AI Customer Support Without the Enterprise Budget

Enterprise AI customer support platforms cost $20,000-100,000+ per year. They’re also overkill for most small businesses.

Here’s how we built AI-powered customer support for under $500/month.

What Enterprise Platforms Give You

The expensive platforms (Intercom, Zendesk AI, Freshdesk, etc.) provide:

  • AI chatbots with custom training
  • Ticket routing and prioritization
  • Multi-channel support
  • Analytics and reporting
  • Integration with everything

Useful features. But you don’t need to pay enterprise prices for them.

The Scrappy Stack

Here’s what we built:

Crisp Chat (Free tier): Basic live chat widget. Free up to 2 team members.

Claude API ($100/month): The AI brain from Anthropic. Handles understanding and responding.

Zapier ($29/month): Connects everything together.

Notion ($0): Knowledge base where we store answers.

Google Sheets ($0): Tracks tickets and metrics.

Total: ~$130/month

How It Actually Works

The Flow

  1. Customer sends message via Crisp
  2. Zapier catches the message
  3. Claude receives message + our FAQ knowledge base
  4. Claude drafts a response + categorizes the issue
  5. Response goes to Slack for human review
  6. Human approves/edits and sends back through Crisp
  7. Everything gets logged in Google Sheets

The AI Prompt

Our system prompt (simplified):

You are a support agent for [Company].

Context: [FAQ content from Notion]

For each message:
1. Identify the customer's issue
2. Check if our FAQ covers this
3. Draft a helpful, concise response
4. Categorize: billing/technical/general/urgent
5. If you can't help, say so clearly

Be friendly but brief. No corporate speak.

Human in the Loop

Important: The AI drafts, humans send. For most tickets, the human just clicks approve. But they can edit anything.

This catches AI mistakes before they reach customers.

What This Stack Handles

Works great for:

  • FAQ questions (60% of our tickets)
  • Basic how-to questions
  • Status inquiries
  • Simple troubleshooting

Needs human intervention:

  • Billing disputes
  • Complex technical issues
  • Angry customers
  • Anything requiring judgment

Our AI handles about 50% of tickets fully automatically (with human approval). Another 30% it drafts correctly. 20% need real human work.

The Numbers

Before AI support:

  • 40 tickets/day
  • 15 minutes average handle time
  • 10 hours/day of support work

After AI support:

  • Still 40 tickets/day
  • 5 minutes average handle time (AI drafts most responses)
  • 3.5 hours/day of support work

That’s 6.5 hours saved daily. $130/month for that trade? No brainer.

Limitations vs Enterprise

Be honest about what you’re giving up:

No sophisticated routing: Our system is simple. Complex routing needs engineering.

Basic analytics: Google Sheets works but isn’t pretty.

Setup time: Building this took about 20 hours. Enterprise platforms are plug and play.

Maintenance: When things break, you fix them. No enterprise support team.

Scale limits: This works for hundreds of tickets. Thousands might need more infrastructure.

When to Upgrade

Consider enterprise platforms when:

  • You’re doing 500+ tickets daily
  • You need sophisticated analytics
  • You have money and no time
  • Support is a competitive advantage

Until then, the scrappy stack works fine.

Step-by-Step Setup

  1. Sign up for Crisp (free tier)
  2. Get Claude API access
  3. Connect Crisp → Zapier
  4. Build your Zapier workflow
  5. Create your knowledge base in Notion
  6. Test with fake tickets
  7. Run parallel (AI + human) for a week
  8. Trust the system, keep humans for approval

Total setup time: 15-25 hours.

The Bottom Line

You don’t need to spend enterprise money on AI support. The tools exist to build something functional for a fraction of the cost.

Is it as polished as Intercom? No. Does it handle 80% of the job for 5% of the price? Yes.

For small teams, that math works.