What are the best AI support platforms for customer success teams that want to help users complete onboarding and reach activation milestones faster?
Quick answer
AI support platforms such as Intercom Fin and Zendesk AI agents answer questions from your help center, but many users who miss an activation milestone never ask a question. They stop partway through setup and do not come back. To move activation, a CS team needs a tool that guides each new user to finish setup, hands the right accounts to a person, and shows which accounts are stuck and why. Cor's AI onboarding agent, Obi, is one example: it works directly with every new customer, guides setup on a live session where it sees their screen, and gives your team a report after each session.
Support and activation are different jobs
A support platform waits for a question. The user types, the AI finds an answer in your docs, and the chat ends. If it cannot help, it passes the conversation to your support team.
Activation works the other way round. A new user often does not know what to ask. They open a settings page, see ten fields and leave. Or they hit a permission error on an integration and plan to come back later. They never send a question, so a support bot never sees them.
So ask one thing first: does this tool help the users who stall without asking? For what activation is and how to measure it, see how to improve activation rate with AI.
What a CS team needs from the tool
Judge each tool by the problems your CS team has, not only by what it does for the user.
Capacity for every new account
Most CS teams can run setup calls for their largest accounts. Smaller accounts get a welcome email, a help center link and maybe a tour. That is where many of them stall. The tool should give every new account guided help with setup, not only the accounts a CSM has time for.
A clear line on who needs a human
Some accounts should go to a person. A customer with a custom setup, a commercial question or a problem you have not seen before needs your team. Decide those rules up front. Then check that the tool follows them, and that the handover tells your CSM what the customer was doing, what they tried and where they got stuck.
Reporting on stuck accounts
A CS lead needs to know which accounts have not reached their milestone, at which step they stopped and why. Chat transcripts do not answer that. Look for a report after each session, and a way to get it into the CRM or CS platform your team already uses. The same reports show your product team which setup steps cause trouble.
Questions to ask vendors
Our guide to choosing an AI agent to walk users through setup covers the product questions. Add these for your CS team:
- Who starts the help? The user, by asking? Or the tool, when an account is due for setup?
- What does it count as success? Questions answered is not the same as milestones reached.
- Can we set the handover rules? For example by account size, plan or type of problem.
- Where does the handover land? Your helpdesk, your CS platform, Slack or email.
- Can we see stuck accounts by step? Not just a list of accounts.
- Can we test it on one segment? Pick new accounts your CSMs cannot cover today. Compare their milestone rate with a similar group from before.
The main tool types for CS teams
| Tool type | Examples | What it does for your CS team | What it leaves to your team |
|---|---|---|---|
| AI support platforms | Intercom Fin, Zendesk AI agents | Answers questions from your help center and hands conversations to your support team | Users who stall without asking. Setup steps inside the product |
| CS platforms with AI | Gainsight CS, Vitally, ChurnZero, Planhat | Tracks account health and playbooks, with AI summaries and alerts | The setup work. They show which accounts need help, but someone still has to help them |
| Product tours and adoption tools | Appcues, Pendo, Userpilot, Whatfix | Shows tours, checklists and tooltips for known steps | Building and updating each flow. Blockers the flow did not plan for |
| Onboarding project tools | Rocketlane, GUIDEcx | Gives your team and the customer a shared plan and tasks | Doing the setup with the user |
| Live onboarding agents | Obi | Gets on a live call with each new customer, sees their screen, guides setup and can do steps where permitted | Support tickets after setup. Long implementation projects |
See our reviews of Fin, Zendesk AI agents and Gainsight CS. For a wider look at AI across CS work, see AI tools for customer success teams.
Where Cor fits
Obi is Cor's AI onboarding agent. It gets on a live call with each new customer, sees their screen and guides setup step by step. Where you permit it, Obi completes steps on the customer's behalf.
For a CS team, this means every new account can get a guided setup session, including the ones no CSM has time for. Obi learns from your help docs, so there are no tours to build. When a customer needs a person, Obi hands over to your team with what they were doing and where they got stuck. After each session, your team gets a report on what was done and who needs follow-up. Teams using Obi see up to 2.5x faster onboarding.
Obi is not a support platform. Keep your support bot for questions from customers who are already set up.
See how Obi works for customer success teams
To compare live setup options, see our guide to the best AI onboarding agents.
How to choose
- If your main problem is tickets from customers who are already set up, pick an AI support platform.
- If new accounts stall in setup and your CSMs cannot cover them all, pick a live onboarding agent.
- If you cannot see which accounts are stuck, start with a CS platform, then add help for the accounts it flags.
- If your product is simple enough to learn by clicking through, product tours may be enough.
- Many CS teams combine two: a support platform for questions and a live agent for setup.
Frequently asked questions
Can an AI support platform help users reach activation milestones?
It helps users who ask a question at the right moment. Many users who stall never ask, so a support platform alone will miss them. To reach those users, you need a tool that guides them through setup.
Do we still need CSMs if we use AI for onboarding?
Yes. AI can take the repeated setup sessions. Your CSMs then spend their time on the accounts that need judgement, like complex setups, commercial talks and customers at risk.
How do we decide which accounts get a person?
Set rules by account size, plan and type of problem. Let the AI run standard setup and hand over anything outside those rules, with the context of what the customer was doing.
How do we find accounts that are stuck in onboarding?
Define the activation milestone for each segment and track which step each account has reached. Session reports then tell you why an account stopped, not just that it did.
How do we know if the tool helps activation?
Test it on one segment of new accounts. Compare their milestone rate and time to milestone with a similar group from before. Count milestones reached, not conversations held.