Support teams spend a significant part of their day replying to questions that have already been answered dozens of times. Password resets. Plan upgrades. Shipping delays. These are not complex cases, but they still consume time and bandwidth.
A well-built customer service chatbot handles these routine queries, surfaces the right help articles, and escalate only the important cases to your team
In this guide, we’ve shortlisted 11 customer service chatbots that help support teams cut down on ticket volume and stay focused on what truly needs their attention.
Table of Contents
- What are customer service chatbots?
- Comparing 11 best customer service chatbots in 2025
- Features of customer service chatbots
- Benefits of customer service chatbots
- How do customer service chatbots work?
- Conclusion
- Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
What are customer service chatbots?
Customer service chatbots are tools that simulate conversations with users to handle support tasks without a human agent. But in practice, they are more than scripted responders. The best chatbots today use AI and natural language processing (NLP) to understand context, trigger workflows, and solve queries across multiple channels.
For support teams, chatbots are not about automation for the sake of it. They triage, organize, and protect your agents from burnout. Here’s a quick comparison between manual support vs. chatbot support.
| Task | Manual support | Chatbot support |
| Responding to FAQs | Time-consuming, repetitive | Instant and consistent |
| First response time | Depends on agent availability | Instant, 24/7 |
| Handling high ticket volume | Requires more headcount | Scales without hiring |
| Accuracy and consistency | Varies by agent | Consistent every time |
| Collecting customer context | Manual, often incomplete | Automated and structured |
| Burnout risk | High with repetitive tickets | Lower due to task offloading |
(If more than 30-40% of your tickets fall into the “routine” bucket, a chatbot can save your team hours every week)
Comparing 11 best customer service chatbots in 2025
Not all chatbots are built the same. Some are fast but rigid. Others offer deep customization but take weeks to set up. This comparison breaks down what actually matters when you’re picking one for your support team.
| Software | Starting price | Free trial | G2 rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hiver | $25/user/month | 7 days. Forever free plan is available | 4.6 ⭐ |
| Help Crunch | $12/month | 14 days | 4.7 ⭐ |
| Ada | Price on Request | NA | 4.6 ⭐ |
| Freshchat | $19/agent/month | 14 days | 4.4 ⭐ |
| Chatfuel | $12/month | 7 days | 4.5 ⭐ |
| Drift | $2500/month | 14 days | 4.4 ⭐ |
| HubSpot | Free | 14 days | 4.4 ⭐ |
| Intercom Fin AI Bot | $39/month per seat | 14 days | 4.5 ⭐ |
| Zobot™ | $7/operator per month | 15 days | 4.4 ⭐ |
| Flow XO | $25 per month | 14 days | 4.4 ⭐ |
| BotStar | $49 per month | 14 days | 4.2 ⭐ |
1) Hiver
Hiver is a modern AI-powered customer service platform built for fast-moving teams. It brings email, chat, voice, and other channels into one simple, intuitive workspace, making it easy for agents to stay organized and responsive.
Unlike heavy, traditional helpdesks, Hiver is effortless to adopt while still offering the depth needed for complex operations. Its AI engine handles repetitive tasks, speeds up every step of the support workflow, and helps teams deliver consistently high-quality service.
Hiver’s chatbot is built around three modules: Admin, Agent, and End User. Together, they help automate support without losing the personal touch.
- The Admin module lets you create and manage chat flows, define how the chatbot responds, and control what happens when a query needs escalation.
- The Agent module gives your team visibility into live conversations. Agents can monitor interactions and step in if a customer needs help beyond what the bot can handle.
- The End User module is where your customers interact with the bot. They get instant answers to common questions and a seamless handoff to an agent if needed.
You can build chat flows using a visual flow builder. It’s simple to use, with building blocks like questions, forms, and messages. No coding or technical skills required.
Because the chatbot is part of Hiver’s help desk system, it connects with your shared inbox, automation rules, and other support workflows. Everything stays connected, and your team doesn’t need to learn a new platform just to use the chatbot.
Getting started with Hiver’s chatbot is easy:
- Go to the Chatflows tab and toggle the flow to ‘Active’.
- Go to the admin panel and click on ‘Chatbots’ under the ‘Improve team efficiency’ section.
- In the Bot Configurations tab, give your chatbot a name. This is what customers will see in the live chat widget. You can change it anytime.
- Click ‘Create new chat flow’, then name your chat flow.
- Choose when the flow should start; either when someone clicks the chat icon or after a chat nudge.
- Use the drag-and-drop builder to add messages, questions, or forms. You can build as simple or detailed a flow as you need.
- Click ‘Save’ once your flow is ready.
Pricing: Hiver has four pricing tiers: a Free Forever plan, followed by the Growth plan at $25 per user per month, the Pro plan at $45, and the Elite plan at $75. Teams can also try Hiver with a 7-day free trial.
2) HelpCrunch
HelpCrunch is a customer support and sales platform that offers a chatbot to help businesses respond faster and smarter to routine website queries. The chatbot works on predefined triggers and responses. You can decide what the bot should say when someone lands on your site, clicks a product page, or asks a common question.

It’s easy to set up using a drag-and-drop editor. You can start with templates or build custom flows from scratch. Here’s what makes it useful in real support workflows:
- You can tag and assign conversations to specific agents or teams so the right person always follows up
- The bot can collect key info like name, email, and company before routing the query
- It connects directly to your knowledge base to serve up help articles when relevant, which means fewer tickets go to your agents
The chatbot is a part of the broader HelpCrunch platform, which includes email, live chat, and marketing automation tools.
Pricing: Starts at $12 per user per month for the Basic plan, with the Unlimited plan priced at $396 per month.
3) Ada
Ada is a powerful automation platform for support, marketing, and sales teams. Its chatbot is built to handle customer conversations across the entire journey, from basic FAQs to tasks like updating info, scheduling, or even processing payments. Everything runs through a no-code builder, so support teams can create and update flows on their own, without needing dev time.

You can also set up different bots for different teams. For example, one bot can handle product queries while another manages billing, and customers get routed between them smoothly, without repeating themselves.
Ada supports over 100 languages out of the box, making it a great choice if you serve customers in multiple regions. Since the bot is trained on real interactions, it’s good at understanding natural phrasing and helping users self-serve before they reach an agent.
Pricing: It offers two plans – Scripted and Generative – based on how much AI support you want. Cost is available on request.
4) Freshchat
Freshchat is part of the Freshworks suite and helps support teams manage conversations across websites, apps, and popular messaging platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Apple Business Chat. At the center of it is Freddy AI, the chatbot that powers automation across all of these channels.

The chatbot lets you handle a variety of use cases, from answering product questions and collecting customer data to triggering backend actions like ticket creation or status updates. You can build different bots based on the task, so the experience stays smooth and focused.
Freshchat supports multiple languages, so your bot can speak to customers in their preferred language. You can also customize how the chatbot looks, using a simple CSS editor to tweak colors, shapes, and layout so it blends into your website or app.
To get started faster, you can choose from ready-to-use templates for different support and sales scenarios. And once your bot is live, you can track how it’s performing using built-in metrics: like how many conversations were resolved, where people dropped off, and how often agents had to step in.
Pricing: It has a forever free plan for up to 10 agents. Paid plans start at $19 per agent per month, with advanced features available in the higher tiers. You can also buy Freshbot sessions separately, starting at $100 for 1000 sessions, which makes it easier to scale conversations across channels without upgrading plans.
5) Chatfuel
Chatfuel is a no-code chatbot platform for businesses that want to automate conversations across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and their website, without depending on developers. You can start with one of the many pre-built templates or build your own bot from scratch, depending on how custom your use case is.

Chatbots in Chatfuel respond to triggers. You can set them to message a user after they click an ad, visit a product page, or take too long to complete a purchase. You can also schedule messages or follow up with users who engaged but didn’t convert.
Customization is straightforward. You can control how the chatbot sounds, what it says, and even what it does, from recommending products and collecting emails to completing purchases inside the chat itself.
It also works well for marketing teams. The chatbot can re-engage users who comment on your Instagram or Facebook ads, making it a good choice for businesses running paid campaigns.
Pricing: It offers a free trial for up to 50 conversations. Its Entrepreneur plan starts at $12 per user per month, and the highest tier is $96 per user per month, which includes advanced features.
6) Drift
Drift is best known as a revenue acceleration platform, and its chatbot plays a key role in turning website visitors into qualified leads. It’s built to start conversations, qualify prospects, and connect them to your team at the right moment, whether through instant replies or by booking meetings straight into a rep’s calendar.

The chatbot kicks off with Playbooks: pre-built conversation flows that you can set up in minutes. These help guide users, ask qualifying questions, and capture contact info without making the interaction feel robotic.
One of Drift’s standout features is lead segmentation. The bot learns from visitor behavior and tailors the chat experience by showing the right message or content based on what the user has viewed or clicked.
For teams running experiments, Drift includes A/B testing right inside the chatbot flow. You can test different welcome messages, CTAs, or conversation paths and see what converts betterthen optimize accordingly.
And if someone is ready to talk, the bot can schedule meetings directly into a sales rep’s calendar without any back-and-forth. It removes friction and shortens the sales cycle significantly.
Pricing: It is priced at a premium, starting at $2500 per month, with its top-tier plans available on request.
7) HubSpot
HubSpot is an all-in-one platform for marketing, sales, and customer service, and its free chatbot builder fits right into that ecosystem. If your team already uses HubSpot’s CRM, the chatbot becomes a natural extension, helping you automate conversations, qualify leads, and route support issues without switching tools.

The chatbot builder is no-code, so you can create flows quickly using drag-and-drop steps. It also helps with:
- Lead qualification: Ask predefined questions and score leads automatically so your sales team can focus on the right people.
- Ticket generation: If a customer has an issue, the bot can convert that chat into a support ticket instantly.
- CRM-powered personalization: Use existing contact info to greet customers by name, suggest relevant content, or continue previous conversations.
- Workflow automation: Add users to lists, trigger follow-ups, or kick off email sequences, all straight from a chat interaction.
Pricing: You can use it for free with the Sales Hub Free plan. Paid plans start at $45/month per user and go up to $1200/month.
8) Fin AI Bot
Fin is Intercom’s powerful AI chatbot built to take real pressure off your support team. It doesn’t rely on preloaded scripts or generic replies. Instead, it pulls answers directly from your help center, FAQ pages, public URLs, and even external tools like Zendesk, so customers always get relevant, accurate information. It works across 43 languages and multiple channels like WhatsApp, web chat, and SMS.

The chatbot is smart enough to handle natural, free-text questions, and when it doesn’t know something, it doesn’t guess. It collects initial context and passes it to a human agent without any drop in the conversation.
You also get detailed reports on how the bot is performing, what questions it handles well, and where it needs better content, helping you improve both your bot and your help docs over time.
Pricing: Fin is available with Intercom’s paid plans starting at $29/user/month. There’s a $0.99 charge per successful resolution (only if the chatbot fully answers the query). Additional resolutions beyond your contract are billed monthly.
9) Zobot™ by Zoho SalesIQ
Zobot is Zoho SalesIQ’s built-in chatbot builder that helps sales, support, and marketing teams connect with website visitors in real time. You can trigger chats based on visitor behavior – like time spent on a page, scroll depth, or actions like clicking a pricing link. That way, you’re not only waiting for people to ask questions; you’re proactively nudging them toward the next step.

It is easy to build with its no-code drag-and-drop interface. If you’re more technical, you can power it with AI engines like Dialogflow or IBM Watson. You can also use Zoho’s Answer Bot to automatically pull responses from your knowledge base.
Zobot handles more than FAQs – it can collect lead data, schedule meetings, and qualify prospects by routing them to the right team. Plus, its hybrid mode gives you the best of both worlds: guided chat flows with the ability to understand open-ended queries.
Pricing: Starts free with 100 chat sessions per month. Paid plans range from $7 to $20/user/month depending on features.
10) Flow XO
Flow XO is a no-code chatbot platform that helps businesses automate conversations across websites, apps, and social media. It’s great for handling those first interactions with your customers, like answering basic questions or collecting contact info.

The bot can recognize common phrases and keywords to respond instantly, making it ideal for FAQs and routine queries. You can build simple or complex workflows using logic-based paths, and even trigger one workflow from another for more advanced automation.
Flow XO also supports payment handling; the chatbot can guide users through transactions by directing them to secure portals mid-conversation. And when it comes to leads, the bot can filter conversations by intent, helping your team focus on the ones that are more likely to convert.
Pricing: Starts at $25/month for 5,000 interactions and up to 15 bots or flows. Need more capacity? You can add 5 extra bots for $10/month or increase your interaction limit by 25,000 for $25/month.
11) Botsify
Botsify is a chatbot builder that helps businesses automate customer interactions across web, social, and messaging platforms. Whether you’re capturing leads, answering FAQs, or nudging customers toward a sale, Botsify makes it easy to do it all in real time, and in over 100 languages.

To boost conversions, Botsify offers conversational forms that collect lead details through chat instead of long static forms. If someone’s question goes beyond the chatbot’s capabilities, the platform allows a live agent to step in instantly, keeping the conversation smooth and personal. You also don’t need to know how to code – their drag-and-drop builder lets anyone on your team design flows and launch bots quickly.
Pricing: Starts at $49/month for 2 chatbots. The $149/month plan includes up to 5 bots, and custom pricing is available for larger setups.
Features of customer service chatbots
These are the building blocks that determine how helpful the bot will actually be in a real support environment.
- Intent recognition: Chatbots trained on real conversations can recognize what customers want, even with informal phrasing. “Cancel my sub” and “stop charging me” trigger the same workflow. This cuts down on confusion and reduces back-and-forth with agents.
- Knowledge base integration: When integrated with your help center, the bot can instantly share the most relevant article. Teams avoid retyping the same answer, and customers don’t need to navigate a separate portal.
- Automated workflows: Bots trigger backend tasks like opening support tickets, assigning tags, updating customer records, or sending follow-up emails, based on how a user interacts with it.
- Multi-channel compatibility: You don’t need different bots for chat, WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger. A single bot can serve all channels with consistent behavior and reporting.
- Conversation routing and escalation: When the bot cannot handle a query or detects frustration, it routes the chat to an agent. It also passes along chat history and context, so the agent picks up where the bot left off.
- Visual flow builder: Most modern chatbots come with a drag-and-drop builder, so support managers can map conversation flows, update triggers, and launch changes without writing code.
- Conversation-level analytics: See what questions are most common, which flows have high drop-off, and where customers keep asking to speak with an agent. These insights help improve both bot and support content.
Benefits of customer service chatbots
Customer service teams spend a huge portion of their day on tasks that don’t require human judgment. Chatbots help clear that clutter, without compromising quality or experience. Here’s how they make a difference:
✅ Free up your agents from repeat questions: Bots can instantly respond to common queries like order updates, password resets, and billing details, so your team can focus on complex cases.
✅ Improve first response time without expanding headcount: Customers get an immediate reply at any hour. This keeps customer satisfaction high and your queue under control, even during traffic spikes.
✅ Maintain consistency in answers: Bots follow set flows, use approved content, and never go off-script, making responses faster and more reliable than ad hoc human replies.
✅ Reduce training time for new support hires: With bots handling basics, new agents can skip repetitive questions and focus on learning the tools and tone needed for real-time support.
✅ Help you spot broken workflows: Chatbot analytics show you what customers are asking most, where the flow fails, and where help content is missing – insights you often miss in manual support.
How do customer service chatbots work?
Customer service chatbots work by combining rule-based triggers and AI models to simulate human-like responses. At a basic level, they use decision trees or keyword triggers. More advanced bots use NLP to understand open-ended queries, sentiment, and intent.
Once trained, chatbots can:
- Answer FAQs instantly
- Connect to CRMs or help desks
- Escalate to human agents with all collected context
- Learn from past interactions over time
When bots collect context upfront and handle known issues, agents step in with full clarity, not from a cold start.
Conclusion
Not every support team needs a chatbot right away. But if you’re consistently seeing high volumes of repeat queries or your agents are drowning in basics, it might be time to consider one.
Use this quick checklist to figure out where you stand:
- Are your agents answering the same questions every day?
- Do you already have a help center or knowledge base?
- Do you experience ticket spikes during launches, holidays, or outages?
- Do you have the time and resources to test and refine chatbot flows?
If you said yes to at least 3, your team is likely ready to benefit from a chatbot. And even if you’re not fully ready, starting with something small, like automating FAQ responses can give your team quick wins without overhauling your entire support setup.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
1. How do customer service chatbots handle complex queries without frustrating users?
They work best when you set a confidence threshold. If the bot isn’t sure, it should pause, ask a clarifying question, or hand the conversation to an agent with a short summary. This avoids long, confusing loops and keeps the customer experience smooth.
2. What data do chatbots need to stay accurate?
They need a single, updated knowledge base and access to real customer data such as order details, subscription plans, or ticket history. When this information is centralized and refreshed regularly, the bot stops guessing and starts giving precise answers.
3. How do I know if my chatbot is actually improving support?
You’ll see it in your metrics. Containment goes up, wait times drop, agents get shorter and clearer conversations, and customers rate handoffs higher. If these improvements aren’t visible, the bot may need retraining or better grounding.
4. Why do bots give inconsistent responses sometimes?
Because they’re pulling information from outdated or scattered sources. The solution is to maintain one source of truth and connect your bot directly to it. Once the bot references the same data your agents use, its answers become consistent.
5. Which industries benefit the most from customer service chatbots?
Any industry with large volumes of repetitive queries — e-commerce, logistics, travel, fintech, and SaaS — sees quick results. Industries with emotional or sensitive conversations tend to use a hybrid approach instead of full automation.
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