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Published On: 6th Aug 2026 10:54
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.
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.
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:
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.
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) 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.
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 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 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 with internal tools:
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
Zendesk is an AI-driven customer support platform that streamlines support operations and handles customer inquiries and agent scheduling. Its key features include:
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).
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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:
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:
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.
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:
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.
Reviewed by: Jo Robinson
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