Organizations are struggling to do more with less when it comes to customer success. Many organizations are facing tight budgets. As TSIA’s The State of Customer Success 2025 webinar showcases, in this money crunch, they are moving towards AI in customer success to automate repetitive tasks.
In fact, 40% of organizations have already deployed AI in customer success management operations. AI-powered customer success agents are a promising solution in this area.
In this post, we will look at what a customer success AI agent is, its top use cases, and how to implement one.
What is a customer success AI agent?
A customer success AI agent uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to automate the routine work of customer success managers (CSMs) such as upselling, cross-selling, promotions, engagement, etc. It operates like a virtual assistant to CSMs but is an automated one.
How do customer success AI agents differ from AI-powered chatbots?
AI-powered chatbots typically answer customers' queries and help with customer service. On the other hand, customer success AI agents are capable of doing more advanced functionalities in marketing, customer engagement, and customer service.
How does an AI customer success agent work?
An AI-powered customer success agent typically works in four steps:
1. Data collection: It connects with your existing CRM platforms, support portals, and marketing platforms to create a complete database of customers (website activity, support queries, orders, etc.).
2. Data analysis: Once the data is collected, AI agents analyze it using natural language processing and machine learning. These interpretations can be stored as customer profiles, which can then be used to personalize any further customer interactions.
3. Task automation: AI agents can automate specific tasks in custom engagement/service and use the interpreted data to personalize communication.
4. Learning and adaptation: AI agents also have self-learning capabilities, which means they can continuously improve by analyzing past interactions and responses.
Top AI as customer success agent use cases
Some top tasks of CSMs where AI customer success agents can assist are:
1. Personalized communication
AI customer success agents analyze past customer interactions (mail, chat, calls, and support tickets) and send personalized communication. This communication could be related to onboarding, predictive alerts, automated check-ins, nudges, follow-up messages, feedback surveys, etc.
2. Customer engagement
AI customer success agents can further run customer campaigns for engagement, such as welcome series, feedback surveys, and more. These campaigns help improve customer retention/loyalty and increase production adoption.
3. Upselling and cross-selling
AI customer success agents analyze past customer data (activity, orders, etc) and run:
- Upselling campaigns: Recommending higher-tier products
- Cross-selling campaigns: Suggesting complementary products.
4. Customer support
AI customer success agents can also take away some manual customer support tasks off the CSM's task list, such as:
- Ticket routing: It analyzes the ticket, categorizes it, and assigns it to the relevant department for resolution.
- Call routing: It analyzes the customer’s query and automatically routes calls to the next best executive available for the customer call.
- Customer support: It acts as a virtual support agent and handles some repetitive customer queries.
AI agents transform customer support with automation.
5. Customer health scoring
AI customer success agents analyze data from existing systems (CRM, marketing, support tickets, etc) and build customer profiles with a score. These profiles can help identify which customers are more likely to come back and which are more likely to churn. You can further build marketing campaigns using these scores.
6. Call quality monitoring
AI customer success agents automatically analyze customer call recordings to assess the following:
- Call quality: Is the audio clear, volume consistent ,and connection stable?
- Conversation quality: Does the tone of voice and choice of words by customers show they were happy with the solution?
This information further helps you improve the customer experience and quality of customer calls.
7. Customer success agent training
AI customer success agents provide live cues to CSMs in case of any issues, like a real-time virtual assistant. It can also simulate customer interactions to train new CSMs who have just been onboarded. Overall, it significantly reduces the team's training efforts.
How to implement an AI customer success agent
You can integrate and implement an AI customer success agent successfully in five simple steps:
1. Understand your use cases
A simple strategy to identify the right use cases for AI agents in customer success is to go into your CSM’s task list and identify tasks that are:
- Repetitive with the scope of automation
- Manual with the scope of error
You can further look into business priorities and look for any automation scope (example: upselling, cross selling, etc) that leads to long-term benefits.
2. Identify current data sources
The next step is to identify where your data currently is, such as:
- CRM records
- Support tickets
- Emails
- Call recordings
- Survey responses
3. Choose the right technology
Once you have the base information ready, you can choose a provider that can:
- Integrate with your existing data sources
- Support the required use cases
- Support all your communication channels
- Handle scale as your business advances
- Meet your budget with growth
4. Create customer workflows
After taking a subscription of an AI customer success agent, identify all the touchpoints where these agents can handle the interactions and where human intervention is required.
For example, an AI customer success agent can handle level-1 and level-2 queries and need CSM help for level-3 queries.
5. Continuously improve workflows
Using AI customer success agents requires regular monitoring and experimentation. You can identify new use cases that can be implemented in your AI customer success platform and opportunities for further workflow enhancements.
The reporting and analytics modules of the AI customer success platform also provide necessary KPIs to track implementation.
Use Plivo for customer success
Plivo is an advanced AI agent helping you to provide:
- 24/7 support: Provides round-the-clock assistance on SMS, Voice, and WhatsApp.
Conversational AI: Use company data (by connecting with CRM, billing, and support systems) and provide precise answers to customers.
- Omnichannel support: Engages customers via voice, Email, SMS, WhatsApp, live chat, and more.
- Sales & engagement boost: Sends AI-driven cart reminders, offers, upsell, cross-sell, and proactive messages
- Real-time insights: Monitors resolution rates, pain points, and customer satisfaction.
Start building better customer experiences with AI. Book a demo today.
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