An AI agent for customer service.

Answers email, chat and the phone from your own records. Anything that moves money waits for a named person, and every action is on the record.

Chat

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Reminders

Projects

Recent

Renewals at risk

Board pack, October

Supplier terms review

Churn post mortem

Which accounts are at risk this month, and draft the outreach.

Worked for 41s · 6 steps · $0.12

Read9 accounts renewing

Read14 open tickets

Comparedusage against the last two quarters

Drafted7 messages, held 2 for a person

Nine accounts renew inside 30 days and three of them are the ones to worry about. Their ticket volume is up while usage is falling, which is the pattern that preceded every churn last quarter.

Salesforce

Zendesk2 sources, permission aware

Message Daciel

Works over the help desk and store you already run.

One record behind every answer

Library

Everything the work produced, with who owns it and who can read it.

AllDocumentsSheetsFrom runs

Renewal brief, Acme

Document · Priya · Deal team

Q3 pipeline review

Sheet · Marcus · Sales

Supplier terms summary

Document · Ana · Private

Churn post mortem

Document · Marcus · Everyone

Board pack, October

Deck · Priya · Leadership

Access review

Sheet · Tom · Admins

Turn the renewal brief into an email to the deal team

Renewal brief, Acme

Chat

One composer, on every surface.

Vendor reviews

Q3 onboarding

Support desk

Website rebuild

Everything the renewal touched: the thread it started in, the artifacts it produced, and who is allowed to see them.

148 artifacts

Keep

Acme renewal

Payroll migration

Hiring: sales

Said once, kept for good

Any answer becomes an artifact, with an owner and a permission.

Slack

Gmail

Outlook

Google Drive

Notion

Salesforce

HubSpot

Zendesk

Jira

GitHub

Linear

Stripe

Zoom

Asana

Airtable

Dropbox

Box

Confluence

Intercom

Google Calendar

Monday

ClickUp

Figma

DocuSign

Trello

Slack

Gmail

Outlook

Connected from day one

The systems you already run, readable in one place.

Runs this week

RunOutcome and traceWhat it producedCost

1Renewal outreachApprovedRead the nine accounts renewing this quarter in Salesforce, compared each one's usage against the last two quarters, drafted seven messages and held two back for a person. 41s, 6 steps, $0.12...7 draftsTotal$0.12Model$0.09Tools$0.03

2Invoice chaseHeldMatched fourteen overdue invoices in Stripe against the support thread for each account, then stopped before sending: two of them are in an open dispute and the policy says a person decides...14 invoicesTotal$0.08Model$0.06Tools$0.02

3Monday briefingApprovedPulled every run from the last seven days, grouped them by workspace, and wrote the briefing into the Library with the trace attached to each claim so any line can be opened...1 briefingTotal$0.21Model$0.17Tools$0.04

4Access reviewApprovedListed every connection holding a write scope, checked each against the role that owns it, and flagged three that now outlive the person who created them. Nothing was revoked without asking...3 flaggedTotal$0.05Model$0.04Tools$0.01

Runs

Every step, every tool call, every cost, and who approved it.

A ticket lands; the reply is drafted

A customer writes in. Daciel identifies them, reads the order, the invoice and the last conversation, and drafts the reply. Informational answers go. Anything that changes money or data is held for the person you named, and the whole run is on the record with its cost.

Queued6+⋯

RUN-2085

Chase the 14 overdue invoices

RUN-2094

Summarise every ticket Acme opened

RUN-2092

Check which renewals slipped a quarter

RUN-2200

Rewrite the onboarding mail sequence

Planned10+⋯

RUN-2211

Renewal quote for Acme, send held

Salesforce

Priya approves

RUN-926

Renewal outreach, nine accounts

Salesforce

Gmail

RUN-2088

Weekly briefing into the Library

Slack

RUN-924

Reconcile Stripe against the tickets

Stripe

RUN-1882

Tag the inbox by account

Outlook

Running3+⋯

RUN-1487

Pull usage for the at-risk accounts

4 steps

RUN-1028

Answer the RFP security section

Confluence

RUN-2187

Flag connections holding write scope

Waiting on Priya6 steps

Done48+⋯

RUN-2074

Monday briefing, written and filed

Library$0.21

RUN-1912

Churn post mortem for Q3

$0.14

RUN-1951

Board pack pulled together

$0.31

RUN-1960

Access review, three flagged

Approved$0.05

RUN-1991

Supplier terms summarised

Thread in #renewals

Marcus Hale9:12 AM

Acme wants a renewal quote. Their contract is up in three weeks.

Ana Duarte9:12 AM

Ticket volume has climbed every month this quarter. Read that before we price it.

Marcus Hale9:13 AM

So someone pulls usage, open tickets and the last two invoices. Three systems.

Priya Raman9:14 AM

And most of an afternoon. Hand it over and hold the send until one of us reads it.

Marcus Hale9:14 AM

@Daciel draft the Acme renewal from usage and tickets, hold the send

Two ways it answers on day one

In the inbox

Every email and connected channel in one queue. The agent resolves what you allow and hands you the rest with the thread, the record and a proposed reply attached.

Start with the inbox

Conversations

7 open · 4 answered without a person

Acme CoWhere is invoice 4417?Agent

NorthwindRefund for the duplicate seatAgent

StarlightCan we move the renewal date?Held

MeridianAPI keys stopped workingWaiting

BrightlineInvoice address is wrongAgent

KestrelDo you support SSO?Agent

HalcyonExport stopped at 10k rowsWaiting

On the phone

A number Daciel buys and holds for you, answered in your business's name. The call lands on the same customer record as the email, with a transcript and the follow-up already queued.

See the AI receptionist

Renewals

9 inside 30 days · 7 drafted, 2 held

Brightline$14kDrafted

Kestrel$9kSent

Halcyon$6kHeld

What is an AI customer service agent?

An AI customer service agent is software that reads a customer's message, looks up the customer's records in the systems a business already runs, and either answers or takes an action: issues the refund, changes the address, reschedules the delivery, opens the ticket. It differs from a chatbot in the second half of that sentence. A chatbot answers from a script or a knowledge base. An agent acts in the order system, the billing system and the help desk, and is judged on whether the case is resolved rather than on whether it produced a reply.

How an AI customer service agent works

A message arrives on a channel the agent owns

Email, chat, a messaging app, or a phone call. Most agents own email and chat. Only a few answer the phone, and it matters: for small businesses the phone is still where the urgent cases come in.

The customer is identified and their records are read

The agent matches the sender to a customer and reads the order, the invoice, the subscription and the last conversation through connections to the systems that hold them. An agent without these connections is a chatbot with a nicer name.

It drafts a reply, or proposes an action

Informational questions are answered from the records. Anything that changes money or data becomes a proposed action: refund $42, reship order 1187, cancel the plan at period end.

Permissions decide whether it acts or asks

Per action, the agent is either allowed to proceed or must hold for a named person. Good implementations let you start with everything held and loosen one action at a time as the record shows it can be trusted.

The whole thing is written to the record

What was read, what was drafted, what was approved by whom, what was done in which system, and what it cost. Reviewing a customer service agent should mean reading that log by exception, not sampling transcripts.

The seven options, compared

Ranked by how much of the job each one covers on its own. Pricing is what the vendor publishes; where nothing is published the row says so. "Approvals" is how a person stays in control of what the agent does, because that is the column every incumbent leaves blank.

	Best for	Channels	How a person stays in control	Published pricing
Intercom Fin	Teams already on Intercom's inbox with high chat volume	Chat, email, in-app. Phone via a separate product	Handoff to a human agent; no per-action approval queue	$29–$132 per seat, plus $0.99 per resolution
Gorgias	Shopify stores; the clearest small-business pricing in the category	Email, chat, social, SMS and voice as add-ons	Rules and macros; the agent resolves or escalates	Help desk not priced per agent; AI charged only when it resolves
Sierra	Enterprises that can fund a months-long deployment	Chat, email, voice	Enterprise guardrails, configured by the vendor	Outcome-based, unpublished; estimates start around $150k a year
Decagon	Enterprise support teams that want behaviour written as readable procedures	Chat, email, voice	AI Operating Procedures edited by the support lead	Per conversation, negotiated, unpublished
Front	Teams that want a shared inbox first and AI as an add-on	Email, chat, SMS, social	Shared drafts and internal comments on the thread	$25–$105 per seat; Autopilot from $0.05 per conversation, plus $10–$20 per seat per AI add-on
Gumloop	Operators who want to build the agent themselves on a node canvas	Whatever you wire up; no inbox or phone line of its own	Human-in-the-loop nodes you add to the flow	Credit-based plans; published on their site
Dacielthis site	Businesses of 5 to 200 people that want the phone, the inbox and the ledger handled by one agent under one approval queue	Email, connected messaging, and a phone number bought inside the product	Per-action permissions; anything gated is held for a named person with an expiry, and the approval is on the record	Contact Daciel for business plan availability and pricing.

Competitor pricing as published on each vendor's site, read 2026-08-19. Sierra and Decagon publish none; their rows carry estimates and say so.

Answers in your name

See pricing

Daciel

ElevenLabs

Answers in a voice you would not know from a person.

Daciel

Twilio

A direct line of its own, answering from the first ring.

Daciel

Cloudflare

Domains provisioned and shielded at the edge before they are asked for.

Daciel

Anthropic

Frontier reasoning on the work, with the trace kept for every line.

Daciel

ElevenLabs

Answers in a voice you would not know from a person.

Daciel

Twilio

A direct line of its own, answering from the first ring.

Daciel

Cloudflare

Domains provisioned and shielded at the edge before they are asked for.

Daciel

Anthropic

Frontier reasoning on the work, with the trace kept for every line.

Daciel

ElevenLabs

Answers in a voice you would not know from a person.

Daciel

Twilio

A direct line of its own, answering from the first ring.

Daciel

Cloudflare

Domains provisioned and shielded at the edge before they are asked for.

Daciel

Anthropic

Frontier reasoning on the work, with the trace kept for every line.

Connects to

Per-action permissionsInform freely; refund, credit or change only with the permission you granted

A named approver, with an expiryAnything held goes to one person, and the approval is on the record

Every reply keeps its runWhat was read, what was done in which system, and what it cost

Safe to let it answer. An agent that can refund or cancel is held to what the person behind it may do, and shows its work.

How permissions work

Questions people ask before buying

What is the difference between an AI customer service agent and a chatbot?

A chatbot answers from a script or a knowledge base. An agent reads the customer's records in your systems and can act in them: issue the refund, change the address, open the ticket. The test is whether it resolves cases, not whether it replies.

What can an AI customer service agent do without asking a person?

Whatever you permit per action. A common setup answers informational questions and looks up records freely, while refunds, credits, address changes and cancellations are held for a named approver. In Daciel each held action carries an expiry and the approval is on the record.

How much does an AI customer service agent cost?

Self-serve tools charge $25–$132 per seat plus a per-resolution or per-conversation fee ($0.05–$0.99). Enterprise vendors price per outcome under contracts estimated from $150k a year. Contact Daciel for business plan availability and pricing.

Can an AI customer service agent answer the phone?

Most cannot on their own; they cover chat and email and hand the phone to a separate voice vendor. Sierra and Decagon include voice in enterprise deployments. Daciel answers a number it provisions for you, and the call lands on the same customer record as the email.

Do we have to migrate our help desk to use one?

Not with Daciel. It connects to the help desk, store, billing and CRM you run today, each connection scoped to the person who authorised it, and works over them. You can also run Daciel's own Support inbox as the desk. Intercom Fin and Gorgias require their own inbox.

How do we know what the agent did?

Ask for the log before you buy. In Daciel every conversation carries its run: the records read, the draft, any action and who approved it, the system it touched, and the cost. The Review tab lists conversations worth a second look so quality review is by exception.

AI help desk AI receptionist Approval workflow software Zendesk alternative Intercom alternative

Built for the future. Available today.

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