A complete guide to Freddy AI automation in 2025

Let’s be honest, AI is everywhere in customer support right now. Every team is trying to figure out how to handle more tickets and keep customers happy without overwhelming their agents. You’ve probably heard of Freshworks’ Freddy AI, since it’s been around for a while and promises to automate a bunch of support tasks.

But what’s really under the hood, and is it the right tool for your team? In this guide, we’re going to break down Freddy AI automation. We’ll get into its main features, how you set it up, what it costs, and where it falls short. We’ll also see how it compares to some newer tools that might be a better fit for teams that need to move fast.

What is Freddy AI automation?

Freddy AI is the brain behind Freshworks’ products, powering features in their customer service tool, Freshdesk, and their ITSM platform, Freshservice. It’s not really a standalone product, but more like the AI engine working in the background to make things smarter for both customers and employees.

Its features are generally bucketed into three main areas:

• Freddy AI Agent: This is the bot that talks directly to your customers, offering 24/7 self-service and aiming for quick resolutions.

• Freddy AI Copilot: This tool works side-by-side with your human agents, giving them real-time help to get through tickets faster.

• Freddy AI Insights: This is for the managers and admins. It provides reports and analysis on support trends, agent performance, and recurring problems.

Because Freddy is built right into the Freshworks ecosystem, it’s deeply integrated. That’s great if your whole world is on their platform. But if your team’s knowledge and tools are spread out, this tight integration can actually become a pretty big limitation.

Key features of Freddy AI automation

Freddy has a lot of capabilities, but they’re spread across its different parts. Let’s look at what each one does and how it helps automate your work.

The Freddy AI Agent: Self-service

This is Freddy’s frontline chatbot. It’s designed to handle all the common, repetitive questions that come in so your team doesn’t have to. You can put it on your website, in your app, or on social media to give customers instant answers.

Its main purpose is to deflect simple queries. For an online store, it might answer "Where is my order?" by checking shipping info, help process a return, or pull up product specs. You build its conversation flows using a no-code tool called the "AI Agent Studio." While that sounds good, the bot is only as smart as the information it can access, which is usually just what’s stored inside the Freshworks platform.

The Freddy AI Copilot: Agent assistance

While the AI Agent handles customer chats, the AI Copilot is like a helpful assistant whispering in your human agents’ ears. It’s a set of tools built right into the help desk that helps your team work more efficiently.

Here’s a taste of what it does:

• Helps with replies and writing: It can suggest replies, help rephrase a sentence to sound clearer, or tweak the tone to be more empathetic.

• Summarizes long conversations: We’ve all seen those tickets with endless back-and-forth. The Copilot can create a quick summary so a new agent can catch up without reading the entire novel.

• Creates knowledge base articles: When an agent solves a tough problem, the Copilot can help turn that ticket resolution into a draft for a new help article.

These are genuinely helpful features for speeding things up. But again, they’re stuck with the data inside Freshworks. If the real answer is in a Google Docs guide or a Confluence page, the Copilot probably won’t find it.

Freddy AI Insights: Proactive management

This part is for the team leads and managers. It digs into your support data to help you see patterns and fix issues before they become major problems.

It can analyze tickets to find recurring complaints, gauge customer sentiment to help agents know who to talk to first, and track metrics like resolution times. It’s a decent analytics tool, but it mostly looks at what’s already happened. It doesn’t give you a way to simulate how your AI might perform in the future, which makes it tough to forecast your return on investment or test changes confidently.

How to set up and use Freddy AI automation

Getting started with Freddy isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. It takes some real configuration in the Freshworks admin dashboard to get it working right.

The setup and implementation process

Getting Freddy AI up and running usually involves these steps:

1. First off, you have to be on a Pro or Enterprise plan with Freshworks and buy the right add-ons. The AI Copilot, for instance, costs extra.

2. Then, you need to assign Freddy licenses and roles to the agents who will actually use the tools.

3. After that, you have to go into the Admin panel and find the specific Freddy features you want, like Auto Triage or the Email AI Agent, and turn them on.

4. Finally, you need to train the AI on your knowledge base, which works best if all that knowledge is already in Freshdesk or Freshservice.

This whole process requires a good bit of planning and admin work. For teams that just want to get going with AI, it can feel like a pretty big hurdle. It’s a different world from solutions like eesel AI, which are built to be truly self-serve, letting you connect your help desk and go live in just a few minutes.

Common use cases in support and ITSM

Once you have it all set up, Freddy AI automation can tackle a bunch of different tasks. Here are a couple of real-world examples:

• Customer Support: A customer types "Where is my order?" into your website chat. The Freddy AI Agent finds their tracking number and gives them a live shipping update, closing the ticket without an agent ever touching it.

• IT Service Management (ITSM): An employee uses a Slack channel to ask for access to a new software tool. The AI Agent, plugged into Freshservice, automatically creates a service ticket and sends it to the right IT manager for approval.

• Agent Productivity: An agent gets a ticket with a long, confusing history. The AI Copilot instantly gives them a summary of the problem and suggests a canned response that fits the situation, saving the agent several minutes of reading and typing.

The challenges and pricing of Freddy AI automation

While Freddy can be a useful AI tool for teams fully committed to Freshworks, it definitely comes with its own set of problems. The confusing pricing and setup are two big things you need to think about before you jump in.

Known limitations and complexities

Being tied to a single ecosystem has its downsides. Here are some of the common headaches teams run into with Freddy AI:

You’re stuck in the Freshworks ecosystem. Freddy works best when all your important information is already inside Freshworks. But what if your team uses external wikis in Confluence or has troubleshooting guides in Google Docs? Getting Freddy to use that info can be a huge pain. This is where tools built for easy, one-click integrations really shine.

The setup is a project in itself. As we covered, getting started isn’t a simple flick of a switch. You have to sort through different plans, pay for add-ons, and click through a bunch of admin settings. For teams that just want to get up and running with AI, this can feel like a major roadblock.

The automation can be pretty rigid. Even though the AI Agent Studio is a no-code tool, the rules you can build are sometimes restrictive. If you need to create custom workflows that connect to other tools or want very specific control over which tickets get automated, you might hit a wall.

You can’t really test it before you go live. One of the biggest issues is the inability to see how the AI will actually perform before you turn it on for your customers. Without a good simulation mode to run on your past tickets, it’s hard to predict resolution rates, forecast cost savings, and roll out your AI without crossing your fingers.

Understanding the pricing model

Freddy AI’s pricing is layered and can be confusing, making it hard to guess what your bill will be each month. The AI features aren’t just included; they’re either paid add-ons or have usage-based fees.

Here’s a simplified look at the pricing for Freshdesk:

Plan	Base Price (per agent/month)	Freddy AI Agent Access	Freddy AI Copilot Access
Growth	$15	No	No
Pro	$49	First 500 sessions/mo free, then $100 per 1,000 sessions	Add-on for $29/agent/month
Enterprise	$79	First 500 sessions/mo free, then $100 per 1,000 sessions	Add-on for $29/agent/month

There are two big things to pull from this:

1. Extra costs for add-ons: Important features like the AI Copilot aren’t included in the main plan. You have to pay a separate per-agent fee, which can add up fast.

2. Usage-based fees: The session-based pricing for the AI Agent means your bill can go up and down. If you have a busy month, your costs will jump, creating a budget headache. This is a far cry from platforms that offer simple, flat-rate pricing with no surprises.

A simpler, more flexible alternative: eesel AI

For teams using Freshdesk or other popular help desks, eesel AI gives you a powerful AI layer without the headaches of ecosystem lock-in, confusing setup, and unpredictable costs that come with a tool like Freddy.

Here’s what makes eesel AI a different kind of tool:

• Go live in minutes, not months. eesel AI is completely self-serve. You can connect your help desk, train your AI on your knowledge, and launch it without ever having to talk to a salesperson. It’s built to get you results almost immediately.

• Bring all your knowledge together, instantly. Instead of being stuck in one system, eesel AI connects to all your knowledge sources with one-click integrations. Whether your info lives in old tickets, a Confluence wiki, Google Docs, or your help center, eesel AI pulls it all together for more complete and accurate answers.

An infographic showing how eesel AI connects to various knowledge sources, a flexible alternative to Freddy AI automation.

• Test with confidence. eesel AI comes with a powerful simulation mode that lets you test your AI on thousands of your past tickets. This gives you a clear forecast of how well it will perform and what your ROI will be, so you can make decisions based on data, not guesswork.

A screenshot of the eesel AI simulation mode, a feature that allows for testing before going live, unlike some Freddy AI automation setups.

• Transparent and predictable pricing. With eesel AI, you get a simple, flat-rate monthly plan. There are no fees per resolution or hidden charges. Your bill is the same every month, even if you have a huge spike in tickets, making it easy to budget and grow.

The eesel AI pricing page, showing a clear, flat-rate model that contrasts with the complex Freddy AI automation pricing.

Final thoughts on Freddy AI automation

Freddy AI automation can be a decent option for businesses that are all-in on the Freshworks ecosystem and have the time and resources to deal with its complicated setup and pricing. It has a lot of native features that can definitely help your team.

But its greatest strengths are also its biggest weaknesses. The deep integration creates a walled garden, the pricing model is unpredictable, and the setup is a pain. For today’s support teams that need to be agile, have clear pricing, and connect all their knowledge no matter where it lives, a more flexible tool like eesel AI is often a much better fit.

Get started with AI automation that actually works

Ready for an AI tool you can set up yourself in minutes and test before you launch? Try eesel AI for free and see how quickly you can start automating your support, or book a demo to see it in action.