AI Agents in Customer Service - How AI Supports Humans to Deliver Excellent Customer Service at Scale

The increasing demand for instant support and personalized experiences has put a lot of pressure on customer service teams. With customer service representatives handling dozens or hundreds of cases daily, from simple FAQs to complex issues, adjusting to customers’ requirements has become increasingly complex. However, with the introduction of AI agents into customer service functions, their workflow can be significantly reduced, empowering them to improve efficiency and focus on more complex cases.

In this article, we'll explore how customer service AI agents can help customer service representatives deliver personalized support at speed and scale.

What are AI Agents in Customer Service?

AI agents in customer service are designed to autonomously execute tasks to increase teams' productivity and elevate customer satisfaction. AI agents can interact with customers to provide instant assistance, answering customers' questions, resolving issues, and helping with tasks that, until recently, required human agents' attention.

AI agents leverage advanced technologies, such as Machine Learning (ML) and Natural Language Processing (NLP), to offer more seamless and relevant customer experiences than traditional chatbots. Powered by this technology, an AI agent can go beyond simple keyword matching to genuinely understand customers' intentions, even if the phrasing is complex or indirect. An AI agent can also learn from each interaction and improve its responses over time to provide more accurate support.

"Agentic AI has emerged as a game-changer for customer service, paving the way for autonomous and low-effort customer experiences. Unlike traditional GenAI tools that assist users with information, agentic AI will proactively resolve service requests on behalf of customers, marking a new era in customer engagement." - Daniel O'Sullivan, senior director analyst for Gartner.

How AI Agents Empower Customer Service?

AI agents designed for customer service not only support clients by answering typical questions, but can also assist human agents, helping them resolve cases faster and more effectively.

Here are some of the most common use cases of AI agents in customer service:

Answering routine questions

AI agents can power chatbots and virtual assistants to answer typical customer queries in natural language. Available 24/7, AI agents provide instant support in multiple languages, helping customers even outside of business hours, and freeing customer service representatives from constantly answering the same questions.

Automatically routing cases

Complex cases often require emotional intelligence and advanced problem-solving skills, which AI agents don't yet possess. When an AI agent analyzes a customer inquiry and understands that it won't be able to provide an efficient solution, it can automatically route it to a human agent. AI chooses a customer representative best equipped to handle the task based on experience, expertise, and workload. To ensure the handoff is smooth and customers don't have to repeat themselves, the AI agent prepares a case summary and instantly shares it with the human agent.

Supporting case resolution

Customer support representative can leverage AI agents to enhance the effectiveness of case resolution. AI agents can instantly surface important information from a company's knowledge base and customer profiles or analyze past case outcomes to suggest the best way to handle a case. Thanks to these actionable insights, customer support agents are better equipped to provide fast and relevant support. AI agents powered by generative AI technology can also help draft personalized responses, speed up case resolution, and increase customer satisfaction.

Performing tasks on behalf of clients

AI agents are more than simple chatbots. While they often answer customer questions, they can also assist with various tasks. For example, an AI agent can check order statuses, cancel monthly subscriptions, fill in return forms, and file complaints on behalf of clients. This is possible thanks to the AI agents' ability to perform actions autonomously, without the need for constant human input.

Guiding clients through issue resolution

AI agents can guide clients through issue resolution, providing step-by-step instructions on how to tackle a problem. This functionality is handy in tech industries, where clients often experience similar technical problems. AI agents can analyze the issue a client reports, understand it, and retrieve information necessary to resolve a specific situation from the knowledge base. They can also interpret a client's responses, identify whether a suggested solution worked, and if not, recommend a different approach. When the standard solutions are exhausted, the agent can hand off the case to a customer support representative for further support.

Managing knowledge bases

AI agents streamline the management of knowledge bases by automatically updating companies' internal resources. They can analyze what led to a successful case resolution, summarize the solution, and store it in the internal knowledge base to speed up the resolution of similar cases in the future. Furthermore, generative AI agents can create knowledge articles based on these resolved cases, ensuring valuable insights are readily available to agents and customers.

Analyzing sentiment

AI agents can assist businesses in analyzing customer sentiment by gathering feedback from internal tools and external sources, such as social media, Google reviews, etc. These insights are crucial for businesses as they help them understand how customers really feel about their brand and implement proactive measures to strengthen a positive brand image.

Analyzing performance

AI agents can analyze customer service teams' performance and effectiveness of customer support efforts by continuously monitoring metrics such as average handling time, resolution rates, customer satisfaction scores, etc. Using this data, they can prepare performance reports for stakeholders, identify bottlenecks, and recommend actions to improve overall support effectiveness.

It's important to note that AI agents are not designed to replace humans, despite what some headlines may suggest. The purpose is to support service teams by handling routine questions and automating repetitive tasks, allowing humans to focus on more complex, high-value interactions.

We see the real opportunity not in agents replacing humans, but in agents complementing teams – human and digital working together in hybrid organizations. – Burley Kawasaki Global VP of Product Marketing and Strategy  

Benefits of Using AI Agents in Customer Service

AI agents offer multiple benefits, from improving customer experiences and increasing human agents' productivity to reducing operational costs. In this section, we'll explore the key benefits of AI agents and how they contribute to improved service delivery and business performance.

Here's a list of the top benefits brought by customer service AI agents:

• Increased customer satisfaction - faster response times, 24/7 availability, and accurate information directly contribute to a more positive customer experience. Customers' satisfaction levels increase when they can quickly and easily resolve their issues.
• Stronger customer loyalty - AI agents can deliver highly personalized experiences by tailoring interactions to each client. This goes beyond simply addressing a customer by their name. AI agents analyze customer data, past interactions, their preferences, and behavior to provide relevant and accurate information. This hyper-personalization improves customer experiences and strengthens client loyalty.
• Higher First Contact Resolution (FCR) rates - AI agents significantly boost the first-contact resolution rates by understanding customer intent, accessing relevant information, and executing actions in real time. This allows more queries to be fully resolved without the need for follow-ups or escalations to human agents.
• Improved productivity - AI agents can significantly increase human agents' productivity by handling repetitive queries, automating customer service-related tasks, and surfacing actionable insights. According to Nielsen Norman Group research, support agents who used an AI tool could handle 13.8% more customer inquiries per hour.
• Efficient scalability - AI agents can easily handle an increased number of cases during peak season, promotional events, or unexpected surges in customer inquiries without compromising on quality.
• Cost reduction - with AI agents for customer service, companies can avoid increasing customer support costs related to hiring additional staff or opening entire customer service offices to support new regions. According to Gartner, by 2029, tasking AI agents with resolving common customer service issues will result in a 30% reduction in operational costs.

Best AI Agents for Customer Service in 2025

The market for AI agents in customer service is growing rapidly, with new capabilities emerging seemingly daily. As technology evolves, businesses continually discover innovative ways to leverage AI for improved customer interactions. Finding the best solution for your business might be challenging in this crowded market. That's why we prepared a list of the best AI agents for customer service in 2025 to help you make an informed decision.

1. Creatio

Creatio is a leading provider of AI-native CRM and workflow automation in 2025, known for integrating predictive, generative, and agentic AI directly into its platform to empower organizations with intelligent, end-to-end automation. Service Creatio, an AI-native service management platform, seamlessly embeds AI into its core at no additional cost, supporting customer service representatives from day one. With pre-built role-based AI agents designed for customer service, Creatio enables business users to effectively collaborate with AI agents.

Creatio's AI agents help businesses reduce operational inefficiencies and achieve significant productivity gains. By autonomously executing actions, recommending next steps in real time, and delivering contextual insights, AI agents directly support users in their daily tasks and enhance the performance of customer service teams. Additionally, business users can build and deploy role-based, hyper-personalized AI agents with ease using Creatio’s no-code platform and integrated AI capabilities.

Creatio empowers organizations to use AI agents while maintaining full control, transparency, and security. With safe AI architecture, a human-in-the-loop approach, and a robust governance framework, businesses can ensure they adhere to data privacy standards and industry regulations. Creatio allows businesses to decide how much autonomy their agents have and provides tools for human agents to monitor AI responses and actions in real-time, ensuring alignment with company policies and goals.

Key capabilities of Creatio's AI agents for customer service:

• Case routing - AI agents intelligently route complex cases to the most appropriate human agents, providing them with full context from the AI interaction.
• Case resolution - AI agents support service teams in delivering faster, more accurate resolutions by providing actionable insights, suggesting the next best actions, and facilitating communication across multiple channels.
• Case sentiment analysis and response generation - An AI agent analyzes customer sentiment and generates personalized responses.
• Knowledge base assistance - Knowledge Base Agent helps generate and update support articles, making it easier to maintain accurate and helpful documentation.
• Service management assistance - Customer Support Agent assists with handling service cases, resolving issues faster, and improving response quality.

Pricing:

Creatio's AI agents are an integral part of the platform and are accessible to all users across all functions at no extra cost. The pricing for the Creatio’s platform + Service Creatio product starts at $40 per user per month and includes all key features and no-code capabilities.

2. Zendesk

Zendesk offers a customer service solution empowered by AI agents that handle routine inquiries and free up human agents to deal with more complex cases. Zendesk AI agents are designed to deliver instant responses 24/7 and empower agents with relevant context by bringing together customer conversations from all channels, including web, social, email, and voice.

Key Zendesk features:

• Knowledge base integration - Zendesk AI agents connect with knowledge bases to generate on-brand responses to FAQs.
• Custom conversation flows enable the design of smarter paths to resolution for more complex issues.
• Integration with backend systems - AI agents can authenticate customers and provide contextual responses.
• Agent Copilot - an AI-powered assistant for human agents, offering real-time suggestions for responses, knowledge base articles, and next best actions.
• QA integration - connects AI agents with QA to identify issues and boost their performance with actionable insights.

Pricing:

The pricing for the Suite Team plan that includes AI agents starts at $55 per agent per month.

3. Intercom 

Intercom offers a customer service suite that combines an AI agent custom-built for customer support, Fin.ai, with a Helpdesk to increase team efficiency and improve services. Fin AI Agent handles customer queries, while human agents focus on priority issues. Additionally, Intercom supports customer service agents in investigating and resolving cases more efficiently with AI-powered tools.

Key Intercom features:

• Fin AI Engine enables a Fin AI agent to refine queries, optimize responses, and validate the quality of its answers.
• Multi-source generative answers - Fin can provide relevant answers by accessing various knowledge sources, including help center articles, internal support content, PDFs, and conversation snippets.
• Fin Tasks - Fin can handle complex requests by following instructions to gather details, make decisions, and take action.
• Helpdesk - provides actionable insights and streamlines workflows to increase support agents' productivity.
• Copilot for agents - provides AI assistance to human agents in the inbox, summarizing conversations, personalizing replies, and automating simple tasks.

Pricing:

Intercom's pricing starts at $29 per user per month for individuals, startups, and small businesses. For those who already have a CRM solution or Helpdesk, Intercom provides an

option to buy Fin.ai separately for $0.99 per resolution.

4. Salesforce

Salesforce Service Cloud enables collaboration between humans and AI agents across channels and industries. Salesforce's Agenforce handles low-touch interactions and helps customer service teams provide seamless experiences from first contact to final resolution. While humans focus on high-touch interactions, AI agents answer typical customer questions, manage orders, and troubleshoot issues.

Key features of Agentforce for Service:

• Customer Service AI - predictive, generative, and conversational AI solutions built into workflows help increase customer satisfaction and boost service team productivity.
• Service Replies - AI-generated replies on SMS, WhatsApp SMS, and more.
• Service Assistant - streamlines customer support, enhances agent productivity, and ensures compliance with company policy.
• Conversation Summaries - offers AI-generated summaries for interaction, work, and order.
• Search Answers - generates answers from the trusted knowledge base and displays them directly in the service console or search page.

Pricing:

Pricing for Agentforce 1 Service, which includes a CRM platform for customer service, starts at $550 per user per month.

See also: Salesforce Alternatives & Competitors and Salesforce Marketing Cloud Alternatives & Competitors

5. Freshworks

Freshworks integrates Freddy AI into its Freshdesk platform to enhance customer service efficiency, automate responses, and provide data-driven insights. Freddy AI combines AI Agent and AI Copilot to instantly resolve queries across channels and provide teams with context and knowledge.

Key Freshdesk features:

• AI Agent Studio - enables users to deploy AI agents with pre-built skills for platforms such as Shopify and Stripe.
• Email AI agent - an AI agent that can read incoming email tickets, understand requests, and respond with the right solution.
• Conversation AI agents - update records, process refunds, and surface details to improve customer service team productivity.
• Case escalation - An AI agent can transfer conversations to human customer service agents with full context for a smooth hands-off process.
• Multichannel support - AI agents are built to handle conversations across different channels, including email, social media, chat, and WhatsApp.

Pricing: 

The pricing for Freshdesk with Freddy AI starts at $78 per agent per month for the Pro + Copilot bundle. Alternatively, customers can purchase Freddy AI as an add-on to other plans, starting at $29 per agent per month.

6. HubSpot

HubSpot offers an AI-powered customer agent called Breeze as part of its Service Hub. Breeze can find relevant content, instantly answer pricing questions, and resolve customer issues accurately. It provides 24/7 support, resolving common problems, assisting with simple actions, and escalating to human agents when needed.

Key Breeze features:

• Instant, 24/7 support - customer support AI agent responds instantly to customer queries with accurate answers to boost client satisfaction.
• Trusted answers - Breeze provides accurate answers by using only approved content.
• Automatic handoff - Breeze automatically transfers cases to a rep when human support is needed.
• Multichannel support - Breeze works across multiple channels, including email, voice, social media, and chat.
• Performance tracking: An AI agent tracks resolution rates, handoffs, and customer sentiment to continuously improve customer satisfaction.

Pricing:

Breeze customer agent is priced based on the number of AI credits, with plans starting at $45 per month for a Small plan with 5000 credits. However, Breeze is only accessible for businesses already invested in the HubSpot platform, particularly those who use the Service Hub Professional and Enterprise. The pricing for Service Hub starts at $90 per user per month. 

See also: Top 10 HubSpot Alternatives & Competitors 

7. Sendbird

Sendbird is an AI agent platform for enterprises that aims to humanize customer experiences with omnichannel AI. Its AI agent is designed to elevate customer experience by personalizing every interaction and delivering fast assistance. With an AI agent for customer service, businesses can automate routine inquiries, reduce support costs, and increase resolution rates.

Key features of Sendbird:

• Omnipresent AI - Sendbird's AI agent interacts with customers across multiple channels and remembers every interaction, so customers don't have to repeat themselves.
• Proactive AI chat - predicts intent, detects friction, and resolves issues before they escalate.
• AI agent builder enables building highly personalized AI agents for customer service that reflect the brand's values, voice, and style.
• AI recommendations - provides data-driven suggestions to optimize AI agents for improved performance.
• Integration with customer support software - Sendbird seamlessly connects with customer support platforms such as Zendesk and Freshchat and supports third-party knowledge base integration.

Pricing:

Sendbird offers consumption-based pricing tailored to business size and conversation volume. Pricing information is only available upon request.

The Future of AI in Customer Service

As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, AI in customer service will enable even more efficient, scalable, and personalized services. Role-based AI agents, multi-agent systems, and increasingly advanced automation will shape the future of AI technology.

In this section, we will explore how each of these concepts will define the next generation of AI-powered customer support:

1. Role-based AI agents

AI vendors increasingly adopt role-based AI agents, designed to handle specific tasks or functions, replacing more generic systems. Rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all AI, businesses introduce specialized agents that focus on one process, such as billing, technical support, or account management. Each AI agent has in-depth knowledge and expertise to tackle these tasks, delivering more accurate and high-quality customer service.

2. Multi-agent systems

The future of AI in customer service will focus on a sophisticated orchestration of multiple, role-based AI agents, rather than a single, monolithic AI. In this multi-agent system, the manager agent breaks down complex tasks into more manageable subtasks and assigns them to specialized sub-agents. AI agents can also collaborate and share information, enhancing their problem-solving capabilities.

For example, when a customer wants to remove one product from their order, the system will trigger an order management agent to check if it is still possible and adjust it accordingly. Once this AI agent completes its task, a billing agent will change the receipt and initiate a partial refund. Another agent will notify the customer once the task is complete, provide a link to track their modified order, and give an estimate for when they can expect the partial refund.

3. End-to-end process automation

By combining role-based AI agents into a multilayered system, businesses can achieve higher levels of automation, with AI agents handling routine tasks as well as complex, end-to-end processes.

According to Zowie, AI-powered virtual assistants automate over 70% of all customer queries, delivering relevant responses and personalized service. In the future, AI agents will manage the entire customer interaction lifecycle, from initial inquiry to post-service follow-up, with minimal human intervention in many cases. Servion Global Solutions predicts that by 2028, up to 95% of all customer interactions will be powered by AI.