7 Best AI Tools For Customer Support In 2026

Phyllis Fang at Level AI explores AI tools for customer service and different ways customer support teams are using AI to achieve core goals, from boosting response speed to improving customer satisfaction.

As well as sharing practical tips for selecting the right AI tools for customer service for your needs and break down six automation-focused platforms, complete with feature highlights and pricing details.

Introduction

AI tools for customer support are a natural fit for customer support, because so much of an agent’s day is spent talking to customers and solving problems.

Artificial intelligence (especially generative AI and agentic AI) offers a valuable resource with high capacity for understanding, responding to, and even anticipating human needs.

Top 5 Uses for AI Tools in Customer Support

AI tools for customer support centers make it possible to handle higher volumes of queries more efficiently, which improves customer experience. Five important ways they do this are by:

• Handling repetitive tasks (like simple customer queries) or by drafting responses that agents can quickly use to free up time for resolving complex issues. AI agents can fully resolve routine requests, freeing up live agents to focus on more complex or emotionally nuanced cases.
• Automatically surfacing the right response or policy during the call to support human agents in real time.
• Instantly generating call summaries and next steps to reduce the volume of after-call work.
• Automatically evaluating agents’ compliance with company regulations and highlighting coaching opportunities.
• Capturing and analyzing cross-channel conversations for an understanding of agent performance and query trends.

A Virtual Agent is a great example of the first benefit in action: they can autonomously handle common queries via chat or voice, acting as the first line of support to reduce workload for human agents.

In general, your success with such applications depends on how effectively your chosen AI systems can capture and interpret customer conversations.

Below, we share key tips to guide your search for an AI tool, whether you’re exploring chatbots, call center AI agents, or customer support platforms with advanced AI features.

What to Look for in AI-Powered Customer Support Tools

To lay the groundwork for a support system that not only scales, but improves over time, here are key features to keep in mind:

Natural Language Understanding (NLU)

Natural language understanding (NLU) is the foundation of any capable AI tool. Look for systems that use AI speech analytics to go beyond surface-level text and grasp true intent. These are capable of handling typos, slang, and nuanced or complex queries with ease.

Emotional Intelligence

Look for tools that use call center voice analytics to accurately detect customer emotions (like frustration, confusion, or delight) and adapt accordingly. The best platforms don’t just recognize tone; they respond with empathy, escalate when necessary, and help de-escalate tense situations in real time.

Robust and Clear Dashboards

Robust and clear dashboards that show how well your support team is doing. Metrics like CSAT, resolution time, and agent performance should be front and center.

Quick and Effortless Handoff

Quick and effortless handoff to human agents, when needed: customer-facing support tools should be able to pass all the context along to the human agents so customers don’t have to repeat themselves.

Integrations

Integrations with internal tools:

• Your AI system should be able to retrieve relevant customer details, ensuring agents have real-time context and a complete view of each interaction.
• The tool should also easily tap into your existing knowledge base, help articles, and FAQs, especially for chatbot and agent assist applications.
• Look for compatibility with other platforms like your e-commerce, order management, and ticketing systems.
• If you need custom integrations, API integrations are a must.

Next, we present top AI-powered platforms that utilize such features, starting with our solution, Level AI.

We’ll also share some real-life examples of using AI tools to successfully accomplish common customer support center goals, from higher agent performance to shorter wait times.

Top AI Tools for Teams in Customer Service

1. Level AI: Best for QA Automation and Real-Time Agent Support

Level AI allows support teams to run at full speed by automating QA and giving agents live help during calls. It listens to every customer conversation and understands both what people are saying and how they’re feeling.

That means teams can catch problems early, spot trends quickly, and keep improving how agents work and how customers experience support.

Features include:

• Natural Language Understanding & Semantic Intelligence
• Comprehensive Sentiment Analysis
• Automated Performance Scoring
• Real-Time Support for Agents & Managers
• Actionable Voice of Customer Insights

Examples of Using Level AI to Drive Business Outcomes

Faster Call Handling and Response During Peak Demand Hours

ezCater, a popular food tech platform for workplaces, manages time-sensitive complex orders between businesses and restaurants.

The company needed a way to help agents handle customer calls quickly and efficiently during peak lunch hours: at the time, newer team members were struggling with quickly finding relevant information across 1,000+ knowledge base articles.

By combining Real-Time Agent Assist and Real-Time Manager Assist, as well as implementing our platform’s features for automated QA, ezCater was able to accomplish that goal.

Real-Time Agent Assist sped up information retrieval for agents, while Real-Time Manager Assist helped supervisors identify problematic calls and provide proactive support to agents.

As a result, ezCater was able to decrease overall call handling time by 13%, and achieve a 23% reduction in call hold time during peak lunch hours, with 94% of calls served within 30 seconds.

Reducing Peak Call Volume Through Efficient Call Deflection

A prominent buy-now-pay-later provider was looking for ways to reduce the volume of customer calls during Black Friday call volume spikes.

Without finding a way to deflect the calls, the company would have needed 2,000+ additional agents to provide the required level of support during that time.

Instead of hiring a huge team of temporary agents, they used Level AI’s VoC Insights to analyze, quantify, and categorize customer priorities and concerns expressed in customer conversations. Based on that information, the company identified gaps in their service bot functionality and expanded available options to cover common queries and deflect more calls.

Due to those changes, call volume during peak times increased by only 6% rather than the usual 150%, with an estimated 500,000 calls deflected to the self-service bot.

In addition to reducing call volume, this change also led to an improved customer experience during peak times compared to previous years. Before the change, agents had to handle multiple calls simultaneously, leading to interrupted conversations and extended wait times.

With most calls getting deflected, agents were able to provide faster response and resolution times, which led to higher customer satisfaction.

Reducing the Number of Unwarranted Refunds

Sometimes agents use credits and refunds as the simplest way to deescalate customer conversations, rather than follow company policies. This was the case for a multinational design and marketing firm, where an internal audit revealed that 30% of refunds provided to customers were unwarranted.

The leadership realized they needed to train agents to follow de-escalation processes to reduce that number.

After standardizing de-escalation protocols across all customer support centers, the QA team used Level AI to monitor conversations and identify agents and teams that didn’t follow company procedures.

Training agents on protocols led to both a decrease in the number of refunds, resulting in cost savings of over $30M within the first year of the engagement, and an improvement in the quality of customer service overall, driving a 47% increase in customer satisfaction score.

2. Zendesk: Best for CS Workforce Management

Zendesk is an AI-driven customer support platform that streamlines support operations and handles customer inquiries and agent scheduling. Its key features include:

• Conversational AI agents for cross-channel query resolution.
• A centralized agent workspace for voice and messaging, including group messaging capabilities and routing.
• Workforce management and work force forecasting tools based on historical data.

Zendesk plans start with a basic Support Team plan offering automations and pre-built analytics at $19 per month per agent, when billed annually. However, Zendesk AI agents are offered only on the higher-tier plans: Suite Team and Suite Professional, starting at $55 and $115 respectively (also billed annually, per user per month).

3. Intercom: Best for No-Code AI Customer Service Workflows

Intercom offers standard features, including omnichannel messaging, automations for routine tasks, and agent support.

Its key features are focused on reducing agent workload and speeding up response times:

• AI-powered response drafts with customizable settings for pulling in customer data.
• Ability to find multiple tickets with the same issue and resolve them in bulk via a single ticket.
• No-code automation workflows to connect Intercom to 450+ apps, including ability to deploy pre-built templates for service triage, onboarding, and CSAT surveys.

Intercom pricing starts at $29 per seat per month, billed annually.

Using Intercom’s Fin AI assistant is not included in the plan pricing. Instead, it’s billed separately at $0.99 per resolution.

4. Freshdesk: Best for Cross-Channel AI Bot Deployment

Freshdesk offers several options for customer support teams that want to start using GenAI to support their agents.

In addition to Freshdesk Omni with cross-channel agent support, Freshdesk provides access to the Freddy AI agent that has additional capabilities. Here are some of the features worth mentioning:

• Summarization of customer questions and AI-generated response drafts.
• Automated prioritization for support tickets.
• Cross-channel GenAI responses via chats and through social media channels, without human support.

Freshdesk Omni plans start at $29 per agent per month, billed annually. Freddy AI Agent support is available at $100 per 100 sessions.

Just like Intercom, Freshworks doesn’t offer an all-included pricing model. Freddy AI capabilities need to be purchased separately, with higher-tier plans unlocking access to Freddy AI analytics and copilot capabilities.

5. Salesforce: Best for Survey Feedback Gathering and Management

In addition to supporting agents and taking over simpler queries, Salesforce’s platform for customer service teams also makes it easier to deflect calls through custom bots.

It also allows customer service teams to survey customers through a built-in AI-powered survey feature that includes the following:

• Survey builder to develop surveys based on AI recommendations.
• Customer lifecycle maps to understand the customer journey and automate feedback gathering at key points.
• Analytics dashboards to sort feedback by location, industry, and so on.

Salesforce pricing is designed to closely match customer needs depending on the industry. To build a plan, you’ll need to follow a number of steps:

• First, you need to select one of the Service Cloud Plan options, starting at $25 per user per month, billed monthly or annually.
• Then, you’ll need to pick add-ons, such as Field Service packages, Einstein AI agent, cloud telephony and so on.
• After that, you’ll need to choose the desired support level, from self-guided support included in all plans to premier and custom plans.

6. Help Scout: Best for AI-Supported Messaging

Help Scout is built for teams that primarily use messaging to communicate with customers. Most of its AI capabilities are focused on making it easier to respond to text-based queries via customer service tools. Help Scout key features include:

• A shared workspace that supports multiple channels and can help prioritize incoming messages, as well as to draft and personalize responses.
• Messaging capabilities that include banners, chat modals, and surveys for announcements, customer support, and surveys.
• A self-service chat builder for website and in-app deployment.

Help Scout has a straightforward pricing model that includes AI message drafts and AI chatbot in all plans, including their free plan.

Small companies that get less than 50 customer contacts per month can stay on the Help Scout free plan with unlimited users. Paid plans start at $50 per month (also with unlimited users) and support 100 and more contacts per month.

7. Tidio

Tidio is an AI customer service platform that combines live chat, chatbots, and a help desk into one affordable solution. Its Lyro AI agent is designed to handle customer conversations autonomously, making it a popular choice for small businesses and growing e-commerce brands that need quick deployment without a heavy enterprise price tag.

Key features:

• Lyro AI agent that resolves up to 70% of common customer questions autonomously
• Pre-built chatbot templates for e-commerce, lead generation, and FAQs
• Multichannel support across live chat, email, Instagram, and Messenger
• Native integrations with Shopify, WordPress, and other major platforms
• Visitor tracking and proactive chat triggers based on browsing behavior

Best for: Small businesses, startups, and SMB ecommerce brands handling under 500 tickets per month that need an affordable, easy-to-deploy AI support tool.

Outcome example: Tidio users frequently report deploying Lyro within hours rather than weeks, with measurable ticket deflection on repetitive queries like shipping status, return policies, and product availability, all without requiring a dedicated implementation team.

This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of Level AI – View the Original Article

For more information about Level AI - visit the Level AI Website

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: Jo Robinson