Constellation ShortList™ Conversational AI

About This Constellation ShortList™

Conversational AI platforms are about humans and computer systems having an intelligent digital interaction. While chatbots have traditional been the earliest use cases and limited to basic information delivery (eg: self-service FAQ responses), as GenerativeAI advances, these copilots and assistants not only interact to solve problems, but can engage with personality —and even empathy—to create dynamic bi-directional experiences between humans and machines.

It uses a combination of AI technologies such as machine learning (ML), natural language understanding (NLU), and natural language processing (NLP) to establish robust sentiment and tone analysis, intent understanding, and cognitive analysis. The last year saw a boom in Generative AI models enabling chatbots and virtual assistants to better understand and respond to natural language, generate personalized responses and create content that is more resonant to a user’s specific questions, situation or needs.

Enterprise Conversational AI systems are used in many applications including chatbots, virtual personal assistants, Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA), Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems, voice assistants, virtual concierge, and intelligent copilots. The earliest use case successes have emerged from service and the contact center where conversational AI applications have delivered exceptional experiences while optimizing operational costs and driving process efficiencies. Today we continue to see more efficient and effective conversational AI systems being prototyped, beta tested, and rolled out across the enterprise as “co-pilots” focused on both functional and industry specific tasks, especially in retail, healthcare, education, transportation, e-commerce, entertainment, hospitality, insurance, banking, and financial services.

Expect to see added pressure put on this space as enterprise technology leaders continue to voice concerns around training, access to proper data/systems, oversight, compliance, maintenance, accuracy of personalization and localization have been addressed. While many software platforms have integrated conversational AI capabilities into their suites, the solutions on this shortlist are, by and large, those that can be implemented and integrated into larger enterprise stacks but typically stand alone and are not dependent on a single vendor’s platform.

Threshold Criteria

Constellation considers the following criteria for these solutions:

• Context awareness 
• Support for multiple most common human languages 
• Automated reinforcement learning to improve outcomes 
• Capacity to understand user intents and needs, personalizing conversations based on real time customer context 
• Automated workflows including case escalation to smoothly transition service to an available human agent 
• Customizable workflow management 
• Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities 
• Natural Language Understanding (NLU) capabilities 
• Access to generative AI capabilities including integration with closed or open source LLMS 
• Integrated with backend systems (ERP, HR, etc) 
• Integrated with front end CX systems (CRM, Service, Knowledge and content management systems) 
• Localization capabilities 
• Security, Privacy, Authentication and Compliance 
• Options to understand accents, pronunciation, emotions, sentiment, sarcasm, idioms, and colloquialism 
• Robust conversational analytics and reporting 
• Scalability 
• Omnichannel capability 
• Industry specific enhancements