The 6 best Zendesk chatbots for customer service in 2025

Your customers want answers, and they want them now. We all know that feeling. But with support teams being stretched pretty thin, offering instant, 24/7 help can feel like a pipe dream. This is where chatbots come in. They can turn a reactive support queue into a proactive, problem-solving helper, especially when you pair them with a platform like Zendesk.

But with so many options out there, which one is actually right for you? The market is crowded with everything from Zendesk’s own tools to powerful third-party apps. Picking the wrong one can mean months of wasted time and a pretty frustrating experience for your customers (and your team).

That’s why we put this guide together. No fluff, just a straight-up look at the top Zendesk chatbots for customer service. We'll compare the native Zendesk solution against some strong integrations that can improve your current setup without making you start all over.

Understanding Zendesk chatbots customer service

In simple terms, a Zendesk chatbot is an AI-powered helper that connects to your Zendesk Suite to handle customer conversations automatically. Think of it as your first line of defense, taking care of the common, repetitive questions so your human agents can focus on the tricky stuff that really needs their brainpower.

You’ll generally find two types of Zendesk chatbots:

1. Native Zendesk AI Agents: This is the built-in solution that lives right inside the Zendesk platform. It’s built to work smoothly with your tickets and help center.

2. Third-Party Integrations: These are specialized chatbot platforms that connect to your Zendesk account. They often bring more advanced features, more flexibility, and a much simpler setup to the table.

Both can answer common questions, gather info from customers, create support tickets, and pass conversations to a human agent when things get complicated. The trick is finding the one that fits your team's needs and resources without causing a headache.

How we picked the best Zendesk chatbots

To cut through all the marketing noise, we looked at each tool on this list based on what actually matters to support teams day-to-day.

• Integration Quality: How well does it actually connect with Zendesk? Is it a true one-click setup, or is it secretly a project for your developers?

• AI & Automation Skills: How smart is the bot, really? Can it only spit out FAQ answers, or can it actually learn from your past tickets and get things done?

• Ease of Setup & Use: Can your support manager get it running this week, or do you need to book a developer for the next month?

• Customization & Control: Can you change the bot's tone, tell it what it shouldn't answer, and decide exactly which tickets it handles?

• Value for Money: Is the pricing easy to understand? Does it offer a clear return on your investment, or are there hidden fees waiting to surprise you?

A quick comparison of the top Zendesk chatbots

Here's a brief look at how our top choices stack up against one another.

The 6 best Zendesk chatbots for customer service in 2025

Let's dive into the details of the best platforms out there today.

1. eesel AI

eesel AI is an AI platform built to plug right into the tools your team already relies on, including a really smooth Zendesk integration. Its biggest draw is how simple and powerful it is. You can add a genuinely smart AI agent to your workflow without needing to switch helpdesks or spend months on a complicated project. It's made for teams who want to see results quickly.

Pros:

• Go live in minutes: This isn't an exaggeration. You can sign up, connect your Zendesk account, and launch a bot without ever talking to a sales rep. Most other tools make you sit through a demo just to see the product.

• Risk-free simulation: This is a huge plus. Before your bot ever talks to a real customer, you can test it on thousands of your past Zendesk tickets. This gives you a solid forecast of how it will perform and what your ROI will be, so you can launch feeling totally confident.

The eesel AI simulation dashboard showing how AI uses past product knowledge to predict future support automation rates.

• Unifies all your knowledge: eesel AI doesn't just skim your help center. It learns from your most valuable data source: your old support tickets. It can also connect to knowledge scattered in places like Confluence and Google Docs, creating one all-knowing brain for your support team.

This infographic illustrates how eesel AI centralizes knowledge from different sources to power support automation.

• Transparent pricing: You pay a flat monthly fee based on how many interactions you have, with no extra charges per resolution. This keeps your costs predictable, even when you get a sudden rush of tickets.

Cons:

• It's a newer platform compared to some of the long-standing enterprise tools, which might be a consideration for some.

Pricing:

eesel AI's pricing is straightforward and designed to be easy to understand.

• Team Plan: $299/month (or $239/month billed annually). This gets you up to 1,000 AI interactions, 3 bots, and the ability to train on your help center, docs, and use the AI Copilot in your helpdesk.

• Business Plan: $799/month (or $639/month billed annually). Includes everything in the Team plan plus up to 3,000 interactions, unlimited bots, and unlocks the really powerful features: training on past tickets, AI Actions for triage, and bulk simulation.

• Custom: For teams needing unlimited interactions, special integrations, and more advanced features, you can contact their sales team.

2. Zendesk AI agents

Zendesk AI Agents (you might remember it as Answer Bot) is Zendesk's own chatbot solution. It’s built directly into the Zendesk Suite, so it works well with your tickets, macros, and help center right out of the box. It’s a respectable starting point for teams who want to keep everything under one roof and are already all-in on the Zendesk platform.

Pros:

• It integrates perfectly with the Zendesk Agent Workspace.

• It comes pre-trained on billions of real customer service conversations.

• It’s included in the main Zendesk Suite plans, so you aren't managing yet another vendor.

Cons:

• You're tied to Zendesk's vision for AI, which can be less flexible and slower to add new features than specialized platforms.

• The per-agent pricing can get really expensive as your support team grows.

• It doesn't have the advanced simulation features or the ability to connect to multiple external knowledge sources that tools like eesel AI offer.

Pricing:

Zendesk's AI features are bundled into its Suite plans, which are priced per agent.

• Suite Team: $55 per agent/month (billed annually). Includes the essential AI agents.

• Suite Growth: $89 per agent/month (billed annually).

• Suite Professional: $115 per agent/month (billed annually).

• More advanced AI capabilities are available as a paid add-on to these plans.

3. Ada

Ada is one of the heavy-hitters in the enterprise chatbot world. It gives you a powerful low-code platform for building out very detailed and complex conversation flows. With support for voice channels and dozens of languages, it's really aimed at large, global companies with deep pockets and the time for a more involved setup.

Pros:

• Great for omnichannel support, and it can even handle phone calls.

• The low-code builder lets non-developers create some pretty sophisticated, custom workflows.

• Integrates with Zendesk for passing conversations over to human agents.

Cons:

• The pricing isn't public. That usually means it’s expensive and designed for enterprise-level budgets, which prices out most small to mid-sized businesses.

• The setup isn't something you can do yourself. You'll likely go through a long sales and onboarding process before you can get started.

Pricing:

Ada's pricing is custom, and you can only get it by contacting their sales team.

4. Intercom

Intercom’s AI agent, Fin, uses OpenAI's advanced GPT models, which makes it exceptionally good at understanding subtle language and having conversations that feel surprisingly human. It's a solid choice for brands that want to provide a premium, high-touch conversational experience from the very first interaction.

Pros:

• Its natural language understanding is top-notch, letting it handle complex questions without getting confused.

• It can ask clarifying questions to figure out what a user is actually trying to say.

• It comes with a polished user interface and good reporting tools.

Cons:

• The pricing model can be a problem. Charging per resolution means your bill goes up as your bot does a better job, creating unpredictable costs that are tough to budget for.

• It mainly learns from your help center articles, which can limit its knowledge compared to tools that can learn from the rich context of past ticket conversations.

Pricing:

Intercom's pricing combines a per-seat cost with a mandatory fee for each resolution.

• Essential Plan: Starts at $29 per seat/month (billed annually), plus $0.99 for every resolution from Fin.

• Standalone Fin Agent (for Zendesk): $0.99 per resolution, with a 50-resolution monthly minimum.

5. ChatBot.com

From the same team that made LiveChat, ChatBot.com is all about its easy-to-use, drag-and-drop visual builder. This makes it a great option for teams that want to quickly map out rule-based or simple keyword-driven chatbot flows. It offers a library of templates, so you can get a bot up and running without being an AI expert.

Pros:

• The visual builder is incredibly easy to learn and use.

• It comes with a bunch of templates for common situations like lead generation and FAQs.

• It integrates with Zendesk to create tickets and hand chats over to agents.

Cons:

• Its AI abilities are much more limited compared to the others on this list. It’s more of a flow-builder than a true AI agent.

• It’s probably better for marketing and sales qualification than for deep, automated customer service.

Pricing:

ChatBot.com's plans are based on the number of chats you have each month.

• Starter: $52/month (billed annually) for 1 active bot and 1,000 chats/month.

• Team: $142/month (billed annually) for 5 active bots and 5,000 chats/month.

• Business: $424/month (billed annually) for unlimited active bots and 25,000 chats/month.

6. Voiceflow

Voiceflow is less of a ready-to-go chatbot and more of a powerful toolkit for building custom AI agents from scratch. It’s the go-to choice for product and development teams that want total control over every little detail of the conversational experience and have the technical folks to make it happen.

Pros:

• Incredibly flexible and powerful for creating truly custom AI agents.

• It can connect to almost any API, allowing for complex, automated actions.

• Perfect for designing sophisticated conversations for both voice and chat.

Cons:

• It requires a good amount of technical knowledge. This is not a tool your support lead can set up on their own.

• It takes a lot longer to see results; it's a full-on development project, not a quick fix.

Pricing:

Voiceflow's pricing has a free tier for hobby projects and paid plans for professional teams.

• Pro: $54/user/month (billed annually as $648/year). Includes 10k credits/month.

• Business: $135/user/month (billed annually as $1,620/year). Includes 30k credits/month.

• Enterprise: Custom pricing for scaling teams that need advanced security and support.

This video provides a comprehensive guide on setting up a Zendesk AI chatbot in 2024.

How to choose the right Zendesk chatbot for your team

Feeling a bit overwhelmed by the options? Don't worry. Picking the right tool just comes down to answering a few honest questions about your team and your goals.

What's the actual goal for your Zendesk chatbot?

What are you really trying to do here? Is it just about deflecting "Where's my order?" tickets, or do you need to automate a multi-step refund process? For basic questions, a simple bot might be fine. For real automation, you need a tool that can perform actions, not just give out answers.

Where does your chatbot knowledge live?

Think about where your team's collective brain is stored. If every answer is neatly organized in your Zendesk help center, a native tool might work. But if the real solutions are buried in thousands of past ticket replies, Slack threads, and Google Docs, you need a platform like eesel AI that can connect to and learn from all those scattered sources with a single click.

How technical is your team?

Do you have developers ready to jump in and help the support team? If not, a platform like Voiceflow is probably not for you. Look for a solution that is genuinely self-serve, designed to be managed by the people who know your customers best: your support leads.

Don't just launch and pray

Please, whatever you do, don't just flip a switch and hope for the best. A bad bot experience is much worse than no bot at all. The best platforms let you test everything thoroughly so you can deploy with confidence.

Look beyond the sticker price

A "pay-as-you-go" per-resolution model like Intercom's might sound good at first, but it can lead to massive, unpredictable bills down the line. A per-agent model like Zendesk's basically penalizes you for growing your team. For most businesses, a flat, predictable monthly fee is the smartest way to manage your budget.

Give your Zendesk support an AI boost

Adding the right Zendesk chatbot for customer service is one of the most effective moves you can make to improve your team's efficiency and keep customers happy. While Zendesk's native AI is a decent starting point, specialized platforms offer a level of power, flexibility, and simplicity that can really make a difference.

For teams that want to get advanced AI capabilities without the enterprise price tag or months of setup, eesel AI really stands out. It plugs into your existing Zendesk workflow in minutes, learns from all your scattered knowledge, and lets you test with confidence so you can deliver better support from day one.

Ready to see how easy it is to get started? Start your free eesel AI trial and connect your Zendesk account in a few minutes.