Customer service teams have been using chatbots for decades, well before AI made them much smarter and more efficient. While early-day chatbots were nothing more than just rule-based robots that were only able to handle basic FAQs and frustrate customers, for the most part – modern, AI-powered conversational chatbots excel at understanding natural language, handling more complex scenarios, and delivering much better customer experiences.
But not all customer service chatbots are created equal – or prove the same value. In this guide, we’ll be talking specifically about AI-driven chatbots that can solve real problems without leaving your customers disappointed.
You’ll learn more about the benefits and limitations of AI chatbots and top features to look for. On top of that, we’ve listed the 10 best AI chatbots for customer service you can explore if you’re looking for the right solution for your team. So, let’s get straight to it!
What is a Customer Service Chatbot?
AI-driven customer service chatbots are software apps that use Artificial Intelligence and other advanced tech to help businesses automate their customer service operations by handling support interactions independently.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) ensures that chatbots can accurately understand human language and provide contextually relevant responses. Conversational AI enables chatbots to respond in a truly conversational way and maintain a two-way natural dialogue. And Machine Learning (ML) ensures chatbots can learn from past interactions and feedback they receive to become smarter over time.
And here’s the thing: an AI customer service bot doesn’t just answer simple customer questions and guide users to your self-help resources. Some of the most advanced customer service chatbot software solutions that can integrate with third-party tools (like CRM, calendar software, and e-commerce platforms) are able to perform specific actions, such as:
- Scheduling/ rescheduling appointments
- Making reservations
- Tracking orders and delivering order status updates
- Updating account information
- Renewing and canceling subscriptions
- Processing returns, exchanges, and refunds
- Making personalized product recommendations
- Collecting customer feedback
AI Chatbots vs. Rule-based Chatbots: What’s the Difference?
AI chatbots use conversational AI to maintain natural, free-flowing interactions, while rule-based chatbots rely entirely on predefined scripts. To cut the long story short, we’ve summarized the key differences between AI-powered chatbots and rule-based chatbots in a comparison table below:
AI Chatbots | Rule-based Chatbots | |
Technology | Built on large language models and use NLP, conversational AI, and ML | Built on predefined rules and simple algorithms |
Context understanding | Understand context and maintain conversation flow | Lack contextual understanding, respond based on keywords |
Flexibility | Generate dynamic responses and adapt to new scenarios | Limited to scripted responses and prebuilt workflows |
Personalization | Deliver personalized responses based on user data and behavior | Provide generic, one-size-fits-all responses |
Customer experience | Provide a natural, conversational experience | Can feel robotic and impersonal, often leading to user frustration |
Learning capability | Learn from past interactions and improve over time | Require manual updates to improve responses |
Cost | Higher initial investment but cost-effective in the long run | Lower upfront investment and maintenance costs |
Use cases | Best for more complex, personalized support and proactive engagement | Best for answering FAQs and providing basic support |
Features to Look for in an AI Chatbot for Customer Service
With plenty of chatbots for customer service out there on the market, which one should you choose? Of course, that primarily depends on your industry, specific use case, and objectives. Overall, these are some of the most important features you should be looking for to ensure your AI chatbot solution satisfies both your customers and your service team.
- Omnichannel compatibility: An AI chatbot should be able to integrate with various digital communication channels so your customers can get instant support through the channel of their preference. Fortunately, many AI chatbots are part of omnichannel messaging platform solutions.
- Seamless handoff to human agents: More importantly, an AI chatbot should be able to transfer conversations to human agents along with the context of the interaction if customers ask for information outside its knowledge scope or simply want to talk to a real person.
- Multilingual support: While this one isn’t critical for local businesses, it’s a must-have for those operating in multiple locations. If you’re serving customers across different regions, look for a chatbot solution that can understand and respond in the languages your customers speak.
- Third-party integrations: Integrations are essential. An AI chatbot should be able to integrate with your existing tech stack (like CRM, ERP, or e-commerce platform) to access customer data for better personalization and perform specific tasks across different systems.
- Reporting and analytics: You simply won’t know how well your AI chatbot is performing and whether it’s meeting your customers’ expectations without being able to track specific metrics and KPIs like user engagement, resolution rates, chat handoff rates, CSAT scores, etc.
- Self-learning capabilities: Finally, the best AI chatbots use Machine Learning to improve over time by learning from past interactions and customer feedback. That enables the bot to increase the accuracy and efficiency of responses it provides, serving customers better and improving CX.
To Bot or Not to Bot? Benefits of Using Chatbots for Customer Service
Let’s get laser-focused on some specific customer service chatbot benefits:
✓ AI chatbots can deliver customer support 24/7
It’s beyond obvious that consumers want quick support – and they want it on their terms. According to HubSpot’s data, 90% of consumers rate an ‘immediate’ response as important or very important when they have a customer service request.
Having to wait on hold for 30 minutes just to get an answer to a trivial question or deal with that ‘We’ll respond to your email within 48 hours’ is extremely frustrating for today’s consumers and won’t cut it anymore, especially in the age where AI-powered automation seems to be everywhere. Luckily, AI chatbots can work tirelessly 24/7 with no coffee breaks and support your customers when your support team isn’t available.
✓ AI chatbots can support your customers in multiple languages
Did you know that statistically, 75% of shoppers want to make purchases in their language? Having a conversational AI chatbot ready to deliver multilingual support and chat with your customers or prospects in their native language not only improves customer satisfaction. That ultimately means you don’t have to hire language-specific agents if you want to support your global customers effectively.
✓ AI chatbots can improve customer experience
AI chatbots can answer questions and resolve customer inquiries around the clock – no matter the time or day customers reach out to you. That includes off-hours, weekends, and holidays when your human reps aren’t there. More importantly, there are no frustrating wait times – customers can get immediate answers. Plus, AI chatbots can get access to a customer’s previous interactions and purchase history, which means they can deliver personalized support. Does it all help improve customer experience and customer engagement? Absolutely yes.
✓ AI chatbots can automate many customer service processes
While AI chatbots can’t successfully handle all your customer service interactions (at least not yet) – they can automate many customer service processes and operations. They can answer FAQs about your products or services, troubleshoot issues, process orders and returns, track delivery, recommend relevant products, schedule or cancel appointments, make reservations, renew subscriptions, and collect customer feedback – all without human involvement.
Intercom’s report revealed that businesses that have adopted AI say that up to 30% of their support requests are being successfully resolved by AI chatbots. This automation can truly save your human agents a bunch of time and effort while also freeing them up to focus on interactions that do need a human touch.
Recommended reading: 7 Ways to Automate Your Customer Service and How AI Can Help
✓ AI chatbots reduce the load on your service team
Customer service jobs have always been stressful. And we all know that workplace stress inevitably leads to burnout and turnover. While there may be an array of reasons causing increased workplace stress and burnout among customer service reps – having to handle an overwhelming number of support requests is definitely one of them. AI chatbots can immediately reduce your inbound call volume and the overall number of requests that require human-assisted support, reducing the load on your team.
✓ AI chatbots can operate across different channels
The demand for omnichannel support is growing. A Salesforce research study found that 71% of customers prefer using different channels based on the context. And what’s particularly great about AI chatbots is that they aren’t only limited by a chat widget on your website. AI chatbots can be integrated with social media and messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, ensuring your customers can get instant support across multiple channels.
✓ AI chatbots can deliver cost savings
Last but not least, AI chatbots are cost-efficient – and numerous stats prove that. For example, according to data from Nice, handling self-service requests with AI chatbots can be 80 to 100 times less expensive than traditional live support. And that’s completely understandable. An AI chatbot can handle dozens or hundreds of customer interactions simultaneously. They can operate around the clock across different timezones and support customers in different languages. For businesses with high volumes of support requests and those operating globally – cost-savings are obvious.
3 Signs Your Business Needs an AI Chatbot for Customer Service
Your team has to deal with high volumes of repetitive questions
Does your support team have to deal with an overwhelming number of repetitive questions about your pricing, product features, or basic troubleshooting? AI chatbots can easily handle these routine customer queries independently.
That is especially the case for e-commerce businesses where questions like ‘What’s the status of my order?’, What’s your return policy?’, or ‘What are your shipping fees?’ are way too common. In fact, statistically, WISMO (Where is my order?) requests can account for up to 35% of customer support interactions in e-commerce. Implementing an AI chatbot will free your customer service team from having to answer these tedious questions over and over again, which is not only frustrating but also takes up a significant amount of your reps’ time.
You want to extend your support availability without hiring more reps
Do you want to stay ahead of the competition by delivering 24/7 support to your customers? Do you want to support your customers outside of business hours without hiring additional customer service reps? Adding an AI chatbot to your existing customer support options is a way to go. AI chatbots are always on, ready to answer questions no matter when customers reach out – and you don’t have to allocate human agents to cover after-hours, weekends, and holidays.
Your business is scaling rapidly and serving international customers
Is your business booming and you’re getting more and more requests from around the globe? While you may attempt to localize your FAQs and knowledge bases and hire customer service reps who speak every potential language your customers may speak, implementing an AI chatbot with multilingual capabilities is the simplest, fastest, and most cost-effective solution to handle support localization challenges. Especially considering that a single agent can fluently speak several languages at most, while some AI chatbots speak over 100 languages!
Top 10 Best Customer Service Chatbots in 2025
1. VoiceSpin
VoiceSpin offers an AI-powered chatbot that can interact with users in a truly natural, human-like way and escalate conversations to live reps while maintaining context. You can deploy it across different digital channels, including social media and messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram. VoiceSpin’s chatbot integrates with CRM systems, calendar software, and other third-party apps, enabling it to deliver personalized responses, schedule appointments, and qualify inbound leads. And you can train it to respond in your unique brand voice. The bot supports multiple languages, making it an excellent solution for businesses operating globally.
Key features and pros:
- Can be integrated across different digital channels
- Supports multiple languages
- Enables seamless handoffs to live agents
- Integrates with CRM and calendar systems
- Automates lead qualification and appointment scheduling
- Provides comprehensive reporting and analytics
Best for:
VoiceSpin’s AI chatbot is best suited for large-scale enterprises and businesses across different industries (like SaaS, finance, healthcare, and real estate) looking to automate their customer service, inbound lead qualification, and appointment scheduling processes.
2. Intercom (Fin)
Intercom’s chatbot, known as Fin, is primarily powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 and designed to pull information exclusively from your business’s existing knowledge sources to prevent hallucinations and ensure the accuracy of responses. It interacts with users in a natural language using your tone of voice, asks clarifying questions, hands off complex conversations to human reps, and supports multiple languages. Fin works across email, live chat, SMS, and messaging platforms and integrates with Intercom’s wider suite of tools, Zendesk, and Salesforce.
Key features and pros:
- Operates across emails, live chat, SMS, and social
- Allows you to create drag-and-drop automations
- Enables handoffs to human agents for complex issues
- Supports multiple languages
- Offers AI-generated insights and custom reporting
- Integrates with Intercom’s ecosystem
Best for:
Intercom’s Fin AI chatbot is best suited for large businesses and enterprises operating in industries like finance, healthcare, SaaS, and e-commerce.
3. Zendesk
Zendesk’s AI chatbots, known as AI agents, are built for businesses looking to automate their customer service operations and improve customer experience. What’s distinctive about Zendesk’s AI agents is that they come pre-trained on over 18 billion real customer service interactions, so they already understand the nuances of the customer experience. Integrated into Zendesk’s ecosystem, AI agents can operate across different channels, including email, social media, and messaging channels. And you can also customize the bot persona to align with your brand voice. Plus, Zendesk offers a 14-day free trial.
Key features and pros:
- Operates across multiple digital channels
- Integrates with backend systems through APIs
- Comes with an intuitive, no-code builder
- Supports multiple languages
- Provides seamless escalations to human reps
- Offers advanced reporting and analytics
Best for:
Zendesk’s AI chatbots are best suited for medium to large businesses with high support ticket volumes, especially those in retail, finance, insurance, and SaaS.
4. Gorgias
Gorgias’s AI chatbot, known as AI agent, is purpose-built specifically for e-commerce businesses. It directly integrates with all the major e-commerce platforms, including Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce, and PrestaShop. In addition to answering basic support questions, it can help users manage orders without human support (that includes tracking order statuses, modifying or canceling orders, handling returns, and editing subscriptions). According to Gorgias, with AI agent, e-com businesses can automatically resolve up to 60% of their support inquiries.
Key features and pros:
- Integrates with the leading e-com platforms
- Automates order tracking and management
- Transfers complex issues to human agents
- Offers multilingual support
- Provides performance statistics
- Allows you to create proactive onsite campaigns
Best for:
Due to native integrations with e-commerce platforms and a ticket-based pricing model, Gorgias’s AI agent is ideal for e-com businesses and online retailers of any size.
5. Ada
Ada is an AI-powered chatbot that can be deployed across all major messaging channels. Its no-code bot builder with a drag-and-drop interface allows businesses to implement chatbots without requiring extensive technical expertise. Similarly to other chatbot solutions, it can answer FAQs and help users update accounts, track orders, check account balances, etc. But what’s particularly great about Ada’s chatbot is that it comes with A/B testing capabilities, which basically allows you to compare multiple variants of the same response and measure the impact of changes to the bot experience on your most critical KPIs.
Key features and pros:
- Can be deployed on all major messaging and social channels
- Allows you to set AI agent persona and tone of voice
- Escalates conversations to human agents
- Supports multiple languages
- Offers A/B testing capabilities to improve bot responses
- Integrates with third-party systems and apps
Best for:
Ada’s AI chatbot is well-suited for enterprise-level businesses with multilingual customer bases and is recommended for businesses in the finance, SaaS, e-commerce, and gaming industries.
6. Tidio (Lyro)
Lyro AI Agent from Tidio is an AI chatbot powered by Anthropic AI and their in-house LLMs (Large Language Models). Lyro AI agent works only with the knowledge you provide and can answer questions in a human-like manner in multiple languages. According to Tidio, it can answer up to 70% of your customer support inquiries. And when it can’t provide an accurate response, Lyro will automatically forward the question to a human rep. In addition, it integrates with the leading e-commerce platforms, making it a great solution for online retailers and e-com businesses.
Key features and pros:
- Integrates with multiple communication channels
- Offers ready chatbot templates
- Supports multiple languages
- Automatically transfers complex questions to human reps
- Provides real-time reporting and analytics
- Integrates with CRM and helpdesk tools
Best for:
Lyro AI agent is best suited for small to medium-sized businesses in e-commerce and retail. It’s ideal for companies looking to automate their customer support without expanding their support team.
7. Zowie
Zowie’s AI agent is an AI-powered chatbot that uses LLMs from OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and Meta and pulls information from several data points, including knowledge bases, FAQ pages, and historical and ongoing conversations. And it continuously learns your tone of voice and brand language to offer an always on-brand experience. Zowie works on all major chat channels, supports multiple languages, and integrates with several popular e-commerce platforms, including Shopify and BigCommerce. According to Zowie, thanks to these integrations, e-com businesses can automate up to 30% of answers to repetitive customer questions.
Key features and pros:
- Works across multiple communication channels
- Offers multilingual support
- Enables proactive chat engagement
- Integrates with third-party systems
- Offers enterprise-level data protection
- Provides reporting and analytics tools
Best for:
Zowie’s AI agent is best for small to medium-sized companies. Direct integrations with major e-commerce platforms make it an ideal solution for online retailers and e-commerce businesses.
8. Chatbase
Chatbase’s AI chatbot (AI agent) works with various platforms like web widgets, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Slack and supports multiple languages. In addition to answering support-related questions, it can perform specific actions like booking appointments, updating customer’s subscriptions, or changing their address. When escalating conversations to human reps, it provides agents with detailed summaries to ensure a seamless CX. What’s also great about Chatbase is that you can experiment with various LLMs to make sure you have the best setup for your specific use case.
Key features and pros:
- Can be deployed on multiple channels
- Enables smart escalations to human reps
- Can support customers in different languages
- Provides basic and advanced analytics
- Integrates with third-party tools
- Offers API access for custom integrations
Best for:
Chatbase AI agent is suited for both SMBs and large-scale businesses across industries like e-commerce, healthcare, finance, education, and real estate.
9. Dixa (Mim)
Dixa’s AI chatbot (known as Mim) is powered by OpenAI and pulls information only from your knowledge base. That ensures AI answers are based on only what exists in your knowledge base and helps avoid hallucinations. And it also displays links to the source articles so users can always explore information in more detail. Based on Dixa, Mim can automate up to 80% of your customer service queries. When customers request assistance from a human rep, Mim provides agents with the full context to jump right into a conversation. Dixa integrates with CRM systems, e-commerce platforms, and other apps.
Key features and pros:
- Built specifically to handle customer service scenarios
- Speaks dozens of languages
- Always displays a link to the source article
- Enables seamless handoffs to human reps
- Integrates with CRM and e-commerce platforms
- Getting started is easy, with no training required
Best for:
Dixa’s AI chatbot is best suited for B2C businesses looking to enhance their customer support with AI-driven automation.
10. Zoho (Zobot)
Zobot from Zoho is an AI-powered chatbot that can answer common questions, qualify leads, schedule appointments, collect payments, create support tickets, and perform other actions. It supports multiple languages and can forward chats to your human reps when required. Zobot lets you build your AI chatbot with the technology you may already be using like Dialogflow, IBM Watson, Microsoft Azure, Haptik, and Zia Skills. And you can deploy it across your website, social media, and instant messaging channels. What’s more, you can add AI chatbot capabilities to your rule-based chatbot to make it hybrid.
Key features and pros:
- Provides a codeless drag-and-drop chatbot builder
- Deployable on multiple digital channels
- Offers sample chatbot templates for specific industries
- Combines AI and rule-based chatbots
- Provides multilingual support
- Offers extensive integrations with third-party tools
Best for:
Naturally, Zobot is best for businesses that are already using the Zoho ecosystem and want to automate their customer service interactions. It’s particularly suited for industries like e-commerce, education, finance, real estate, and travel.
Are AI Chatbots Going to Replace Human Customer Service Agents?
As AI chatbots are getting more sophisticated and efficient thanks to advancements in generative AI, will they eventually replace human reps in customer service? Well, it has been a burning question for customer service professionals lately.
While some reduction is inevitable, gen AI will actually also create new job opportunities. According to Gartner, by 2026, investment in generative AI will lead to a 20% to 30% reduction in customer service and support agents and will create new jobs to enable generative AI in customer service and support.
And here’s why generative AI customer service chatbots, in particular, aren’t going to replace human customer service reps in the near future:
AI chatbots aren’t that smart (at least yet)
First and foremost, AI chatbots heavily rely on the data they are trained on and the quality of your internal knowledge sources. And though AI chatbots excel at resolving straightforward, low-complexity issues, they fail when it comes to handling issues that fall outside of their training data. The same goes true for complex issues that require human judgment, problem-solving, and critical thinking. They simply cannot think ‘outside the box’ like your human reps can.
AI chatbots lack emotional intelligence
Secondly, AI chatbots struggle with understanding and responding appropriately to human emotions like frustration or sarcasm because they lack emotional intelligence. While they can detect customer sentiment (at least to some extent), they lack the ability to truly empathize with frustrated customers, provide personalized emotional support, or handle delicate situations. No wonder that based on SurveyMonkey’s report, 61% of consumers say humans understand their needs better than AI.
Customer concerns and preferences for human interactions are real
While many companies are eager to implement AI chatbots, customer preferences often tell a different story. For example, SurveyMonkey’s report also revealed that 90% of people prefer to get customer service from a human rather than a chatbot. Furthermore, according to a Gartner survey, 64% of customers would prefer companies didn’t use AI in their customer service at all. This is because many customers fear that AI will simply become another obstacle between them and a human agent.
Customer Concerns About AI in Customer Service:
Our takeaways: The best customer service happens when AI chatbots and human agents team up because both have different strengths and limitations. That’s why smart, forward-thinking businesses won’t try to replace human reps but find the ways bots and humans can work together and really benefit from each other while improving the experience for both customers and agents.
Next Steps: Get Started with VoiceSpin’s AI Chatbot for Customer Service
AI chatbots are here to stay. And they are only going to get smarter as AI technology evolves and improves. With the right chatbot solution, you can improve customer experience by delivering quick and efficient support 24/7 while also reducing the number of support requests that require human assistance. If you’re ready to get started with customer service AI chatbots at this point, here’s why implementing VoiceSpin’s AI chatbot might be a worthwhile investment for your business:
- Easy to train: It learns everything about your company, products, services, and policies, using all your internal knowledge sources to provide highly accurate, relevant answers to your customers’ questions in your brand’s voice.
- Works on different channels: It works on your website, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and other digital channels, so you can add it to the channel your customers actually prefer to use for customer support.
- Speaks multiple languages: It speaks multiple languages, enabling you to scale your business globally while still being able to support your customers and prospects in their preferred language without hiring more reps.
- Performs specific actions: In addition to answering your customers’ questions, it can also qualify your inbound leads, create new lead records in your CRM, schedule appointments, and perform other actions.
- Integrates with your CRM: It seamlessly integrates with your CRM so it can retrieve and update customer information automatically while providing more personalized answers to improve customer experience and satisfaction.
Better yet, with VoiceSpin, you can get a complete customer service platform that unifies multiple communication channels under one roof so your reps can easily handle customer interactions across channels from a unified inbox with the full context of previous interactions.
Book a demo call now to see VoiceSpin’s AI chatbot and other AI contact center solutions in action and learn how exactly they can improve and automate your customer service operations while also reducing your support-related costs.
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