Chatbots are making it possible for any company—regardless of size—to deliver fast support for their customers. Now, with the addition of conversational artificial intelligence (AI), chatbot responses can go one step further and mimic real human conversation with recommendations tailored to each customer. The development of a conversational AI chatbot means more questions are answered quicker, giving your customers a better experience and your team more time to handle complex problems that need a human touch.
Chatbot vs. Conversational AI: What’s the Difference?
The terms chatbot and conversational AI are often used interchangeably, but they’re actually slightly different.
A chatbot is a program designed to answer basic customer questions. The simplest type of chatbot uses if-then logic. For example, an online chat asks what type of help a customer needs and then displays an option menu. If the customer selects “Reset Password,” then the chatbot will respond with a link to the Help Guide for resetting passwords. If they choose “Other,” then the chatbot will connect them with a live representative. More advanced types of chatbots use AI technology to search large databases such as a help center and formulate a response.
Conversational AI refers to a specific type of AI that’s been trained to recognize speech or text inputs, use algorithms to determine the user’s intent, and respond in a human-like way. Think Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, or Google’s Gemini. This type of AI mimics human interactions and, when trained well enough, can even pass for a human representative.
Not all online chatbots are equipped with conversational AI technology, but when they are, the result is a conversational AI chatbot.
5 Benefits of Conversational AI Chatbots
Conversational AI chatbots are far superior to the rudimentary chatbot model because they offer key benefits like:
Improved Customer Experience
Unlike human employees, a conversational AI chatbot doesn’t need to eat or sleep, so you can offer a Live Chat on your website that’s available 24/7 to help users. The increased availability, faster response times, and personalized experience result in an improved customer experience that will increase brand loyalty.
Efficiency in Handling Inquiries and Tasks
A survey of 1,000 companies by SuperOffice found the average customer service response time is 12 hours, yet 46% of customers expect a response within 4 hours. A conversational AI chatbot streamlines customer communication, ensuring every user receives a prompt response to their inquiry. It also can engage with the customer to identify the type of support they need, and then direct them to the appropriate team for assistance. This drastically improves operational efficiency so tasks are completed promptly.
Cost-Effectiveness and Scalability for Businesses
AI-powered chatbots are the key to increasing productivity without significantly raising costs. A conversational AI chatbot can handle all of the simple and repetitive tasks that take up large portions of the workday. This allows your customer service team to optimize their daily operations and allocate more resources to high-attention areas that need extra support. This makes them more productive as a team and paves the way for future growth. Unlike a human representative, a conversational AI chatbot has no limit to how many customers it can help at a time, making it easy to grow your business without your customer service team being overwhelmed or your customer satisfaction taking a dip.
Greater Lead Generation
Conversational AI chatbots aren’t just for current customers; they’re also fantastic at nurturing prospective customers. In fact, some companies incorporate their conversational AI chatbot into their sales model because of its success in improving lead generation efforts. Personalized recommendations and positive interactions go a long way toward converting new leads into paying customers.
Enhanced Data Collection
AI functions by collecting and analyzing data and then formulating a response based on its findings. This means you can use your conversational AI chatbot to gather and organize vast amounts of data regarding customer behaviors, pain points, attributes, and more to give you deeper insights into how your customers think and feel about your products and services. This data will enable you to make more informed decisions that will drive productivity and growth.
4 Use Cases of Conversational AI Chatbots Across Industries
One of the best things about conversational AI chatbots is their versatility. Their ability to interact with and learn from human inputs coupled with advanced data analysis capabilities make them the ultimate virtual assistant for any industry.
Customer Support and Service
AI chatbots are excellent at troubleshooting and providing customer support. A conversational AI chatbot in the customer support/customer service world could look like a virtual assistant on the company website, a live chat on the mobile app, or even automated support responses on social media.
Sales and Lead Generation
Any sales rep will agree that the more you can get a prospective client to talk, the more you’ll learn about them and how to tailor your sales pitch to their pain point. Conversational AI chatbots are communication pros. They can analyze online behavior and then tailor their approach to match what’s been successful with past converted leads who exhibited similar behaviors. This data-driven approach to lead nurturing drives more qualified leads to your sales team. Plus, once a lead expresses interest in making a purchase, the conversational AI chatbot can easily schedule an appointment with a company representative or help the customer complete their purchase online.
Personalized Marketing and Recommendations
The top AI chatbots are always collecting and mining data, which means they can analyze and understand a customer’s buying choices in seconds. Using pattern recognition algorithms, they can then predict and recommend the products that are the best fit for a specific customer and even upsell related products to them.
Human Resources (HR) Management
63% of HR professionals rank onboarding/offboarding as the most time-consuming part of their job. An AI chatbot can help your resident HR team source candidates across multiple channels, as well as automate many portions of employee training, freeing up time for other important tasks.
The 10 Best Conversational AI Tools of 2024
Podium
Podium’s AI Employee is one of the most versatile conversational AI tools on the market today. With its advanced language-processing capabilities, It can take the place of an employee and perform manual tasks like answering customer questions, scheduling appointments, checking inventory, and following up with leads. What sets our AI Employee apart from other conversational AI tools is that it can handle these tasks from start to finish without any human oversight.
Podium offers two standard plans and a custom pricing option.
ChatGPT
Known as the original AI chatbot, ChatGPT is a text-based conversational AI chatbot by OpenAI. One of ChatGPT’s biggest draws is its proficiency in STEM knowledge, which enables it to solve mathematical equations as well as write and debug code.
ChatGPT is free to the public and no longer requires an account to use.
Claude
Claude is a conversational AI trained by Anthropic. One feature that makes Claude stand out from other conversational AI chatbots is its ability to work with uploaded documentation. Users can upload any file and then request Claude provide a summary, clarify points within the document, etc.
Claude currently has three versions: Free, Pro ($20/person), and Team ($30/person).
Gemini (Formerly Google Bard)
Gemini is Google’s conversational AI chatbot. One of the biggest pros to using Gemini is it sources answers from the web and provides footnotes for responses, making it easy to fact-check. It’s also capable of generating images.
Gemini has a free version and a Gemini Advanced version only available as part of the Google One AI Premium Plan for $19.99/month.
Zapier Chatbots
Powered by OpenAI, Zapier Chatbots is a program offered by Zapier that allows users to build and train their own conversational AI chatbots. Zapier Chatbots are powered by automation and can be embedded on websites or shared with team members and external parties.
Zapier Chatbots is free to start, but Premium and Advanced plans will have additional customization and configuration options.
Meta Llama 2
Llama 2 is an open-source AI trained by Meta. This AI chatbot has been pre-trained on a specific dataset to promote accuracy. Llama 2 was trained on 40% more data than the previous iteration, Llama 1, and it’s accessible to all businesses who agree to use it responsibly.
Llama 2 is free for research and commercial use.
Pi
Pi sets itself apart as the first emotionally intelligent conversational AI chatbot. It’s minimalistic in design, making it a great AI chat buddy but not such a great AI assistant. It cannot generate content like other AI chatbots can, but it will remember conversations you’ve had with it even after leaving the website.
Pi is free to the public.
Poe
Known as the AI chatbot aggregator, Poe allows users to access multiple AI chatbots in one place. It’s designed as a personal AI companion that can answer questions and give recommendations on food, travel, and more. Users can even create and train their own conversational AI chatbot that will then be available to other Poe users.
Poe offers Free, Pro, and Business plans.
Perplexity
The Perplexity AI chatbot is known for its user-friendliness. It’s connected to the internet, which means it can draw on current news articles for responses to user queries. In addition to its online platform, Perplexity also has a mobile app available for both iOS and Android so users can ask questions on the go.
Perplexity AI is free to the public.
Grok
Grok’s conversational AI chatbot is unique in that it’s been modeled after the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Answers are witty, humorous, and sometimes a little spicy. Grok is a fairly new conversational AI, but its purpose is to help with research and innovation by not only answering questions but even prompting what questions to ask next.
Grok is currently in beta testing and is only available to a limited number of users in the United States.
Boost Your Customer Satisfaction with Podium
Ready to start incorporating AI into your business’s day-to-day operations? Podium’s AI Employee will give you all the capabilities of a regular conversational AI chatbot and more. It can schedule appointments, follow up with customers, nurture leads, and help you boost sales—all without any additional human oversight. Plus, it sounds like a human!
Get a demo of Podium to learn more about how our AI Employee can help you manage customers more effectively.
