If you’re searching for Glean competitors, you’re not just looking for a different logo on the same product. You’re likely running into a fundamental disconnect: the promise of enterprise search versus the reality of what your customer-facing teams actually need to do their jobs.

Glean has established itself as a major player by offering a powerful, horizontal solution to a universal problem: siloed company knowledge. The idea is simple and compelling. Connect all your apps, and give every employee a single search bar to find anything. For a software engineer hunting for a specific code repository or an HR manager looking for a benefits policy, this is a significant step up.

But for your Support, Customer Success, and Sales teams, the game is different. They don't just need to find information; they need to synthesize it, act on it, and use it to create value in real-time. They need answers, not a list of documents. They need to generate a personalized follow-up email, not just find a template. They need to understand a customer’s entire history in seconds, not piece it together from ten different search results.

This is where generic enterprise search falls short, and it’s why a new class of AI-native platforms is emerging. This article breaks down why CX and GTM leaders evaluating Glean competitors are increasingly choosing Ask-AI—a platform purpose-built to transform workflows, not just organize company files.

The rise of enterprise search—and its limitations

The explosion of SaaS tools has created a knowledge crisis. Information critical to running the business is scattered across dozens of applications—Salesforce, Zendesk, Slack, Notion, Google Drive, and countless others. The average enterprise uses hundreds of apps, turning the simple act of finding an answer into a frustrating, time-consuming scavenger hunt.

Enterprise search companies like Glean emerged to solve this fragmentation. By indexing data across these disparate systems, they provide a unified search layer that promises to make information accessible to everyone. And for general knowledge discovery, they deliver. Glean’s ability to surface relevant documents from a sea of data is a powerful asset for large organizations.

But CX and GTM teams operate at the sharp end of the business. Their needs are more specific, their workflows are more dynamic, and the cost of a slow or incomplete answer is measured in lost deals, churned customers, and damaged brand reputation.

The core limitation of a horizontal tool is that it’s optimized for everyone, which means it’s optimized for no one in particular. A Customer Success Manager (CSM) prepping for a Quarterly Business Review (QBR) doesn't need the same tool as a developer debugging code. While both need access to information, the context, speed, and required action are worlds apart. This gap is what drives the search for more specialized glean alternatives.

Why CX and GTM teams are looking for Glean competitors

When CX and GTM leaders start exploring the market, their search is usually triggered by a few common pain points they experience with generic, one-size-fits-all solutions.

The "one-size-fits-all" problem

Glean is designed to serve the entire organization, from engineering to legal. This broad focus is a strength for general-purpose search but a critical weakness for specialized, high-velocity teams.

CX and GTM functions don’t just need a better search bar. They need an intelligent platform that understands their unique workflows:

• A support agent needs an immediate, synthesized answer to a complex technical question from a customer, not a link to a 50-page technical document.
• A sales executive needs a concise summary of all previous interactions with a prospect—across email, support tickets, and Slack—to prepare for a call in minutes.
• A CSM needs to identify at-risk accounts by analyzing product usage data, recent support issues, and sentiment from call transcripts.

A generic enterprise search engine treats all queries with the same neutral lens. It can’t differentiate the urgency of a customer-facing request from an internal one, nor can it perform the GTM-specific actions required to resolve them.

The hidden costs of implementation and adoption

Enterprise-wide tools often come with enterprise-wide price tags and complexity. While Glean’s pricing isn’t public, it’s widely understood to be a significant investment, often requiring a top-down, C-level mandate and a lengthy implementation cycle managed by IT.

But the total cost of ownership goes beyond the license fee. The real costs are often hidden:

• Slow Time-to-Value: The path to ROI can be long and uncertain. If the tool isn’t deeply embedded in the daily workflows of your teams, you face the "empty search bar" problem—a powerful tool that nobody uses because it requires them to leave their primary workspace (like Slack or their CRM) to go ask a question.
• The Cost of Unactionable Data: Most platforms stop at surfacing information—they don’t help you act on it. For CX and GTM teams, without contextual, queryable insights, your data becomes just another archive. Support teams are stuck reading through ticket logs instead of getting instant answers. CSMs are left piecing together customer context manually instead of proactively managing risk. The result? Slower resolutions, missed opportunities, and time lost to work that AI should already be doing. 

Search vs. action: The missing link for CX and GTM

The most fundamental limitation is the gap between information retrieval and value creation. Glean finds documents. Ask-AI helps you get work done.

Finding a relevant case study is helpful. But what a salesperson really needs is to instantly draft a personalized email to a prospect that incorporates key points from that case study, tailored to the prospect’s industry and pain points.

Finding a knowledge base article on a new feature is a start. But what a support team really needs is to automatically generate a new, customer-friendly FAQ based on the top five questions they’ve received about that feature in Slack this week.

This is the missing link in many enterprise search tools. They stop at retrieval. For CX and GTM teams, retrieval is just the first step. The real work begins with synthesis, creation, and action.

A closer look: Ask-AI as the purpose-built alternative

Ask-AI was built on a different premise. Instead of creating a single search tool for the whole company, we built an AI-native platform designed specifically for the workflows, challenges, and goals of customer-facing teams. It’s not just another name on a list of apps like Glean; it’s a different category of solution.

Why context matters: The power of pre-processing

Where other tools surface raw data, Ask-AI adds intelligence. Its pre-processing layer continuously analyzes every ticket, message, and customer interaction to extract meaningful context—before you ever ask a question. That means it can detect escalation risks based on tone or urgency, flag churn signals by combining sentiment, volume, and ACV, and surface renewal or upsell opportunities from subtle product feedback. Teams get real-time alerts on sensitive issues like outages or security mentions, while also uncovering macro trends like bug spikes or workflow bottlenecks. With Ask-AI, insights aren’t buried in data—they’re delivered, prioritized, and ready to act on.

Beyond retrieval: Native content generation and workflow automation

This is where Ask-AI creates a clear separation from generic search tools. The platform is designed to be an active participant in CX and GTM workflows, not a passive library.

• For Support: An agent can highlight a customer’s question in a ticket and have Ask-AI draft a complete, on-brand response that is grounded in the company’s official knowledge base. This is how monday.com achieved a 13.5% reduction in ticket handling time.
• For Customer Success: A CSM can use a one-click automation in Ask-AI to generate a complete account summary, pulling data on recent tickets, product usage, and key contacts from Salesforce and Zendesk. HiBob’s Customer Success team reduced call prep time from hours to minutes using this exact capability.
• For Sales: A sales rep can automatically generate a follow-up email after a demo, summarizing key discussion points and attaching relevant resources, all personalized to the prospect.

This isn’t just about saving time. It’s about elevating the quality and consistency of every customer interaction. It’s about selling the transformation, not just the tool.

Designed for adoption: AI where your teams already work

The best tool is the one your team actually uses. Ask-AI is designed to live inside the applications where your CX and GTM teams spend their day. Through our robust Slack integration and Chrome extension, users can access the full power of the platform without ever switching tabs.

• In Slack: Ask a question, summarize a thread, or trigger a workflow.
• In Zendesk: Get suggested answers, summarize tickets, and draft replies.
• In Salesforce: Pull up account histories and prepare for calls.

By bringing the AI to the user, we eliminate the friction that kills AI adoption for so many enterprise tools. We don’t give them another destination; we give them a superpower inside their existing environment.

The bottom line: Comparing Glean and Ask-AI for CX and GTM

To make the distinction clear, here’s a head-to-head comparison for CX and GTM use cases. While both are powerful platforms, they are optimized for fundamentally different jobs.

When you look at the landscape of Glean competitors, it becomes clear that the most effective solutions are not generic copies but specialized platforms that solve a specific, high-value problem.

How to choose the right enterprise search solution for your team

Navigating the market for enterprise AI can be overwhelming. Here’s a simple framework to help you make the right choice for your organization.

Step 1: Define your primary use case

Be brutally honest about the problem you’re trying to solve.

• Are you looking for a "Google for your company"? Is the primary goal to help employees across all departments find internal documents more easily? A horizontal solution like Glean might be a good fit.
• Are you trying to make your CX and GTM teams faster and more effective? Is the goal to reduce ticket handle times, increase sales productivity, and prevent customer churn? You need a purpose-built platform like Ask-AI that focuses on GTM outcomes.

Step 2: Evaluate the total cost of ownership (TCO)

Look beyond the sticker price. Consider the full investment:

• Licensing Fees: The upfront cost of the software.
• Implementation Costs: The resources and time required from your IT team to deploy and maintain the tool.
• Training Costs: The time your team will spend learning a new system.
• Cost of Low Adoption: What’s the cost of paying for a tool that only 20% of your employees use?

Step 3: Measure the path to ROI

How will you justify the investment? Vague promises of "increased productivity" are no longer enough. Demand clear, measurable outcomes.

• For a generic tool, ROI is often measured in soft metrics like "time saved searching."
• For a CX and GTM-specific tool like Ask-AI, ROI is measured in hard metrics that directly impact the bottom line:
  
  • Support: Reduction in average handle time, increase in first-contact resolution, ticket deflection rate.
  • Success: Faster new hire onboarding, reduction in churn, increase in net revenue retention.
  • Sales: Less time on call prep, higher quality customer interactions.

Yotpo, for example, saw a 20% reduction in internal support tickets and a 30% improvement in agent efficiency after implementing Ask-AI. That’s a tangible return.

Step 4: Prioritize the end-user experience

The most sophisticated AI in the world is useless if your team won’t use it. The critical question is: does this tool fit into my team's existing way of working, or does it force them to change their behavior?

Solutions that require users to open a new tab, log into a separate system, and manually search for information will always struggle with adoption. Platforms that are seamlessly embedded in the tools your team already loves—like Slack—will feel less like another piece of software and more like an intuitive extension of their own capabilities.

The final verdict: Why the best Glean competitors are specialists

The market for enterprise AI is maturing. The era of one-size-fits-all tools is giving way to a new generation of specialized, AI-native platforms that deliver tangible results for specific business functions.

For CX and GTM leaders, the choice is becoming clearer. While generic search tools can help you find what you’re looking for, a purpose-built AI platform for CX and GTM helps your team do what’s needed. It closes the gap between information and action, between data and revenue.

If you’re simply looking for a better way to search your company’s files, there are many options. But if you’re looking for a way to transform how your Sales, Support, and Success teams operate, you need more than a search bar. You need an AI partner.

Ready to see the difference?

Ask-AI helps CX and GTM leaders scale faster, reduce tickets, and build trust—without adding headcount. Book a demo today to empower your team with responsible AI that delivers incredible customer experiences through your reps, help center, and product.