Conversational AI Can Replace Human Employees And Double Your Profit. Learn How

Softensy
8 min readMar 12, 2021

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By Maryna Cherednychenko

According to the Conversational AI Market report, the market volume will grow four times in 2024 compared to 2019. In monetary units, this figure will be $15.7 million compared to the current $4.2 million. The primary use case is running chat and voice bots for customer care. It brings gains to both clients and business owners. The former get classy service, and the latter cut down costs. If you don’t want to lag behind your competitors, you should think of using AI. No matter if you sell everyday goods or narrow focus items, you will benefit from robot experts.

What Are Artificial Intelligence Platforms?

Artificial intelligence platforms provide a set of tools for creating smart virtual assistants that mimic human cognitive functions. As a rule, such platforms offer ready-made solutions and different customization levels to design a bot that will meet your requirements. In some cases, you need to code a lot; in others — construct an AI bot from off-the-shelf units.

The choice of platform depends on your purpose. For simple operations, you may want to pick up standard solutions. They are suitable for basic bots that extract the prepared answers to specific requests from the database. For more complex tasks, you need a superior bot that can think and analyze. The top-level species can read between the lines and even joke!

Before we move on to exploring the AI platforms, let’s briefly look at the history of the bot’s creation and consider current trends in the field of conversational interface.

Conversational AI Evolution

The history of artificial intelligence software began with the Turing test in 1950. Ten years later, the coders released Eliza — an early language recognition program. After that, scientific research continued in the field of linguistics and machine learning.

In 2001, Richard Wallace came up with the Artificial Intelligence markup language or AIML. Later, it was used to create a chatbot ALICE. To this day, ALICE is considered the most successful program. To communicate with a person, she uses predefined patterns. In simple words, ALICE has a knowledge base to pick up the right answers to particular questions.

The next generation of chatbots is more advanced. To generate a response, they use the text of the message and the context of the dialogue. They may produce a new answer which is not in the database. The fantastic thing is that some bots can understand idioms and symbolic meanings. For example, a sentimental upgrade of the Watson robot enables it to get a sense of phrases like “In seventh heaven” or “Eat one’s words.”

Communication with ALICE chatbot

Current Trends Of Conversational AI

Speaking bots are continually evolving to respond to new business demands. In 2021, we expect to see them more social, witty, and helpful. Besides, the AI and bots are going to upgrade user experience entering IoT and augmented reality. Let’s take a more precise look at the up-to-date prospects.

Code-free platforms provide an easy way to integrate virtual assistants into your shop. You can do it even if you are not a developer or don’t want to hire one. As a rule, code-free bots can answer repeated questions and are suitable for performing simple tasks.

Staff assistants aim to help your employees do the work with high quality. Make an appointment, send an email, book a meeting room — all these tasks take up almost 25% of the working time. Enterprise app bots can take these easy steps and leave more time for direct duties.

Sensitive bots are a rare species of AI you can talk to. They remember the topics of previous talks, learn users’ tastes, and guess the feelings. Such bots act like human beings. Thanks to this, they enhance clients’ confidence and boost the level of sales.

Augmented reality helps users try on clothes in an online store or see how the chair from the furniture store will look in their room. Large retailers, such as IKEA and Amazon, are already introducing this technology. However, it is not in demand because users are not sure how to use it. AI chatbots can smooth the shopping journey by giving proper hints.

Chatbot guides users through AR

App managing bots organize data from all the apps installed on the device. According to Statista, an average user runs 30 apps daily. The multipurpose bot may combine all reminders and alerts into a single system. Also, it can perform some actions with the consent of the user.

Personified bots engage users in a dynamic dialogue. People prefer chatting with wise Alexa, sassy Siri, and attentive Sophie rather than with impersonal bots. Giving your character individual touches of nature, you take UX to a higher level.

Voice assistants crowd out text bots. They are available on the go: while walking or driving. Such accessibility saves time and helps get the requested information at any time and in any place.

Multilingual bots are the must-have if you trade worldwide. Note that English-speaking people make up only 20% of the total population. So, make sure your AI expert speaks the languages of the target audience.

Machine-to-machine communication and IoT allow managing a smart home, daily expenses, office facilities, and much more. For example, you may tell your bot to switch off the light or turn on the printer. Also, you can ask it to display the latest spendings or contact the support service.

Data visualization displays patterns of user behavior in a graphic form. While speaking with clients, bots learn their shopping choices, attitudes to promotions, reactions to price change. They supply top managers with useful infographics that contribute to sales growth.

Сonversational AI trends

Best Conversational AI Platforms

Let’s take a look at the top AI platforms you can use to interact with clients, in-house activities, and B2B relations.

IntelliTicks

A multipurpose AI conversation platform aims to supply you with tiresome employees who are ready to work around the clock. Besides, it has a human reserve option. It means that you can separate duties and assign simple tasks to robots and complex functions to people. Thus, you will reduce the salary fund and save skilled specialists from routine work.

The service integrates with popular messengers like Facebook Messenger and Zapier. So, you can organize support through the usual channels keeping the clients in the comfort zone.

IntelliTicks has a free plan and three types of a paid plans. You can start with zero expenses and upgrade to more advanced features if it works for you.

IntelliTicks benefits:

  • Combined robot&human support
  • Communication via habitual channels
  • A well-stocked template library
  • Built-in payment gateway
  • Rich knowledgebase
  • Chatbot building with no code
  • Free plan and trial

Chatfuel

It is a primary chatbot platform for Facebook Messenger. They provide an easy way to integrate bot assistants. You can set up everything without specific knowledge and coding skills. Chatfuel produces multilanguage bots, so you can successfully run the business in any country or region.

It provides a payment gateway for American users. For the rest of the clients, it gives Stripe payment.

With all the pros, Chatfuel has restricted AI and Natural Language Processing solutions. So, it is better to use it for standard recurring questions.

Chatfuel benefits:

  • Ready bot templates
  • Individual messaging to each client
  • Mailout with the help of AI bots
  • Conversations in many languages
  • Free plan up to 1000 participants
  • Analytics dashboard
  • Free plan and trial

Verloop

It is an excellent choice for marketing automation. Verloop robotizes FAQs, demos, wizards, registrations, lead generation, lead scoring, and many other things. The virtual assistant gives your clients step-by-step instructions and solves emerging issues with human attention and care.

You can build the bot using drag and drop features and train it to answer business-related questions. Verloop bot speaks many languages, which enables you to provide AI customer service all over the world.

Verloop benefits:

  • Integration with more than 1000 apps
  • Drag-and-drop interface
  • Lead qualification
  • Schedule meetings
  • Huge base of predefined replies
  • Free plan and trial
Easy communication with Verloop

Engati

It is a powerful conversation AI platform that integrates with the most popular messengers. They are Skype, Kik, FB Messenger, Telegram, Slack, and Line. Among other things, Engati bots deliver training, set private labeling, and analyze work results. They are smart enough not only to give canned responses but to understand the context of the dialogue.

The bots are available 24/7 at your clients’ service. If they face a complex issue, they pass it to human colleagues.

Engati benefits:

  • In-context communication
  • Fast construction of bots
  • Easy customization
  • White Label solutions
  • Free plan and trial

Zoho SalesIQ

It provides a lot of chatbot AI tools to optimize the site workflow. You can track visitors, analyze their behavior, receive reports and recommendations for further marketing steps. Besides, Zoho bots support clients via text or voice channels setting a pleasant user experience. For good or bad, you have to be a skilled programmer to work with Zoho tools. Be ready to write some code to connect with the database and create a virtual assistant as per your needs.

Zoho SalesIQ benefits:

  • Visitors tracking and analysis
  • Team management
  • Automatic emails
  • CRM-based triggers
  • Mobile apps for Android and iOS
  • Free plan and trial

Choose Your Intelligent Way

People created robots to make life easier. Artificial intelligence review proves effectiveness in business activities. Finally, you can get rid of low-skilled tasks and free up time for more creative activities. Just like a human employee, a more advanced robot is more expensive than a simple one. Therefore, before developing, determine the range of tasks it will do and the result you expect to receive. If you are in doubt about your choice, drop us a line. We will assist in building conversational AI.

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Softensy
Softensy

Written by Softensy

Softensy specializes in fintech development and enterprise-level apps. Our team helps companies automate business processes by developing software solutions.

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