By Paula Quiroz
Conversational AI models (also known as AI chatbots—the technologies behind application interfaces that accept human input in natural language as text or voice and produce context-appropriate responses) have come a long way since they first hit the market 6 years ago.
Modern natural language generation has given rise to a wave of smart chatbots that can engage in impressively natural sounding conversations–allowing users to feel more comfortable speaking to a machine.
Top 3 Conversational AI Questions Answered:
1. What are the various departmental uses for conversational AI tools? Specifically, how can sales use it, marketing, etc.?
While the most popular use case for conversational AI and chatbots are in the contact center, there are lots of areas where conversational AI technology is rapidly growing.
In the area of sales, conversational AI can be used in the agent assist and coaching role where conversational AI can guide a sales executives to ensure that the sales methodology and playbook are being followed, providing next best steps for the sales exec based on the responses by the prospect or customer.
AI chatbots can also be used in sales to directly support electronic shopping by acting as personal shopping assistants on eCommerce sites to help shoppers locate or suggest alternative items based on their shopping or search history, just like an in-person sales assistant would assist a shopper physically in a store.
For marketing, smart chatbots can interact with visitors on a website and gather contact info to generate leads and automatically schedule follow-up meetings with human sales reps.
Chatbots are also capable of placing outbound interactive phone calls with potential clients to generate a sales funnel for later follow-up by human sales representatives.
2. What are some green flags to look out for when selecting a chatbot AI vendor? Is there a guide for selecting a conversational AI tool?
Some of the items outlined in this webinar should be considered must haves for a conversational AI solution.
These specifically being a no-code interface for building and deploying chatbot solutions, pre-trained models that are specific to an enterprise’s domain, and a good understanding of how easy a solution is to deploy and modify.
There are many other features to consider, however they are really dependent on the requirements and planned use cases that are planned.
As mentioned in the webinar, Aragon Research publishes an annual Globe on Conversational AI, with this year’s Globe covering 20 providers.
The report covers the current state of the market as well as providing details on the strengths, challenges, and feature capabilities of these 20 providers that are making a difference in the market.
3. How big is the conversational AI market?
The conversational AI market has been growing at a rapid rate for the last several years and is showing no sign of slowing down.
One of Aragon Research’s subscription services called Aragon Foresight provides detailed market forecasts for 16 separate software markets as well as a series of 20 proven toolkits and methodologies.
Our Digital Labor forecast has the digital labor market at around $5 B currently and rapidly growing to almost $14 B by 2026 with a CAGR of 30%.
This is a sizable market that is growing at a rapid pace.
Want to learn more? Watch our latest on-demand webinar on conversational AI applications.
Putting Digital Labor to Work
Aragon’s Senior Director of Research, Craig Kennedy discusses the current state of the smart chatbot market and why it is now a must-have technology for the digital enterprise.
Craig answers the following questions:
- How did chatbots get so darn smart?
- What are some of the key trends in 2022?
- Why should enterprises employ artificial intelligence chatbots?