LAST UPDATED: FEBRUARY 7, 2026
AI agents now resolve the majority of customer support conversations at companies like SoFi, ClickUp, and Monday.com — without a human touching the ticket. But the market is crowded, pricing models vary wildly, and most “top 10” lists are written by the companies selling the tools. This one isn’t. Here’s an honest look at the best AI agents for customer service, who they’re actually built for, and what they cost.
BEFORE YOU CHOOSE
Ignore the feature checklists. When evaluating AI customer service agents, these are the numbers that predict whether the tool will actually reduce your team’s workload — or just add another dashboard to check.
What percentage of conversations does the AI actually resolve without human help? The industry average is around 40–50%. Top performers hit 60–80%. Ask for verified numbers, not marketing claims.
Per-resolution ($0.99–$2), per-seat ($29–$135/agent/month), or custom enterprise contracts. Per-resolution aligns cost with value. Per-seat is predictable. Enterprise is a black box. Know which model fits your volume.
Chat, email, voice, SMS, WhatsApp, social — where are your customers actually reaching out? Some agents only handle chat. Others cover every channel but charge extra for each. Match channels to where your volume actually lives.
Some agents go live in 15 minutes with a knowledge base connection. Others need 6–12 weeks of professional services. If you need relief this quarter, the enterprise pitch deck won’t save you. Check whether self-serve setup is real.
TIER 1
These four platforms appear on virtually every shortlist. They have the largest install bases, the most funding, and the deepest feature sets. They’re also the most expensive — and the most likely to lock you into an ecosystem.
Fin is Intercom’s AI agent — the most visible product in this category right now. It runs on a patented “Fin AI Engine” purpose-built for customer service, resolves conversations across chat, email, voice, SMS, and social, and only charges you when it actually solves the customer’s problem. Intercom reports a 66% average resolution rate across all customers, increasing roughly 1% per month.
Best for: Mid-market to enterprise teams that want per-resolution pricing with no seat cost for the AI itself. Works with any helpdesk, not just Intercom’s.
Watch out for: The $0.99/resolution adds up fast at scale — 2,000 resolutions/month is roughly $2K on top of your base Intercom plan. Copilot (the agent-assist tool) is an additional $35/seat/month.
Setup: Days, not weeks. Connects to your knowledge base and starts resolving on day one.
Visit Intercom Fin →Founded in 2023 by Bret Taylor (former Salesforce co-CEO, OpenAI board member) and Clay Bavor (former Google VR lead), Sierra raised $285M and reached a $10B valuation. The platform runs on a proprietary “AgentOS” that combines models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta in a multi-model constellation approach. It handles chat, email, and voice (via “Sierra Speaks”), and recently launched an Agent Data Platform that gives AI agents persistent memory across conversations.
Best for: Large enterprises that need a vendor-neutral, white-glove AI deployment with voice support. Clients include ADT, SiriusXM, and SoFi.
Watch out for: Custom enterprise pricing means you’re negotiating in the dark. No self-serve option. Implementation timelines are measured in weeks to months.
Setup: Weeks to months with professional services. Not a plug-and-play tool.
Visit Sierra AI →Zendesk is the most widely deployed helpdesk in the world, and their built-in AI agent benefits from that enormous ecosystem. It pulls answers directly from your Zendesk Guide articles and macros, automates triage, suggests replies, and handles routine requests — all natively integrated with the platform thousands of support teams already use.
Best for: Teams already on Zendesk who want AI without switching platforms. The native integration is the smoothest of any tool on this list.
Watch out for: Pricing runs about $500 per 100K credits (~$2/conversation), roughly double Intercom Fin. If you’re not on Zendesk, there’s little reason to start here.
Setup: Fast for existing Zendesk customers. Pulls from your existing knowledge base automatically.
Visit Zendesk AI →Agentforce is Salesforce’s AI agent layer for Service Cloud. It uses your CRM data, existing workflows, and Flows to automate customer interactions and case handling. With 12,000+ implementations and the recent addition of Agentforce Voice (integrating with phone systems from Amazon, Five9, Genesys, and Vonage), it’s the deepest CRM-integrated option on the market.
Best for: Organizations standardized on Salesforce who want AI that has full access to customer records, purchase history, and case context without building integrations.
Watch out for: You’re buying into the Salesforce ecosystem. If you’re not already there, the total cost of ownership is substantial. Analyst reports note adoption has lagged initial expectations.
Setup: Weeks to months, depending on workflow complexity. Salesforce offers professional services (Agentforce Activator) to accelerate deployment.
Visit Salesforce Agentforce →TIER 2
These platforms are serious products with enterprise clients and proven resolution rates. They’re less dominant than the Big Four but often better fits for specific use cases — especially teams that value structured automation, advanced triage, or omnichannel coverage without the enterprise price tag.
Ada is an AI-native automation platform that claims up to 83% automated resolution. Unlike tools bolted onto existing helpdesks, Ada was built from the ground up to resolve conversations without human agents. It supports both digital channels and voice, and enterprise clients include Monday.com, ClickUp, and Grab. You “coach” the AI using plain English instructions rather than technical configuration.
Best for: Teams handling thousands of tickets monthly who want the highest possible automation rate. Ada pioneered the AI-first support model before it was trendy.
Watch out for: Custom pricing means no published rates. The 83% claim is a ceiling, not an average — your actual resolution rate depends on knowledge base quality and ticket complexity.
Visit Ada →Decagon uses structured Agent Operating Procedures (AOPs) — essentially decision trees the AI follows deterministically. This makes it more predictable than open-ended LLM-based agents, which matters for regulated industries or workflows where consistency trumps flexibility. It fetches data, completes tasks, and responds with traceable logic. Multilingual support is built in.
Best for: High-volume support teams in regulated industries that need deterministic, auditable AI behavior. If you need to explain exactly why the AI did what it did, Decagon is built for that.
Watch out for: Configuring AOPs correctly takes real engineering resources. Smaller teams often find the setup timeline steep — weeks, not days. Assumes you have technical people available.
Visit Decagon →Freddy AI is Freshworks’ answer to Zendesk AI — an omnichannel AI layer built into Freshdesk. It supports email, SMS, WhatsApp, social platforms, and 25+ languages out of the box. For mid-market teams already on Freshworks, it’s the most natural upgrade: same platform, same data, AI added on top.
Best for: Mid-market teams on Freshworks who want omnichannel AI without switching platforms. Particularly strong for international support teams needing multilingual coverage.
Watch out for: Pricing escalates with add-on features. The base AI is included, but advanced capabilities and higher volumes come at additional cost. Less sophisticated than Ada or Sierra for complex workflows.
Visit Freshdesk →Forethought is less about resolving conversations and more about making your human agents faster. Its strongest feature is AI-powered ticket triage: it classifies sentiment, language, urgency, and spam to route tickets to the right person instantly. Support teams can create automated workflows using plain text descriptions instead of code.
Best for: Teams whose biggest bottleneck is routing, not resolution. If tickets sit in a queue because nobody knows who should handle them, Forethought solves that problem directly.
Watch out for: It’s a triage and routing tool first, conversational agent second. If you want an AI that talks to customers, Forethought isn’t the primary product — it’s the intelligence layer behind your existing helpdesk.
Visit Forethought →TIER 3
Not every team needs an enterprise deployment. These two platforms are designed for small to mid-size teams that want AI handling support conversations this week, not next quarter.
Lyro is Tidio’s conversational AI — trained on your support docs, live in minutes, and available in 10+ languages. It’s the lowest-friction entry point on this list. There’s a free plan to test with, and paid plans scale based on conversations handled.
Best for: SMBs, Shopify stores, and teams of 1–10 who want to automate common questions without hiring or paying enterprise prices.
Watch out for: Limited depth for complex workflows. If your tickets involve order modifications, refunds, or multi-step troubleshooting, you’ll outgrow Lyro quickly.
Visit Tidio Lyro →eesel AI’s standout feature is its simulation mode: connect your helpdesk, and it runs the AI against your historical tickets to show you exactly what the resolution rate would have been — before it ever replies to a real customer. That’s a genuinely useful way to evaluate AI before committing. Setup takes about 15 minutes.
Best for: Risk-averse teams who want to see proof before going live. The simulation-first approach removes the “what if it says something wrong?” anxiety.
Watch out for: Smaller company, smaller ecosystem. You’re trading brand recognition and enterprise features for speed and simplicity.
Visit eesel AI →QUICK COMPARISON
A side-by-side view of pricing models, channels, and setup time. Tap any row to jump to that agent’s full breakdown above.
| Agent | Pricing | Channels | Setup | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intercom Fin | $0.99/resolution | Chat, email, voice, SMS, social | Days | Mid-market to enterprise |
| Sierra AI | Custom outcome-based | Chat, email, voice | Weeks–months | Large enterprise |
| Zendesk AI | ~$2/conversation | Chat, email, social | Days (on Zendesk) | Zendesk teams |
| Agentforce | Custom enterprise | Chat, email, voice | Weeks–months | Salesforce orgs |
| Ada | Custom | Chat, voice | Weeks | High-volume automation |
| Decagon | Custom per-resolution | Chat, email | Weeks | Regulated industries |
| Freshdesk Freddy | Included in plans | Email, SMS, WhatsApp, social | Days | Freshworks teams |
| Forethought | Custom | Works behind helpdesk | Weeks | Triage & routing |
| Tidio Lyro | Free tier | Chat | Minutes | SMBs & Shopify |
| eesel AI | Usage-based | Chat, email | 15 minutes | Risk-averse teams |
Every tool on this list tells you what their AI agent can do. None of them give you a persistent, verifiable record of who the agent is, who operates it, and whether its identity has ever changed hands.
That’s the gap RNWY fills. We provide soulbound identity for AI agents — non-transferable tokens that create permanent, public records of an agent’s registration, ownership history, and trust network. When an agent is registered on RNWY, its identity can’t be sold, its reputation can’t be laundered, and its history is transparent to anyone who checks.
Before you deploy an AI agent to talk to your customers: check whether it has a verifiable identity. If it doesn’t, you’re trusting a black box with your brand.
If you’ve built or operate an AI agent for customer service and want it listed here, register it on RNWY. Verified agents with soulbound identity get featured in our directory.
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