I tried dozens of platforms to find the 6 best AI tools for customer success in 2025

If you’re a Customer Success Manager, you probably feel like you're trying to be everywhere at once. Your day is a constant juggle of customer calls, logging notes, digging for answers, and tackling an admin list that never seems to shrink. It makes sense that most of us are looking for a smarter way to get things done.

AI isn't some sci-fi concept anymore; it's here and it’s genuinely useful. More than half of CS teams (52% to be exact) are already using it in some way. The problem is, many are stuck with basic tools that don't do much more than scratch the surface.

The real shift happens when AI starts handling the tedious parts of your job, freeing you up to focus on what actually matters: building relationships and thinking about the bigger picture. This article cuts through the noise and gives you a straight-up look at six of the best AI tools that customer success teams are using to make their work easier and more impactful.

What are AI tools for customer success?

When we talk about AI tools for customer success, we’re not just talking about your average chatbot. These are platforms that connect to the places you keep your data (think CRM, helpdesk, and call recordings) to help in a few key ways, as illustrated in the graphic below:

1. Automate the repetitive stuff like summarizing calls, drafting emails, and answering the same questions for the hundredth time.

2. Analyze customer data to spot risks and opportunities you might otherwise miss.

3. Personalize how you talk to customers at scale, so you don't lose that human touch.

The point isn't to replace you. It’s to help you move from being a reactive problem-solver to a proactive advisor by giving you back time and offering up better insights. The best tools handle the grunt work so you can do the high-value work that builds relationships.

How we chose the best AI tools for customer success

I’ve spent a lot of time in the trenches with different platforms. To put this list together, I focused on what really makes a difference for a busy CS team. Here’s what I looked for:

• Getting started: How quickly can you actually get it up and running? I picked tools that don’t require a six-month implementation project before you see any value.

• Core job: Does the tool solve a real, specific problem for CS teams? Whether it’s automating meeting notes or predicting churn, it needs to do its main job well.

• Plays well with others: Does it connect easily with the tools you already use, like Zendesk, Salesforce, or Slack? A tool that lives on its own island is just more work.

• Cost and growth: Can the tool grow with your team? And is the pricing clear and predictable, or are you going to get hit with a surprise bill?

Comparing the best AI tools for customer success

For anyone who just wants the highlights, here’s a quick breakdown of how the top tools compare.

Tool	Best For	Key Feature	Pricing Model	Integrates with Helpdesk?
eesel AI	Self-serve automation for existing helpdesks	AI Agent, Copilot & Triage	From $299/mo	Yes (Zendesk, etc.)
Gong	Conversation intelligence & coaching	AI call analysis & topic tagging	Custom Quote	Limited (syncs data to CRM)
ChurnZero	All-in-one CS platform	Customer health scoring & journey automation	Not Publicly Available	Yes
UpdateAI	CS-specific meeting assistance	Voice of Customer (VoC) topic tracking	Acquired by Gainsight	N/A
Lantern	Proactive expansion & retention	Agentic AI for champion & intent tracking	From $15/user/mo	Yes (via CRM)
ChatGPT	General-purpose task assistance	Versatile content & email generation	Free & Paid Tiers	No (Manual copy/paste)

The 6 best AI tools for customer success teams in 2025

Let's get into the details of what makes each of these tools a solid pick for any customer success team trying to level up.

1. eesel AI

eesel AI is an AI platform that hooks right into the tools you’re already in all day, like Zendesk, along with your chat and knowledge sources. It’s got a few main parts that work together: an AI Agent that automatically answers frontline support questions, an AI Copilot that helps your human agents draft replies, and AI Triage to automatically route and tag tickets. It learns from your past conversations, help articles, and internal docs, so it sounds like you.

• Why it's on the list: Its biggest plus is how easy it is to set up yourself. A lot of enterprise AI tools can take months to get going, but you can get an eesel AI agent live in just a few minutes from its dashboard, no sales call required.

• Pros:

  • The setup is incredibly fast and self-serve, with one-click integrations.
  • It works inside the tools your team already knows, so you don’t have to switch helpdesks or mess up your workflow.
  • The pricing is clear and predictable (Team plan at $299/mo, Business plan at $799/mo), without weird per-ticket fees.
  • You get a lot of control over what gets automated using simple rules you can write in plain English.

• Cons:

  • It’s laser-focused on support automation, triage, and knowledge. If you need broader CS features like health scoring or journey mapping, you’ll need to look elsewhere.

• Pricing: Starts at $299/month for the Team plan, which covers 1,000 AI interactions. There's a free 7-day trial that you can extend for another week, giving you plenty of time to kick the tires.

2. Gong

Gong has become the standard for understanding what’s really being said in customer conversations. It records, transcribes, and analyzes every call, meeting, and email. Then, its AI digs through all that conversation data to pull out key insights, track topics, and flag risks that were mentioned.

• Why it's on the list: Its AI features, like Call Spotlight, are really impressive. They automatically create summaries and highlight action items, saving your team from having to re-listen to hours of calls. The AI Topic Tagger can even pick up on when topics like "Pricing" or "Next Steps" are discussed, helping you see trends across all your customers.

• Pros:

  • Gives you deep, data-backed insights into customer chats that you just can't get otherwise.
  • Great for training, coaching, and seeing how your team is performing.
  • The AI automatically points out recurring topics and at-risk deals, so you can be more proactive.

• Cons:

  • It's mainly for analysis and coaching, not for directly automating your follow-up tasks or handling support tickets.
  • The price can be steep, especially for smaller teams that might not need everything it offers.

• Pricing: Custom quote only. Pricing is usually per user plus a platform fee, so you have to talk to their sales team to get a real number.

3. ChurnZero

ChurnZero is built to be the main hub for a customer success team. It’s a big platform that pulls together all your customer data, customizable health scores (they call them ChurnScores), automated customer journeys, and communication tools into one spot.

• Why it's on the list: It's the "full suite" approach. With over 60 native integrations for tools like Salesforce and Zendesk, its goal is to put all customer info in one place, which is a massive headache for most teams.

• Pros:

  • Has powerful automation for managing the whole customer lifecycle, from onboarding to renewal.
  • You can customize it a lot to fit your team's specific processes.
  • It’s a well-established tool, with customers reporting things like a 60% drop in churn.

• Cons:

  • Getting an all-in-one platform like this up and running can be a long and complicated project.
  • The price isn't public, so you have to go through a full sales cycle to get a quote.
  • It might be too much if you're just trying to solve one specific problem, like deflecting common support questions.

• Pricing: Not public. You have to book a demo to get a custom quote.

4. UpdateAI

UpdateAI was a conversation intelligence tool made just for customer success teams. People loved it for its ability to automate meeting notes, pull out action items, and track customer feedback themes over time. It was a great example of a tool that solved a very specific, annoying problem for CSMs.

• Why it's on the list: I'm including UpdateAI here as a bit of a case study. It was a fantastic niche tool that turned messy meeting conversations into clean, structured data. But in July 2025, it was acquired by Gainsight, one of the giants in the CS world.

• Pros:

  • Its features were perfectly built for CSMs, like tracking customer mood and feature requests.
  • It automated one of the most draining parts of a CSM's job: all the admin work after a call.

• Cons:

  • You can't buy it as a standalone tool anymore. New sign-ups are paused while its tech gets absorbed into Gainsight's larger platform.

• Pricing: No longer available. Its features are being rolled into Gainsight's enterprise platform, which has a custom pricing model aimed at big companies.

5. Lantern

Lantern is a newer kind of AI platform that connects to your data sources (like your CRM or Gong) to keep an eye on your customer relationships for you. Its AI agents automatically track important signals, like when your main contact at a company changes jobs or when someone from a target account visits your pricing page, showing they might be ready to buy (intent).

• Why it's on the list: This tool points to the future of proactive CS. AI agents do the research and tell you where to focus your energy to stop churn before it happens and find expansion opportunities. It’s all about getting ahead instead of just reacting.

• Pros:

  • It automates the manual work of tracking key contacts and accounts, something most CSMs struggle to keep up with.
  • Helps you spot churn risks early and find warm leads for expansion.
  • Offers over 50+ integrations to pull signals from all your different tools.

• Cons:

  • The per-user price can add up if you have a large team.
  • It's mainly focused on finding revenue signals for sales and CS teams, not on direct support automation.

• Pricing: Lantern's pricing is public and starts at $15/user/month for its Starter plan if you pay annually.

6. ChatGPT

You know this one. ChatGPT is the famous AI from OpenAI that can write emails, summarize text, and brainstorm ideas. A lot of CSMs are already using it for quick, one-off tasks to speed up their day.

• Why it's on the list: For most people, this is their first step into AI. It’s super versatile, easy to use, and genuinely helpful for getting over writer's block on a tricky email or whipping up a quick report draft.

• Pros:

  • Extremely flexible and useful for a huge range of content tasks.
  • The free version is often good enough for many daily needs.

• Cons:

  • It’s completely disconnected from your customer data, so you’re always copying and pasting information back and forth.
  • Pasting sensitive customer info into a third-party tool can be a big security risk.
  • It knows nothing about your company's specific knowledge, so it can't answer product questions accurately and might just give you generic (or wrong) information.

• Pricing: There’s a solid free plan, with paid plans like Plus ($20/month) for more power.

How to choose the right AI tool for your team

Feeling a bit overwhelmed by the options? Don't sweat it. Here are a few simple tips to help you pick the right tool.

• Start with your biggest headache. Don't buy an AI tool just to have one. Are you drowning in support tickets? Buried in meeting notes? Struggling to see churn signals? Pick a tool that solves your most immediate problem first.

• Look for a quick win. The best tools start helping you right away. Be wary of solutions that need a multi-month onboarding project. Self-service platforms, like eesel AI, let you test out their impact almost immediately.

• Make sure it plays nice with your other tools. A new tool should feel like an add-on to your current workflow, not a whole new system. If it doesn't connect smoothly with your helpdesk and CRM, it’s just going to cause more problems.

• Watch out for hidden pricing. Models that make you sit through multiple sales calls just to get a price are often hiding extra costs. Clear, public pricing from companies like eesel AI or Lantern is usually a sign of a more straightforward product.

A video explaining how AI is transforming customer success and what teams should look for in a tool.

Automate tasks, not relationships

The real point of using AI in customer success isn't to replace human connection, it's to make more room for it. By handling the repetitive admin tasks that eat up our time and energy, these tools free up CSMs to do what they do best: build trust, understand customer goals, and give smart advice.

If your team's biggest bottleneck is the time you spend answering the same questions and hunting for information across a dozen different places, a tool built for fast, simple automation inside your existing helpdesk is the smartest place to start.

Ready to stop answering the same questions over and over? Start your free 7-day trial of eesel AI and see how quickly you can get your support workflows running on their own.