Customer support automation: choosing the right tools

Imaginereducing customer service costs by 30%while boosting satisfaction scores. Sound too good to be true? It's possible and increasingly common with the right customer support automation tools.

Customer support automationboosts customer satisfaction and cuts costs by delivering rapid, personalized assistance around the clock.

Here’s a list of the 10 best customer support automation software and tips on selecting the perfect one for your business.

10 best customer support automation software in 2024

Good AI tools for customer support automation make it easier to handle customer interactions and boost efficiency. This list includes thebest AI sales assistant softwareand customer service tools for automated customer support.

Chatfuel

Chatfuel is one of the top chatbot development companiesfor customer support automation. Its powerful support and sales chatbots are designed for WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and websites. It provides easy-to-use customization options and advanced AI capabilities for effective and intelligent interactions across platforms.

Businesses use thisno-code chatbot builderto create automated human-like interactions tailored to customer service needs.

Chatfuel’s automation tools enhance customer service through appointment bookings, lead qualification and message management.

Our AI-driven sales agent—Fuely AI—boosts customer satisfaction and efficiency. This makes Chatfuel’s bot-building servicean ideal choice for e-commerce platforms, healthcare providers, marketing agencies, SaaS companies and online businesses.

Features

1. No сoding required:Chatfuel allows users to create chatbots without any programming knowledge. Its visual interface simplifies the process of building conversational flows and automating responses.

2. Integration with different platforms: Chatfuel is the official Meta partner. The system seamlessly integrates with Facebook Messenger, Instagram, websites and WhatsApp - making it an excellent choice for businesses lookingto add a messenger chatbot to their website.

3. Templates and plugins: The platform offers pre-built templates and plugins for users to quickly set up common bot functionalities like FAQs, lead generation and e-commerce.

4. Analytics and insights: Chatfuel provides analytics to track user interactions, understand engagement and optimize bot performance.

5. Free tier:This automated customer service offers a free plan with basic features, making it accessible for small businesses and startups and ideal for trials.

6. Customer knowledge base: Chatfuel’s AI classifies customers based on behavior for hyper-personalized interactions and tailored support.

7. Automated instant responses: The AI delivers immediate, relevant responses to customer inquiries. It gathers essential information and facilitates a smooth transition to human agents.

8. Streamlined service operations: Chatfuel’s solutions support product recommendations, ad engagement, transaction assistance, abandoned cart recovery and re-engagement with customers.

Shared inbox: The shared inbox compiles all customer support inquiries into one unified space so team members can collaborate and respond to messages more efficiently.

Pricing

So,how much does a chatbot cost? The good news is that you canmake a chatbot for freewith Chatfuel. There is a free plan with basic features and paid plans for clients and companies who need more capabilities.

• Business (Instagram/Facebook): $19.99/month

• Business (WhatsApp): $49.49/month 

• Enterprise: $300/month

User ratings

Chatfuel is rated 4.5 stars on G2 and 4.4 on Capterra. Customers love how easy it is to build achatbot for small businesses. They also mention that theenterprise chatbotsare great for customer service automation.

Source: G2

Source: Capterra

Thousands of companies have successfully used chatbots to automate customer service.

• Chatfuel helped HelloFreshachieve a 76% decrease in response times.

• TheCultt resale platform raised customer conversion rates by 37%using a chatbot.

• The Bake at Home Bot acquired 250% more users in a monthduring the COVID-19 pandemic.

Start a Free Trialwith Chafuel to improve your customer service automation technology.

Freshdesk

Source: Freshdesk

Freshdesk started as a service desk software - not an AI-driven platform. It was initially made to address the challenges faced by large customer support teams. Freshdesk was designed to provide a robust ticketing system and support management tools.

Today, Freshdesk is a multichannelAI customer service softwarethat offers customer support tickets, a knowledge base for self-service and customizable features. It provides automation tools - canned responses and automated workflows - to boost team efficiency and automate customer service.

However, customers state that importing and exporting large amounts of data is not always easy with Freshdesk. If you plan to export mass data, this may not be the customer service automation technology for you.

Features

1. Automated ticketing systems: Freshdesk tickets are allocated based on agent skillsets and workload or distributed evenly across the team.

2. Freddy AI integration: Freshdesk’s AI assistant—Freddy—analyzes incoming tickets, identifies patterns and routes them to the most suitable agent or team. It then suggests relevant knowledge base articles to agents to assist customers.

3. Unified support: Freshdesk integrates with WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook Messenger and email through Freshchat. This centralizes all tickets and conversations, helps with time tracking and automatically creates knowledge-base articles from responses.

Pricing

• Basic Plan:Free

• Growth:$15/month

• Pro:$49/month

• Enterprise:$79/month

User ratings

4.4/5

Source: G2

Zendesk

Zendesk is an automated customer service platform with generative AI chatbots that anticipate customer needs and actions.

It offers a robust feature set and extensive customization options, which appeal to larger enterprises with complex support needs.

Users can centralize all customer interactions into one platform with support ticket tracking, live chat and a customer service team knowledge base. Integration with other business tools like Salesforce and Slack allows for automating customer service interactions.

Although Zendesk provides positive customer experiences, it takes time for users to learnhow chatbots workand the system includes some lag due to heavy feature loading.

Features

1. Instant responses to customer queries: Zendesk AI agents deliver immediate, human-like replies to contact center requests. The customer service agents use data from a knowledge base with adjustable tone and brand voice.

2. Autonomous task execution: Zendesk AI software handles processing refunds, changing passwords/bookings and canceling appointments from start to finish.

3. Data-driven insights: These automated customer service tools can anticipate customer needs and resolve issues proactively.

Pricing

• Support Team:$19/month

• Suite Team: $55/month

• Suite Growth: $89/month

• Suite Professional: $115/month

Suite Enterprise: Custom

User ratings

4.3/5

Kustomer

Source: Kustomer

Kustomer combines AI assistants, email functionality and CRM platform capabilities to complete customer service tasks.

The tool focuses on providing a 360-degree view of the customer, integrating data from various sources to create a unified customer profile. This allows support agents to see all interactions and purchase history in one place, enabling more personalized and efficient service. 

Unlike the more traditional ticket-based systems, Kustomer emphasizes conversational support, treating each customer interaction as part of a continuous dialogue rather than individual tickets.

Keep in mind that it can be a challenge to complete administrative tasks with Kustomer - such as exporting emails to PDF or searching customer service history under specific emails.

Features

1. Pre-made templates: Kustomer’s automated customer service solutions feature pre-built, customizable visual templates.

2. Self-service customer support team: The chatbots use data from the company’s knowledge base to provide accurate and efficient responses during customer service tasks.

3. Contextual engagement: Artificial intelligence offers AI-generated summaries to agents for transitions between bots and human agents.

Pricing

• Enterprise: $89/month

• Ultimate: $139/month

User ratings

4.4/5

Source: G2

Intercom

Source: Intercom

Intercom customer service software boosts productivity within a customer support team by handling repetitive interactions. Intercom combines messaging, bots and AI-driven customer service automation to create meaningful interactions.

Intercom differs from other automation tools by focusing primarily on customer engagement and messaging rather than traditional customer support ticketing. It offers live chat, in-app messaging, and automation tools designed to facilitate real-time, proactive communication with customers.

Intercom is often used for customer onboarding, product announcements and sales—in addition to support. Its conversational approach emphasizes relationship-building and personalized interactions, making it a popular choice for businesses looking to enhance customer engagement across the entire customer lifecycle.

The biggest downside of Intercom is that the lower-priced plans don't include some of the basic features like multiple team inboxes or workload management.

Features

1. Integrations: Intercom offers integration through AI-powered chatbots and an AI-enhanced help desk. It's supported by OpenAI's product line and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI.

2. Multilingual support: Intercom AI autonomously resolves multilingual inquiries and includes instant language detection during automated customer service interactions.

3. Self-service support: The knowledge base articles are unique to customer needs to support effective self-service and improve customer experience.

Pricing

• Essential: $29/month

• Advanced: $85/month

• Expert: $132/month

User ratings

4.5/5

Source: G2

Help Scout

Help Scout is a customer service platform that makes it easier for teams to handle customer inquiries. It provides a variety of tools, including shared inboxes that consolidate multiple email accounts into one location.

The platform also features a knowledge base where businesses can create self-service resources, such as FAQs and articles, allowing customers to find answers on their own. Additionally, Help Scout offers live chat functionality, enabling real-time support directly on websites.

To help businesses improve their service, Help Scout includes reporting and analytics tools that track important metrics like response times and customer satisfaction. 

Help Scout is especially favored by small to medium-sized businesses that value a user-friendly interface and aim to provide personalized, efficient customer support.

This customer experience tool doesn't offer as many features as other options though. The Doc Editor feature falls short in comparison with alternative automated customer service software.

Features

1. Email management: Help Scout offers custom email templates, automatic CC/BCC, follow-ups, notes, reminders and email tracking.

2. Collaboration tools: Customer service agents can assign conversations, access specific mailboxes and collaborate on tickets through the Help Scout knowledge bases.

3. AI functionalities: The platform includes AI-driven content rewriting, tone adjustment and email summaries.

Pricing

• Standard:$22/month

• Plus: $44/month

• Pro: $65/month

User ratings

4.4/5

Source: G2

Zoho Desk

Source: Zoho Desk

Zoho Desk is a cloud-based customer service and help desk platform designed to help businesses manage and resolve customer inquiries effectively. It provides tools for ticket management, allowing support teams to handle customer issues submitted through various channels such as email, phone, chat, social media, and web forms, all from a unified interface.

Zoho Desk offers automation features such as ticket assignment and workflow management, which help improve efficiency and response times. It also includes a knowledge base that enables businesses to create self-service portals where customers can find answers to common questions on their own.

Its interface is a bit cluttered compared to more user-friendly platforms. That being said, the unique AI virtual assistant and tools for team collaboration make up for the busy design. The team feed allows support teams to give updates and comments to each other all in one place.

Features

1. AI virtual assistant (Zia): Zia generates tags for tickets, suggests relevant knowledge base content, analyzes customer emotions and highlights unusual ticket content.

2. Intuitive collaboration:The platform includes a team feed for agents to update each other and share comments - similar to a Slack channel. It also features an agent collision detector to prevent multiple agents from working on the same case simultaneously.

3. Flexible workflow automation: Zoho Desk provides a blueprint for creating and automating workflows. The platform’s automation directs redundant tasks.

Pricing

• Free Plan:For limited support

• Standard:$14/month

• Professional:$23/month

• Enterprise:$40/month

User ratings

4.4/5

Source: G2

Tidio

Source: Tidio

Tidio is an automated customer service interaction platform that gives support across channels. The AI bot - Lyro - combines natural language processing, email marketing and live chat to deliver a responsive customer experience. This automated customer service software is ideal for small and midsize companies.

Designed to help businesses enhance their customer support and engagement, Tidio allows website visitors to interact with businesses in real time through live chat. This feature is particularly useful for answering questions, resolving issues quickly, and providing personalized support.

Tidio is known to be one of the more expensive automated systems for customer service processes. Some users admit that it is not the best value for money in terms of features and agents allowed on each plan.

Features

1. Live chats: Tidio’s live chat software allows multiple simultaneous one-on-one interactions to address customer feedback.

2. Easy setup: Tidio AI automated customer service software - chatbots and FAQs - can be installed in under 5 minutes and offers customization options.

3. Smart View for customer support analytics: The Smart View feature provides detailed analytics by analyzing customer feedback and prioritizing questions by urgency.

4.  Chatbot functionality: Chatbots that can automate responses to common queries, guide users through the purchasing process and help manage customer interactions even when live agents are unavailable.

Pricing

• Basic Plan: Free

• Starter: $29/month

• Growth: $59/month

• Tidio +: $749/month

• Enterprise: $2999/month

User ratings

4.7/5

Source: G2

LiveAgent

Source: LiveAgent

Live Agent is a customer service automation software specifically for small businesses. They have a user-friendly interface and streamlined ticketing system.

Some of LiveAgent’s key capabilities include a universal inbox where emails, chats, calls, social media messages, and other customer inquiries are automatically consolidated into a single ticket stream.

Detailed analytics provide insights into agent performance, customer satisfaction, and support trends. 

Inbound calls can be routed to agents through the dashboard, enabling centralized phone support. Customers can access a branded self-service portal to find answers in the knowledge base, submit tickets, and track their status.

Some users find the embedding options challenging to implement due to limited documentation. The overseas support and technical team could also present timezone difficulties.

Features

1. Google Maps API integration: Live Agent integrates with Google Maps API to visualize customer locations for better customer interactions geographically.

2. Team transfer ability: The platform provides easy handovers between agents and the ability to add notes specific to each agent.

3. Customizable ticket routing: Users can customize ticket management processes to shape workflows and ticket handling to their needs and preferences.

Pricing

• Free account:Limited

• Small:$9/month

• Medium:$29/month

• Large:$49/month

• Enterprise:$69/agent

User ratings

4.5/5

Source: G2

Custify

Source: Custify

Custify is an AI customer service assistant that uses analytics to understand customer behavior and lifecycles.

Custify is a customer success platform designed to help SaaS (Software as a Service) companies reduce churn, increase customer satisfaction and drive growth by proactively managing customer relationships.

 It provides tools for customer health monitoring, lifecycle management, and personalized engagement, enabling Customer Success teams to better understand and assist their clients.

The customer service software monitors key metrics—customer satisfaction, interaction rates and potential risks—to get a better view of customer engagement. The customer experience tools include customer segmentation, journey mapping and personalized communication. 

The reporting and analytics section of Custify could use some improvements. There is no dashboard for each customer service agent to see all stats in one centralized place.

Features

1. Data application: Custify technologies sift through large volumes of data and target key performance indicators (KPIs) to analyze them and build a knowledge base.

2. One customer account: Custify consolidates all customer history data from various sources into a single, accessible location.

3. API integration: The platform’s API integration connects to a range of third-party solutions - CRM systems, invoicing and payment platforms and messaging and social media channels (Slack, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Telegram).

Pricing

• Professional:$999/month

• Individualized pricing plans

User ratings

4.7/5

Source: G2

Why is customer support automation important for your business?

Customer support automation enhances efficiency, reduces costs and improves customer satisfaction - and these aren't the only reasons your business needs it.

Here'show a chatbot can benefit your businessby automating customer service:

• 24/7 availability: Round-the-clock support ensures that customers receive assistance anytime - regardless of time zones or business hours.

• Increased efficiency: Automation handles repetitive tasks and customer questions quickly to free up human customer support agents for more complex issues.

• Cost savings: Businesses reduce the need for a large customer support team and lower operational costs.

• Consistency in responses: Automated systems deliver consistent and accurate informationto reduce the risk of human error and give uniform customer experiences.

• Personalized customer interactions: Advanced AI chatbots analyze customer data to provide personalized recommendations and solutions.

• Scalability: Automation tools can handle increased volumes of customer interactions during peak times without compromising service quality.

• Enhanced data collection: Automated systems track and analyze customer interactions and provide analytics for improvement.

• Improved customer satisfaction: Fast, accurate responses and personalized support lead to higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.

• Streamlined workflow: Automation integrates with existing systems to streamline support processes.

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How to select the best customer support automation tool for your business?

Selecting the best customer support automation tool for your business involves carefully evaluating options that align with your needs and goals. Consider advanced solutions likeAI sales assistant softwareand onboarding chatbotsto automate routine tasks and provide personalized support.

Here's a step-by-step guide on how to select the best customer service automation tool:

1. Identify your needs: Determine what tasks you need to automate and the specific requirements for your business. Consider the volume of interactions, required features and integration capabilities.

2. Compare features: Evaluate different tools based on their features - AI capabilities, integration with other systems and ease of use.

3. Assess scalability: Choose tools that can scale with your business growth and handle increased interaction volumes without a drop in performance.

4. Evaluate customer support: Make sure the automation tool provider offers reliable support and resources to assist with setup and troubleshooting.

5. Review pricing and ROI: Analyze the cost of the automation tool relative to the potential return on investment.

6. Test with a trial: Use free trials or demos to test the tool’s performance before committing.

Conclusion

It’s important to choose the right customer support automation for your business. This list of 10 tools can help each business in different ways, but they can all boost efficiency and make interactions with your customers more powerful. 

Start a Free Trialwith Chatfuel to see how customer support automation can strengthen your customer service strategy.

FAQs

What is the best tool for automated customer service?

The best looks different for everyone, but the top customer service automation software cuts customer service costs, gathers customer feedback and uses artificial intelligence to support the entire customer journey.

How much do customer service automation tools cost?

Some customer service automation tools include a free trial or subscription for basic features. Most advanced features are available in pay-per-agent plans.

How will customer service automation tools benefit my business?

Some of the benefits of automated customer service are a streamlined workflow, better data collection and cost saving for your business.