The most helpful AI agents for small businesses, according to business owners

Most small businesses know the frustration of scaling their tech all too well. As they address their pain points in day-to-day operations, they find themselves buried in tedious setup processes, constant troubleshooting, and tools that just don’t scale.

I researched several companies who have shared about their struggles and the subsequent success they found in leveraging AI agents.

Whether it’s generating leads, creating content for social media or the website, handling customer queries, or managing cash flow, every function is a potential time sink when done manually. This is why today, big and small businesses alike are using AI agents to scale their business.

In this article, I’ll explore how small businesses use AI agents and highlight some of the best tools available, complete with insights from fellow entrepreneurs and other professionals.

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How Small Businesses Can Use AI Agents

AI agents are no longer a luxury for large enterprises. Small businesses are now leveraging them more than ever before. Below, I share some ways they are using this technology to stay competitive.

1. Supporting Customers Better

Many businesses struggle to deliver high-quality customer support without burning hours on chatbot maintenance or live chat backlogs, and this is especially common among small teams with limited resources.

As Yamini Rangan, CEO of HubSpot, puts it, “SMBs don’t typically have the time, resources, or the level of AI expertise that larger companies do. But with Gen AI, SMBs can now leverage powerful technology to improve both efficiency and effectiveness. If used thoughtfully, SMBs can reach more customers, serving customers with even more insights and with unprecedented relevance.”

Bridget Pyne, marketing manager at BabelQuest, shares her company’s experience, saying, “Building our old chatbot was so time-consuming. A full week sometimes vanished into branching logic and endless tweaks. Then came maintenance!”

Their next step was finding a solution that didn’t just work but worked better and faster. They turned to an AI agent to streamline everything.

“Breeze customer agent took less than an hour to set up, and minimal upkeep since it taps directly into our existing knowledge base,” explains Pyne. “It’s like going from dial-up to fiber optic — the difference has been incredible. The time saving alone has freed up additional hours for the team to review content gaps and better improve our knowledge base offering.”

According to an IBM report, businesses using AI-infused virtual agents can reduce customer service costs by up to 30% while improving customer satisfaction and loyalty. That’s a significant win on both fronts.

But remember (and I think it’s necessary to reiterate) AI agents are powerful, not perfect. The human touch is still essential in customer service. AI should handle the repetitive and straightforward tasks, while human reps step in for complex, emotional, or sensitive interactions.

I highly recommend setting clear escalation paths and design moments, where human connection shines, especially when empathy and nuance matter most.

2. Marketing the Business

One thing I’ve consistently noticed among small business owners is the constant juggling act where marketing often ends up on the back burner. For many, it’s just posting occasionally on social media, sending a newsletter once in a while, or relying on word-of-mouth.

But marketing isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a growth engine. Data from our State of Marketing report shows that businesses that have set up marketing goals and strategies are 2.5 times more likely to report growth than those without.

The problem? Marketing takes time. But that’s where AI agents can step in. From content generation and email writing to campaign management and analytics, AI marketing agents can automate tasks and even make strategic decisions based on data. They handle the workflow while you focus on results.

Jen Spencer, vice president at We Are Girls Club, an organization supporting women in sales leadership, puts it this way: “With a small marketing team, I have to wear many hats. But using an AI content agent allows me to go from A to Z on a project all by myself and save so much time. What used to take me one to two weeks with a team now takes me minutes.”

Spencer continues, “If I didn’t have this tool, I would’ve had to launch my marketing campaign without a landing page, and my conversion rates would’ve suffered.”

3. Handling Parts of the Sales Process

Sales teams are often overloaded with repetitive, manual tasks like sending follow-ups, qualifying leads, and responding to basic queries. What if AI could handle that grunt work?

Vendict, an AI-native government, risk, and compliance solution, created their own AI agent — Maya — to do just that. Maya manages key parts of their go-to-market efforts: qualifying inbound interest, running outbound campaigns, supporting website chat, and even aiding sales enablement.

Inna Kubovski, vice president of marketing at the company, shares the returns of this investment. “The most immediate benefit is speed. Maya dramatically cuts down time-to-first-touch, follow-up delays, and inbound triage. That alone improves conversion rates because you’re catching people when they’re still in a decision-making mindset.”

According to Kubovski, the deeper advantage is focus.

“Our team isn’t spending their days chasing ghost leads or formatting cold emails. They’re talking to the right people, with better context, and they’re more productive because of it,” Kubovski says.

4. Managing Financial Processes

Cash flow is the lifeblood of any small business and also one of its greatest stress points. Many SMBs still rely on outdated spreadsheets and slow manual processes that lead to delayed payments, missed invoices, and financial blind spots. AI agents can now manage invoicing, forecast cash flow, flag unusual spending, and even automate collections. This gives business owners a real-time pulse on their finances and the confidence to make smarter decisions.

According to a PYMNTS Intelligence report in partnership with American Express, 83% of SMBs are already using AI for data analytics and financial management, and 73% are consolidating their cash management into unified digital platforms.

On a lighter note, you could AI your business just like Sherzod Gafar plans to AI his entire life.

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Best AI Agents for Small Business

Ready to add an AI agent to your team? These are currently some of the most helpful AI agents for small businesses I’ve found.

1. Breeze by HubSpot

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HubSpot’s Breeze Agents are AI-powered “digital coworkers” built directly into the CRM, designed to automate major pieces of your sales, marketing, and support workflows. I like to think of them as always-on teammates that don’t sleep, don’t forget things, and actually know your business.

There’s a Prospecting Agent that researches leads and writes customized outreach emails (in your voice), a Content Agent that drafts landing pages or blog posts based on your CRM data, and a Customer Agent that handles support tickets 24/7.

Bradley Poole, CRO at ResellerRatings, said their Breeze-generated emails outperformed their own BDRs in quality and engagement.

“What makes it exceptional is its ability to scan contact information and generate truly contextual, customized outreach that resonates with prospects. It doesn’t just save time, it’s elevating the quality of our initial touchpoints with potential customers.”

What I like: Personally, I love how deeply it integrates with your existing CRM data. It pulls from real customer context, campaign history, and content you’ve already created.

Pricing: Included with HubSpot’s Service Hub Professional ($100 per seat/month) and Enterprise plans ($150 per seat/month).

2. Jasper AI

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I think Jasper is a great option for marketing teams, especially the ones with so many tasks and so little time to complete them. It can generate long-form content, Facebook ads, emails, landing pages — you name it — and it can do it in your exact brand voice. You can train Jasper with your tone, upload documents and guidelines, and even generate visuals alongside text.

Carl Bleich, head of content at Bloomreach, said their team shifted its workflow entirely around Jasper. Now writers focus on strategy and editing, while Jasper drafts the bulk content, helping them publish consistently and drive a 40% bump in traffic.

What I like: What I love most? Once it learns your tone, it pulls from that every time, keeping your voice consistent across everything from tweets to whitepapers.

Pricing: Starts at $39/month for individual creators. Enterprise pricing available on request.

3. Intuit Assist for QuickBooks

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Most business owners hate bookkeeping and the monotony of it all. But this is exactly where AI shines. With Intuit Assist, you can scan receipts, upload PDFs, or forward emails, and it’ll handle the rest — categorizing expenses, generating invoices, flagging suspicious charges, and even forecasting your cash flow.

According to Amit Talach, Intuit’s senior VP of product, “We have Intuit Assist now making much more accurate, explainable, and transparent recommendations on expense categorizations, effectively automating accounts payable and accounts receivable.”

What I like: Handing over your finances to an AI agent might feel like a leap. But if there’s one company that’s earned trust here, it’s Intuit. Their tools are built for accountability, not just automation — and I believe they’ve had decades to prove that.

Pricing: Starts at $35/month (Simple Start) and goes up to $235/month (Advanced), depending on the features you need.

4. Lyro by Tidio

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Lyro AI Agent is a smart chatbot built into Tidio’s live chat platform, and it plugs directly into your existing help documents, site content, and FAQs. Once it’s live, Lyro answers questions in a few seconds, handles recurring tasks, qualifies leads, books meetings — and escalates to a human only when necessary. I find it super helpful because it supports multiple languages and works across live chat, email, and social channels. It can reclaim up to 64% of your team’s time.

For ecommerce? It handles shipping updates, inventory questions, and returns. For service businesses? It books appointments, shares policies, and collects contact info.

What I like: What I love is how quickly it gets up and running and how natural the conversations sound. You’re not getting stiff, robotic responses. Lyro speaks like a real teammate would.

Pricing: Based on conversation volume. Starts at $0/month for up to 50 conversations and scales to $175/month for 300 conversations. (A conversation = any chat, email, ticket, or message thread.)

5. Microsoft Copilot for Small Business

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Microsoft 365 Copilot is like having an AI assistant that lives inside the tools you’re already using — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more. It helps you draft documents, clean up data, summarize meetings, generate presentations, and automate repetitive tasks.

But the real magic is Copilot Studio, where you can build your own agents to run autonomously — think invoice follow-ups, email outreach, or even internal reporting. Once configured, they’ll work behind the scenes while you focus on higher-value tasks.

What I like: I love how Microsoft’s AI provides agents in the tools and allows you to customize them to fit your business’s unique needs.

Pricing: You could either use the Microsoft 365 Copilot plan at $30 per user/month, pay for the Copilot Studio plan $200/month per tenant for 25,000 messages, or pay $0.01/message for pay-as-you-go.

Build Your Own Agents

Here’s where I think things get really exciting. You don’t have to wait around for someone else to build your ideal AI agent. You can do it yourself, like what Cole Fortman did in the post below.

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And this one.

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Platforms like Agent.ai (from HubSpot cofounder Dharmesh Shah) make it insanely simple to spin up a digital coworker, without writing a line of code. Automate onboarding, lead scoring, status updates, client follow-ups — anything repetitive that eats up your time.

Shah built it for “the curious creator,” and over 8,800 people have already built agents on the platform. It’s free (for now), uses the latest GPT models, and lets you go from idea to working agent in a weekend.

Want to learn how to build an AI agent? Check out this guide here.

Conclusion

Every few years, tech gives small businesses a shot to level the playing field. I believe this is one of those times. The barrier to building and using smart, autonomous agents has never been lower.

Whether you’re trying to keep up with content demands, speed up support, or finally hand off your bookkeeping headaches, I guarantee there’s an AI agent ready to step in.

You don’t need a team of engineers. You don’t need a six-figure budget. You just need a problem worth solving and the willingness to see it through.

Because at this point, the only thing left to do is start.