According to Gartner, the market for Conversational AI platform providers is extremely varied both in terms of positioning strategies by vendors and in the needs of companies.
Selecting the best solution is strategic for the success of your business.
HOW TO choose the ideal CONVERSATIONAL AI platform provider
Conversational AI platforms providers are the technology on which the development of chatbots and virtual agents is based and represent a vast and rapidly changing market.
There are an estimated 2000 vendors on the CAIP market globally which differ in terms of capabilities, supported languages and strategies.
For this reason, decision makers need tools to segment and evaluate the market in order to guide their actions in terms of choices, investments and skills to be involved.
In this regard, Gartner recommends limiting the selection to vendors capable of providing the level of sophistication necessary to ensure success and return on investment.
The level of sophistication of Conversational AI platform providers varies significantly.
FEATURES OF THE CONVERSATIONAL AI platform
Key factors that increase complexity include:
The number and complexity of integrations into back-end or external management systems, such as authentication services, CRM, ticketing systems, etc. which can contribute to the complexity of a project.
The sophistication of the customer’s domain model:
The number and type of communication channels with the customer and the methods of interaction (for example: developing a chatbot that manages only text is less complex than developing a chatbot that includes images or voice interactions).
The possible orchestration of multiple chatbots or VAs (virtual assistants) to be allocated to different uses, which can increase the structural complexity of a project.
The number of utterances and intents to support and related training data generation, tuning and management tasks, which further increase the level of complexity.
The number of languages and language variants to manage, which affects the level of sophistication of the solution.
As emerges from the Gartner report:
The right tools mitigate the complexity of designing, developing and maintaining solutions. The more demanding the solutions, the more the importance of robust tools grows.
Gartner
HOW TO IDENTIFY CONVERSATIONAL AI PLATFORM VENDORS
In this regard, Gartner distinguishes 3 ways of categorizing vendors:
1) WHO WILL TAKE CARE OF THE CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE OF THE SOLUTION?
In this regard, the market is divided into three macro-categories:
Application development: define whether CAIPs require NLP-level development skills or make connection APIs available to developers.
and large-scale implementations require constant monitoring, so dedicating internal development figures could be prohibitive in terms of scalability and maintenance.
Line of business (LOB): check whether CAIPs provide low-code/no-code tools for training and maintenance of intent and dialogue design that enable front-line staff to be autonomous in management and maintenance.
Managed by vendor: If the development and maintenance of the platform is managed by the vendor. An appropriate positioning could be one in which the development and maintenance activity of the vendor overlaps with the management autonomy of the business people.
2) WHAT IS THE OBJECTIVE OF USE?
Cost reduction: reduce the number of resources allocated to particular processes as a function of cost cutting policies.
Enhancement of resources: increase the level of quality of work, using conversational AI to support people, decision making strategies and compliance.
Growth and innovation: increase business opportunities through innovation and the opening of previously non-existent channels, for example by integrating a bot into the messaging management of social platforms such as Whatsapp, Telegram or Facebook Messenger.
3) WHAT IS THE TARGET OF THE conversational AI PLATFORM SOLUTION?
Customers: conversational AI solutions for the end customer must take into account the wide variety of language, the potential use of colloquial words, different vocabulary and phonetic spelling used in the description of products and services.
Employees: business partners and other users who require specific tasks. The language in this case will include specific terms, acronyms and abbreviations, in a more transactional level of interaction.
Consumers: Usually the words consumers and customers are synonymous, but in sectors such as the media, for example, customers are the buyers of advertising space, while consumers are the target audience. In this case, integrations with products used by consumers are typical, such as web and mobile applications, speakers, etc.
simple, fast and independent
To the guidelines provided by Gartner, we add the key aspects of “simplicity”, “speed” and “autonomy”, which characterize No Code AI platforms such as Crafter.ai
In the Conversational AI Software market, No Code platforms allow users of all experience levels and companies of all sizes to access the benefits of conversational AI with no need to hire specialized resources or get a system integrator’s support.
Simplicity: you don’t need to be a technician to use the platform. The user interface must be simple and intuitive in guiding the user through the chatbot creation process, from simple Q&A up to increasingly more complex solutions, which include the possibility of customizing the conversational flow.
Speed: the integration of generative AI and fast training are features capable of making both the bot creation process extremely rapid, allowing the automatic creation of Q&As and related answers thanks to generative AI, as well as a rapid implementation , thanks to an extremely fast training.
Autonomy: no code platforms such as Crafter.ai allow users total autonomy both in the activities of updating the Q&As and the bot’s knowledge base, and in the activities aimed at refining the chatbot’s response capacity, through the customization of conversational flows and the management of any messages that the bot may have not understood properly (miss).
HOW HAS THE CAIP MARKET CHANGED WITH THE ADVENT OF GENERATIVE AI?
The advent of generative AI has further changed the landscape of conversational AI software, introducing new possibilities and challenges in selecting the right vendor.
Generative AI-based solutions can create content and responses autonomously, paving the way for more fluid and personalized conversations.
However, this new technology requires more through evaluation during the vendor selection process, as it requires a more advanced understanding of natural language generation capabilities and machine learning models.
When evaluating conversational AI vendors, it is important to consider not only the technical characteristics and capabilities of the platform, but also their experience in implementing generative AI-based solutions and attention to the supervision and monitoring aspects of LLMs, to ensure that you do not run into “hallucinations ” of the generative AI or in incorrect responses from the chatbot.
In conclusion, choosing the right conversational AI platform for your needs requires an in-depth evaluation of the available vendors, taking into account technical criteria, natural language generation capabilities and industry experience. With careful evaluation and a clear understanding of your business objectives, you can find the ideal solution to drive your business success through conversational AI.
