareness is also why traditional systems tend to force customers into choosing from preset menus, an approach that feels unnatural and often frustrating.
When people have to repeat themselves or rephrase to get the bot to understand, trust in the system erodes quickly, and the likelihood of escalation increases.
2. Look For a System That Turns Insights Into Better Service
In customer experience strategy, closing the loop means not just collecting feedback, but acting on it, and letting the customer know you did.
For example, if a customer complains about a confusing ordering process, closing the loop means acknowledging the issue, addressing the root cause, and improving the process behind the scenes. This builds trust while also driving meaningful change within the organization.
The faster your system can react to feedback, the more effectively it connects insights, automation, and learning, forming a continuous cycle of improvement.
That’s where many legacy chatbots fall short. Bots built on decision trees don’t adapt on their own. Their responses are hardcoded, so any changes require manual updates and developer involvement, which is both time-consuming and costly.
In contrast, AI-driven virtual agents use customer analytics software to learn from real interactions. They can interpret intent, manage edge cases, and refine their behavior over time.
By analyzing patterns in customer feedback, they can proactively identify recurring issues and optimize future responses without human intervention.
The most capable agents go even further. They turn insights into action, updating records, adjusting orders, or triggering follow-ups, all while tracking performance metrics like resolution rates, customer satisfaction, and others that support a wide range of customer analytics use cases.
This kind of intelligent feedback loop not only improves service quality but also helps your team stay ahead of customer needs.
3. Chatbots Should Function Just as Well on Voice as in Text
Today’s customers expect a smooth, consistent experience across every channel, whether that’s web, chat, email, social, or voice.
But many platforms still struggle to deliver this, especially when it comes to voice. That’s because voice is harder to get right.
Conversations often feel robotic or scripted, which makes sense given that many legacy bots rely on rigid decision trees and keyword matching.
AI-driven agents, by contrast, are built to handle real conversations, not just recognize commands. They’re designed to understand natural language, respond with empathy, and take meaningful actions across both voice and text channels.
And they can do this at scale, adapting fluidly to the customer’s intent regardless of where the interaction begins.
Next, we’ll highlight the top AI agent platforms that combine conversational intelligence with strong, channel-agnostic performance, offering a consistent experience whether customers are typing or talking.
Top AI Agents for Customer Service
1. Level AI Virtual Agent
Level AI’s Virtual Agent is a fully integrated platform that combines voice and chat support, agentic automation, and performance monitoring in a single system. It’s designed not just to talk, but to understand, take action, and continuously improve.
AI Virtual Agent:
- Uses natural language understanding and semantic intelligence to interpret intent, tone, and context for natural, helpful conversations.
- Resolves issues autonomously and analyzes 100% of interactions to uncover sentiment trends and root causes.
- Takes context-aware actions on behalf of agents and customers, with real-time tracking and full transparency
- Deploys in days with minimal engineering support and at over half the cost of traditional solutions.
Automatically identifies and maps high-volume, repeatable queries for automation, freeing agents for complex tasks.
2. Zendesk AI Agents
Zendesk AI Agents are chatbots that resolve customer requests across multiple channels and handle routine inquiries from routine FAQs to complex issues.
These AI agents determine why the customer is contacting the organization and can retrieve accurate answers, do certain actions, and escalate to humans when needed.
Key features include:
- Generative AI replies from connected knowledge sources via messaging and email
- Support for multiple languages
- Scripted and hybrid AI conversation flows
- API integrations with third-party tools
- Analytics, journey mapping, and performance dashboard
Zendesk AI Agents is offered as a feature of their standard pricing plans, starting at around $50 for a small customer service team.
3. Fin (by Intercom)
Fin is designed to answer requests and resolve queries across channels with conversational interactions. It uses generative AI and integrates with external services like helpdesks and knowledge bases.
Its features include:
- Delivers natural, personalized responses and handles complex issues using conversational AI
- Draws from customer data in multiple sources to generate complete answers
- Routes unresolved or complex cases to human agents
- Works across website, email, and messaging
- Provides analytics, workflow automation, and integrates with existing support operations
Pricing starts at around one dollar per resolution, with a minimum allotment of 50 resolutions per month.
4. Sendbird
Sendbird is a multichannel AI agent that handles customer inquiries and focuses on smooth handoffs to human agents when required.
Sendbird integrates with a number of external customer data systems like CRMs, helpdesks, etc., and offers security and compliance with several standards like GDPR, HIPAA, and more.
Key features include:
- Omnichannel support, including web, mobile, messaging, and more
- A no-code builder for creating and training bots
- Live agent handoff
- Customizable workflows that can be automated
- Personalized bot appearance
- Real-time analytics, including actionable insights and audience segmentation
Pricing isn’t immediately available on the website and requires a conversation with sales.
5. Ada
Ada is designed to automate customer service across web, mobile, and messaging channels, allowing businesses to provide instant and personalized support.
Features include:
- A no-code builder and drag-and-drop interface for designing conversation flows
- A proprietary reasoning engine combining different AI models for increased accuracy in conversational AI
- Connects with CRMs to personalize responses to individual customers
- An analytics dashboard for comprehensive reporting on interactions, performance, and customer sentiment
According to the website, you need to book a demo to get pricing information.
6. Breeze Agents (by HubSpot)
Breeze Agents is HubSpot’s AI agent that handles high-volume conversations across multiple channels. Breeze connects with external systems like your knowledge base and Hubspot CRM to provide fast, accurate, and cited responses using customer data, and can escalate to human reps when needed.
Key features include:
- Easy setup with no coding required
- Breeze copilot for assisting in tasks like updating your CRM or editing documents
- Full integration with the rest of the HubSpot ecosystem
Breeze is included as a feature in HubSpot’s Professional and Enterprise plans, and HubSpot uses a credit system to track pricing for AI usage.
What Are The Use Cases of AI Customer Service Agents?
1. Financial Services
- Virtual agents handle account queries, transaction disputes, and balance checks, resolving routine contacts without human handoff. McKinsey estimates generative AI could reduce human-serviced contacts by up to 50% in banking.
- A European bank deployed a gen AI-powered chatbot in its contact centre that, within seven weeks, eliminated wait times for around 20% of contact centre requests.
- At a separate bank, a gen AI agent now drafts credit-risk memos, increasing revenue per relationship manager by 20%.
- AI agents handle KYC by prepopulating forms, validating document uploads, and following up on missing information without agent involvement.
2. Telecommunication
- A European telecom used AI agents to cut service call resolution time by 60% and save more than a million euros annually, while also improving its net promoter score.
- A leading energy company reduced billing call volume by around 20% and cut up to 60 seconds from customer authentication by integrating an AI voice assistant into its back-end call workflow.
- A European media and telecom company deployed a gen AI copilot to give customer service agents faster knowledge retrieval during live calls.
3. Retail / Consumer Goods
- AI virtual agents handle order status, returns, and product queries at volume, with escalation paths to human agents for complaints.
- McKinsey’s European Customer Operations roundtable found retail beginning to follow banking and telecom in AI adoption, with human agents shifting toward customer success roles focused on high-value buyers.
4. Cross-Industry (Agent Assist)
- Gartner ranks agent assist tools among the four highest-value AI use cases in customer service. These tools surface knowledge base answers, next-best action recommendations, and real-time data during live calls.
Gartner rates case summarization and post-interaction wrap-up as among the most practical use cases available. Both give agents a structured overview of each interaction without manual note-taking.
Frequently Asked Questions.
What Are AI Customer Service Agents?
A. AI customer service agents are AI-powered systems that automate customer support by understanding queries, responding conversationally, and resolving issues across channels.
How Do AI Agents For Customer Service Work?
A. AI agents use natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, and integrations with CRM and support tools to handle customer queries and automate workflows.
What is the Difference Between AI Chatbots and AI Agents?
A. AI chatbots follow predefined scripts, while AI agents for customer service can understand context, handle complex conversations, and take real actions.
What Are The Benefits of Using AI in Customer Service?
A. AI in customer service improves response time, reduces costs, enables 24/7 support, and enhances customer satisfaction.
Where Are AI Customer Service Agents Used?
A. AI agents are widely used in call centers, contact centers, SaaS companies, e-commerce, banking, and telecom industries.
This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of Level AI – View the Original Article
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Call Centre Helper is not responsible for the content of these guest blog posts. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Call Centre Helper.
Author: Level AI
Reviewed by: Robyn Coppell
Published On: 9th Apr 2026
Read more about - Guest Blogs, Level AI
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