Streamlined Solutions: 7 Best AI Phone & Chat Agents and Chatbots for Small Businesses

AI agents and chatbots aren’t just for support anymore. Today, businesses of all sizes — from local shops to full sales teams — are using AI to talk to leads, make follow-up calls, book meetings, and keep customers engaged without hiring more people.

Whether you’re running a small business or a sales team with a growing pipeline, these tools can help you do more with less — especially when it comes to phone outreach, SMS, and chat.

In this guide, we’ll go over the top platforms to:

• Chat with visitors and answer questions automatically
  
• Make real phone calls and send messages to leads
  
• Help you follow up, book meetings, or reactivate customers

Some are better for small teams and support. Others (like OneAI) are built for sales and outbound performance. Let’s get into it.

OneAI

Best for: Mid-market & enterprise sales teams (also works for leaner ops)
Main channels: Phone, SMS, WhatsApp
Website: OneAI.com

OneAI is more than a chatbot, it’s a full platform for automating phone-based outreach and follow-ups. The focus isn’t just on finished calls, but on booked meetings, qualified leads, and actual sales results.

The AI agents sound natural (with small human-like pauses), follow your script exactly, and can:

• Handle calls, retries, and time zones without missing a beat
  
• Navigate gatekeepers and IVRs
  
• Transfer to a rep mid-call or send calendar invites
  
• Run multi-channel cadences (calls + messages)
  
• Sync everything with your CRM, calendar, and phone tools
  

You also get tools to test voices, change scripts, see what’s working, and optimize, all from one place.

What makes OneAI stand out

• Natural voice + ~200ms latency = smooth conversations
  
• Full control over cadence, timing, outcomes (e.g., voicemail vs. pickup)
  
• Deep CRM, calendar, and API integrations
  
• Outcome-based pricing, not just usage-based
  

If you're doing outbound at scale, or just want your follow-ups to actually convert, this is the one to look at.

Zapier AI Chatbot

Zapier offers a customizable AI chatbot solution that anyone can use, even without coding skills. You can create specific-purpose chatbots based on OpenAI's GPT-3.5 model to give career advice, translate corporate jargon, suggest gift ideas, and finesse feedback for employees. You can also restrict its access to outside data sources and set custom responses. To get started, you need to have a Zapier account. Zapier has multiple pricing options, and you can get started with a template.

Features:

• Powered by GPT-3.5 /GPT-4(Premium)
• No code app-builder 
• Variety of templates
• Multiple sharing options
  Restricting access to outside data sources

Use cases:

• Customer service: Answer customer questions, resolve issues, and provide support.
• Sales: Qualify leads, generate leads, and close deals.
• Marketing: Create and manage social media campaigns, send personalized emails, and track campaign performance.
• Human resources: Onboard new employees, answer HR questions, and track employee performance.
• Education: Create and deliver personalized learning experiences, grade assignments, and answer student questions.
• Healthcare: Provide reminders for appointments, answer patient questions, and track patient health data.

Spell

Spell empowers small businesses with revolutionary GPT-4 powered AI agents, specifically tailored for multitasking. Spawn multiple autonomous agents to simultaneously tackle varied tasks, from blog writing to advanced reasoning via AutoGPT. Its intuitive design boasts plugins to supercharge agent capabilities, a user-friendly chat interface, and seamless sharing options. Dive right in with curated templates, collaborate with your team for optimized results, and transform the way you work. With Spell, the future of efficient business operations is just a command away.

Features:

• Autonomous agents
• GPT4 & AutoGPT integration
• No-code functionality
• Parallel task handling
• Plugin-enhanced agents
• Team collaboration

Use cases:

• Marketing: auto-generate ad copies, social media posts, and tailored marketing campaigns, enhancing reach and engagement.
• Finance: analyze financial trends, offer stock predictions, and craft insightful reports for informed decision-making.
• Productivity: task automation and streamlining daily activities
• Sales: qualify potential leads, prioritize customer outreach, and craft AI-assisted personalized pitches.
• Recruitment: sift through candidate resumes, ensuring job requirement matches and auto-scheduling interviews with prime candidates.

Fini

Fini will turn your knowledgebase into an AI chat in 2 minutes, ready to answer customer questions instantly, 24/7. For this, you just need to provide a link to your knowledge base, no code experience, easy integration with Slack, Discord and many more. Fini AI helps you configure every single detail about your personalized agent all the way from tone, to character, to what questions you want it to answer. In situations when we don't know the answer, or for pre-configured topics, customers are seamlessly routed to a human without confusion. The price starts from $0.076 per question, up to 10k questions per month, so it makes this solution pretty affordable for small businesses. Still under development.

Features:

• No-code solution
• Easy integration
• Fully customizable
• Provides analytics
• Template library

Use cases:

• Customer Service:handle routine queries, allowing human reps to tackle complex issues.
• Sales:qualify and generate leads, boosting sales and revenue.
• Marketing:manage campaigns and track performance, enhancing target reach.
• Human Resources:streamline onboarding, HR queries, and performance tracking.
• Education: offers personalized learning and grades tasks, elevating student outcomes.
• Healthcare:send appointment reminders, answers queries, and tracks health data to elevate patient care.

HyperWrite

HyperWrite, a product of Otherside AI, has recently introduced a new Personal AI Assistant designed to enhance productivity. This assistant can handle a range of tasks, from booking flights to in-depth research and writing amazing copies. Utilizing Cohere’s Command-Light model, HyperWrite strikes the right balance between speed and accuracy. This ensures that users can generate expected outputs swiftly, be it during planning, drafting, editing, or iterating. Operating as a browser extension with an intuitive interface, users simply enter a command and can sit back with a coffee, watching the magic unfold as tedious tasks are efficiently tackled.

Features:

• Robust automation with chained task capabilities
• Employs Cohere's command-light model
• Supports multiple languages for translation (based on GPT-4)
• Adapts to your writing style, offering tailored suggestions.

Use Cases:

• Content generation:generate content for a variety of formats.
• Proofreading: proofread your writing for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors.
• Style editing: improve the style of your writing.
• Research:research information for your writing.
• Collaboration: collaborate with others on writing projects.
• Education:help students with their writing assignments. 
• Business:improve marketing materials, customer communications, and internal documents.

ManyChat

ManyChat revolutionizes communication by offering a seamless platform for creating Messenger Bots tailored for marketing, sales, and support. Compatible with Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, WhatsApp, email and SMS. It stands out with its Visual Flow Builder, simplifying bot creation through an intuitive visual interface. Dive into a variety of methods to engage users, including the Comments Growth Tool, which lets bots automatically respond to comments. Beyond structuring conversations, ManyChat provides valuable insights with its analytics tools.

Features:

• No-code solution
• Friendly interface of the Chatbot Builder
• Built-in analytics
• Comments Growth Tool
• Combine Manychat with social ads

Use cases:

• Customer service: answer customer questions, take orders, and provide support. 
• Marketing: send automated messages to customers, such as reminders for upcoming reservations or promotions.
• Menu: create a digital menu that customers can view and order from.
• Reservations: create a chatbot that customers can use to make reservations. 
• Loyalty program: create a loyalty program that rewards customers for their purchases. 
• Project management: manage projects by tracking tasks, milestones, and deadlines. Collaboration: collaborate with team members on projects. 

Fin by Intercom

Intercom's AI chatbot, Fin, powered by GPT-4, answers questions about your business using information you control, offering instant customer support and resolving over half of user queries autonomously. It integrates easily with platforms like Intercom Articles and Zendesk, ensuring accurate responses based on your content. With built-in safeguards, Fin ensures quality interactions while smoothly transitioning complex issues to human support teams. Omnichannel capabilities and upcoming multilingual support further enhance customer experiences.

Features:

• Resolves 50%+ of customer queries.
• Easy integration with Intercom, Zendesk, and public URLs.
• Customizable answers.
• Omnichannel support across platforms.
• Upcoming support for 43 languages.
• Minimal setup required.

Use cases:

Customer service: answer customer questions, provide support, and resolve issues. 

Marketing: send automated messages to customers, such as reminders for upcoming events or promotions. 

Sales: qualify leads, generate leads, and close deals. 

HR: onboard new employees, answer HR questions, and track employee performance. 

Healthcare: answer patient questions, provide support, and schedule appointments. 

Conclusion

There are a lot of AI tools out there, and not all of them are built with results in mind. Whether you’re automating support, speeding up sales, or just trying to stay on top of lead follow-up, there’s something in this list that can help.

If you're running a small team, start simple. If you're already doing outbound or have leads slipping through the cracks, try something more powerful, like AI phone agents that actually book meetings for you.

The right setup will save you time, improve response rates, and help you grow without burning out your team.