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Finding the right platform to build your chat or voice solution on is not an easy task. Currently, there are 300+ bot platforms on the market each offering its own unique combination of features, capabilities and pricing models. That includes NLU only platforms, LLM only, and all manner of hybrid platforms.
Ease of use: The platform should be intuitive and user-friendly, with a low learning curve for both technical and non-technical users.
Customization and flexibility: The platform should allow for customization of the chatbot's personality, tone, and responses to fit the brand's voice and specific use cases.
Integration capabilities: Ideally, the platform integrates with your existing systems, such as CRM, ERP, and other business applications.
Scalability: The platform should be able to handle increasing workloads and growing user bases without compromising performance.
Security and privacy: The platform should adhere to industry standards for data security and privacy, protecting sensitive customer information.
Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities: The platform should possess strong NLP capabilities to accurately understand and respond to user queries, even in complex or ambiguous situations.
Analytics and insights: The platform should provide detailed analytics and insights into user interactions, allowing businesses to measure the effectiveness of their chatbot and identify areas for improvement.
Cost-effectiveness: The platform should offer a competitive pricing model that aligns with the business's budget and scale of operations.
Vendor support: The vendor should provide reliable and responsive customer support to assist with any issues or questions that may arise.
Every Conversational AI operation is unique. Your strategy, technology environment, and organizational resources will combine to leave you with a specific set of requirements and give a different weight to each of the criteria mentioned above.
Picking the wrong chatbot platform is like starting with one hand tied behind your back. Instead, you want to find a platform that matches your requirements with the right balance of capabilities and features.
Amazon Lex is a scalable and flexible framework for building conversational interfaces powered by AWS. It provides built-in integration with Amazon Web Services, including AWS Lambda, Amazon S3, and Amazon DynamoDB, and offers support for advanced features such as automatic speech recognition (ASR) and natural language understanding (NLU).
Amelia is a powerful AI platform for building virtual assistants that understand natural language. It uses advanced technology for smooth, multi-turn conversations. These 24/7 assistants, available in over 100 languages, can answer questions, guide users, and even automate tasks, leading to happier customers, more productive employees, and increased profits.
Boost.ai offers Conversational AI solutions for enterprises, focusing on chat and voice bots to automate customer service and enhance engagement. Their platform ensures scalable, secure, and consistent customer interactions across various channels, aiming to improve satisfaction and reduce costs.
Founded in Germany, Cognigy is a platform for building enterprise-grade chatbots. It uses AI to understand user conversations and automates tasks like customer service or technical support. It has great usability for the teams building and maintaining the chatbot and is often chosen by European enterprises for seamless GDPR compliance.
Developed by Google, Dialogflow is a powerful platform for building conversational interfaces, including chatbots, voice assistants, and IVR systems. It offers natural language understanding (NLU) capabilities, pre-built integrations with messaging platforms, and rich analytics for monitoring performance.
IBM Watson Assistant is a cognitive AI platform that enables developers to build and deploy conversational AI applications across multiple channels, including web, mobile, and messaging platforms. It offers pre-built integrations with IBM Cloud services, such as Watson Speech to Text and Watson Text to Speech, and supports multi-turn dialogue management and context retention.
Kore.ai is a low-code platform for businesses to create smart chatbots and virtual assistants. It offers tools for design, training, and deployment, helping companies automate tasks and improve customer and employee experiences.
Microsoft Bot Framework is a comprehensive framework for building Conversational AI applications using Microsoft technologies. It supports multiple programming languages, including C#, JavaScript, and Python, and provides SDKs for integrating with Microsoft Azure services, such as Azure Bot Service and Azure Cognitive Services.
Formerly known as Power Virtual Agent, this bot building platform has been augmented with the power of OpenAI’s LLM capabilities, and is quickly becoming a platform of choice for corporations to build their Conversational AI channels such as chatbots and virtual assistants for customers and employees alike.
OneReach.ai provides a no-code/low-code platform for creating and deploying Conversational AI applications across various channels like text, voice, WhatsApp, email, and Slack. This platform enables businesses and researchers to automate interactions and tasks easily, enhancing user experiences and operational efficiency.
A cutting edge, tech forward company that is one of the first who have created an LLM powered RAG solution with extensive guard rails that is reliable enough for commercial, customer facing applications. Well worth a look - and because of their size, clients can expect more personalized service.
Rasa is an open-source platform for building Conversational AI applications with a focus on natural language understanding (NLU) and dialogue management. It offers advanced features for handling complex conversations, managing context, and integrating with external systems, making it ideal for building custom chatbots and virtual assistants. Rasa is now also leveraging LLM power through products such as Rasa CALM.
Teneo.ai offers an AI-driven platform designed to enhance contact center performance by automating customer service interactions and improving conversational IVR systems. Teneo aims to boost AI efficiency quickly, integrating seamlessly to provide a proactive and personalized customer support experience.
Voiceflow is a low/no-code platform that enables companies to build and deploy Conversational AI applications powered by large language models. The platform provides a visual drag-and-drop interface, pre-built components, and integrations to streamline the development of chatbots, voice assistants, and other conversational experiences.
Here are a few things to keep in mind when you are building for scale:
Scalability and growth: Anticipate future growth and scalability requirements. Choose CAI platforms that can accommodate increased user volumes, expanded service offerings, and evolving customer needs without significant reconfiguration or performance issues. Scalable platforms should support additional channels, languages, and functionalities as your chatbot portfolio expands.
Flexibility in deployment: Evaluate whether the CAI platforms offer deployment options that fit your scalability goals. Are you looking to expand capabilities leveraging LLMs? You might want to talk to your vendor to get an idea of their roadmap going forward.
Future integration capabilities: Plan for an integrated omnichannel approach by selecting CAI platforms that support cross-channel interactions and data synchronization. Look for platforms that enable centralized management of customer interactions across web, app, whatsapp, voice, email, and possibly even social media.
Almost all of the bot platforms are integrating large language models (LLMs) into their offering to make sure you can augment your existing chatbot or voice assistant with Generative AI features. Leveraging LLMs in a smart way is half the battle.
What types of Generative AI vendors you can use AI models from may depend on the platform you are currently on. Some key vendors include:
OpenAI with their API and different GPT models
Anthropic offering Claude models and their Messages API
Cohere providing their Command models
Mistral AI with their commercial API offerings
Google's Vertex AI platform
IBM’s watsonx for enterprise AI
Azure’s OpenAI Services from Microsoft
AI21 Labs with their Jurassic models
Each vendor has its own model offering. Different LLMs compete in speed, cost per token, and relative intelligence. Some model providers provide specialized models optimized for specific tasks, while others focus more on generalized models and allow companies themselves to fine-tune their models if needed.
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