Conversational AI
Conversational AI solutions–including chatbots, voice assistants, and virtual agents, have become extraordinarily popular over the last few years. The global conversational AI market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 22%, reaching almost US$14 billion by 2025.
Data from various conversational AI vendors showed that the volume of interactions handled by conversational agents increased by as much as 250% in multiple industries. These solutions are already delivering significant value for many organizations.
Those currently using conversational AI have great expectations for the tech innovation in particular:
In fact, 76% say that conversational AI/ chatbot capabilities are revolutionizing business communications, and 72% believe these capabilities will increase company profitability and revenue and lower company risks.
The internet is full of “conversational AI” tools and finding the right ones can become difficult. That’s why we have arranged our top 14 conversational AI platforms that you can choose from to get started.
While conversation is natural and intuitive, it's also a complex construct. Even the simplest interaction has layers of richness and nuance. Every time a customer interacts with a brand, they bring purpose, problem, need or a question.
Not selecting a conversational AI around the needs of your customers can hamper customer experience. That’s why it's important to identify features before considering a conversational AI platform that can seamlessly mimic human interactions and deliver customer-centred conversations.
To get a better idea of the industry experience of your chatbot provider, consider asking them the following questions:
This will give you an understanding of how well the conversational chatbot will perform for your business.
Getting the combination right will help you design a conversational AI tool that’s ready for and can deal with human unpredictability in a natural way. Speaking to a good AI agent shouldn't feel like talking to a robot.
For instance: Synthflow AI offers 11Labs integrations to enhance its AI voice capabilities. You can choose from hundreds of different voices or clone your voice. Syhthflow guardrail top LLMs like Llama and OpenAI's GPT-3 through GPT-4o. It also offers multilingual and accents—from Australian and British to Argentinian Spanish to support effective communication. This makes it a versatile tool for global businesses
Moreover, customer service automation powered by AI is transforming how brands handle customer interactions, allowing businesses to resolve queries faster while improving user satisfaction.
Ask your conversational AI providers about future integrations, timelines and how receptive they are to custom requests.
Most AI bot platforms are SaaS solutions, which means they essentially check where data is hosted and if data centres are certified by industry standards. Here’s a list of compliance certificates necessary when choosing an conversational AI:
While the scale is important to ensure that customer experience is not affected, it's crucial to add personalization to customer interactions. It could be speaking the customer’s preferred language, having previous chat history, or sharing recommendations based on past preferences. Additionally, contact center automation enables businesses to streamline customer interactions, reduce wait times, and enhance overall service efficiency by automating repetitive tasks.
For this post, we evaluated several chatbots based on their ability to handle tasks like image generation, providing detailed explanations and information gathering. We assessed their responsiveness, creativity and accuracy.
Here are our top picks on the best conversational AI platforms according to their uses and capabilities:
Synthflow’s no-code and enterprise-ready capabilities set it apart. It allows users to create and customize voice agents and processes within the tool. This flexibility allows users to optimize their voice agents according to their business needs.
Synthflow uses unique custom models that provide customized performance and accuracy by owning and deploying models for particular applications and sectors. This helps the platform to grow with users without sacrificing speed or efficiency, whether a firm is just starting or expanding rapidly.
Synthflow AI charges $0.08/minute and comes with three paid plans-
ChatGpt is a cutting-edge conversational AI assistant powered by Open AI. It stands out from competitors with its ability to understand and communicate in natural, human-like frequency. The platform is trained on a massive amount of data to function. Open AI claims that they’ve fed Chatgpt with 300 million from websites, books, articles, and posts.
In just five days, ChatGPT crossed 100 million users, making it the fastest-growing conversational AI in history.
OpenAI offers several ChatGPT subscription plans to cater to different user needs:
Zendesk’s newly launched AI agents are designed to autonomously handle a range of customer service requests–from basic FAQs to complex queries. It seamlessly integrates with the Zendesk ticketing system, providing a quick and efficient way to handle customer queries and transfer them to human agents when necessary.
Zendesk customers only pay for successful AI query resolutions rather than a flat fee per agent.
Businesses can purchase additional AI agent resolutions at $1.50 each, with potential discounts for larger volumes. A pay-as-you-go option is also available at $2 per resolution, providing flexibility for businesses unsure of their baseline usage.
Retell is a middleware layer that allows you to bring your own LLM and phone provider. For early- stage companies that have a quick project to put up and have an assistant API or other LLM, Retell makes it easier to connect to do phone calls. Overall, Retell AI excels in providing a low-code infrastructure where you can access powerful APIs for agent creation, updates, and initiating phone calls.
For those requiring a complete setup of telephony, LLM agent, knowledge base and phone numbers, total costs generally range between $0.13 and $0.31 per minute, with monthly totals varying based on minutes used and features selected.
IBM Watson Assistant is an AI-powered conversational solution that is ideal for different types of businesses. It uses advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand user intent and provide accurate human-like responses. The platform supports both voice and text-based interactions, making it versatile for various use cases.
IBM Watson offers three pricing plans:
Yellow.ai is an enterprise-grade conversational AI platform for leading brands, including Sony, Hyundai, Domino’s and more. It’s built on a multi-LLM architecture that is trained through billions of conversations on this dynamic automation platform. Yellow.ai is fluent in over 135 languages and supports over 35 channels. You can reduce operating costs by automating conversations across email, text and voice.
Yellow.ai offers two plans, including:
Developed with the aim of simplifying phone-based transactions, Goodcall leverages the power of GPT and NLP algorithms to engage in human-like interaction with recipients. You can teach your AI agent custom responses based on common customer queries, and it suggests new skills based on caller questions to continuously improve.
Goodcall offers subscription-based pricing starting at $59/month.
Amazon Lex is a modern service tool powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that is used for building conversational and interactive chatbots and virtual assistants. You can integrate Amazon Lex to answer complex questions using data enterprise knowledge repositories. Quickly build and deploy chatbots or voice bots to mobile devices and other chat services so users can pause and restart multi-turn conversations as needed.
Amazon Lex works on a pay-as-you-go pricing model, ensuring cost-effectiveness and accessibility for businesses of all sizes.
You can try Amazon Lex for free. You can process up to 10,000 text requests and 5,000 speech requests or speech intervals per month at no cost for the first year.
Vocode.dev is the only open-source voice assistant tool in this list. This platform provides tools and abstractions to build voice agents on top of LLMs. With Vocode.dev, you can create a system that answers/makes phone calls, acts as a personal assistant, joins Zoom meetings and more.
Like Play AI, Vocode.dev also offers a free plan along with two paid plans, including:
Slang AI is designed specifically for restaurants and is built keeping both operators and customers in mind. This AI voice assistant allows restaurants to take reservations, answer questions and satisfy callers with appropriate answers. Slang AI is easy to onboard, install, and get started with, ensuring that the restaurant remains operational 24/7.
Slang AI offers two paid plans starting at $299 per month.
Calldesk works best for businesses that want to automate repetitive customer service calls with AI-powered voice agents, allowing the support team to focus on high-level interactions. When the AI voice agent encounters a query that they couldn’t solve, it seamlessly handles it to a human agent, maintaining overall customer satisfaction.
Contact the support team for a customized pricing plan.
Developed by a team of Ph.D. AI researchers and audio engineers, Phonely.AI is leading the way in voice assistance. Setting up Phonely.AI is quick and easy; simply connect your website to build an AI voice agent in minutes. Phonely can transfer calls, take appointments, and handle product returns, all in real time.
Phonely.AI offers four paid plans, including:
Bland AI is a phone calling system that leverages its API to seamlessly send and receive AI phone calls. The system includes live call transfers, allowing calls to be transferred to a human agent when the predefined criteria are met. Bland supports various use cases including AI answering machine, AI telemarketing, AI receptionist, and AI IVR.
Bland AI offers usage-based pricing starting at $0.09/minute.
Play AI is an AI voice technology that is accessible and easy to adopt. The platform allows users to build delightful AI voice agents for various use cases. Play AI API provides developers an AI voice stack that can be easily integrated into any AI agent, application or device.
Play AI offers a free plan where you can create unlimited agents, 30 minutes of voice calls and API access.
Beside this Play AI offers four paid plans:
By offering businesses more personalized experiences, efficiency, and operational scalability than ever before, AI-powered voice bots are reshaping the world of customer service. With their ability to handle complex inquiries, respond with empathy, and continuously learn from interactions, these AI bots are transforming traditional customer service into a seamless 24/7 powerhouse.
And, if you’re wondering about your next steps as a business owner, think of a conversation AI solution that provides a seamless conversation between a brand and its customers.
Synthflow's no-code, drag-and-drop interface allows users to set up a voice agent in minutes without needing any technical knowledge or coding ability. It can seamlessly handle a large volume of calls across all timelines and languages.
Want to try a free demo to see how you can replace your traditional call centres with AI voice bots? Sign up here.