Chatbots vs Conversational AI vs Virtual Assistants: Whats the Difference?

A good customer base increases brand awareness, improving brand credibility. The conversation process becomes more complicated (and time-consuming) when a rule-based chatbot transfers the connection to a live agent without resolving the issue. When shopping, a customer surfs different websites to find the best value. An effective e-commerce website will resolve customers’ questions instead of losing sales. When the customers don’t get answers instantly, they might seek the products elsewhere.

Wiley’s Head of Content claims after having implemented the application, their bounce rate dropped from 64% to only 2%. Conversational AI is the name for AI technology tools behind conversational experiences with computers, allowing it to converse ‘intelligently’ with us. To learn more about the history and future of conversational AI in the enterprise, I highly recommend checking out the Microsoft-hosted webinar on how ChatGPT is transforming enterprise support.

Chatbots vs. conversational AI: key differences

Chatbots can be deployed across various platforms, including websites, mobile apps, messaging applications, and even voice-activated devices like smart speakers. Yes, rule-based chatbots can evolve into conversational AI with additional training and enhancements. Conversational AI is a broader and more advanced concept compared to traditional chatbots. It represents the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, including natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, and neural networks, into digital conversational systems. Conversational AI systems are designed to engage in natural and human-like conversations with users, whether through text or voice interactions. Unlike static chatbots, they possess the capability to understand context, learn from interactions, and provide more personalized and contextually relevant responses over time.

Chatbots are deployed on websites, in-app widgets, messaging platforms, and help centers. Virtual assistants are available on a variety of devices, such as smartphones and tablets. Essentially, they act as personal digital assistants that provide administrative support. Virtual assistants free you from performing tedious and repetitive tasks, so you can engage in activities that are more critical to your business. Essentially, speech recognition takes what you say and turns it into editable text. However, its utility doesn’t stop there– this technology can also be used to gauge the emotions of those speaking in a video or conversation, as well as understanding the general context.

What is the best conversational AI?

Conversational AI is context-aware and supports a variety of communication channels, including text, video and voice. This versatility allows it to understand requests with multiple inputs and outputs. It constantly learns from its interactions to improve its responses over time.

They possess the intelligence to troubleshoot complex problems, providing step-by-step guidance and detailed product information. We’ve all encountered routine tasks like password resets, balance inquiries, or updating personal information. Rather than going through lengthy phone calls or filling out forms, a chatbot is there to automate these mundane processes. It can swiftly guide us through the necessary steps, saving us time and frustration. Zowie is the most powerful customer service conversational AI solution available. Built for brands who want to maximize efficiency and generate revenue growth, Zowie harnesses the power of conversational AI to instantly cut a company’s support tickets by 50%.

A reporting system is essential for determining the ROI of your chatbot, providing insights into its impact on key metrics. Rethinking processes in order to incorporate a conversational AI chatbot is exciting, but it also presents a significant challenge. Users can interact with chatbots that simulate the personalities and speaking styles of real figures like Elon Musk or fictional characters like Harry Potter. For example, the technology can streamline employee training, enhance onboarding procedures, and efficiently manage employee data updates.

You can create bots powered by AI technology and NLP with chatbot providers such as Tidio. You can even use its visual flow builder to design complex conversation scenarios. When compared to conversational AI, chatbots lack features like multilingual and voice help capabilities. The users on such platforms do not have the facility to deliver voice commands or ask a query in any language other than the one registered in the system. On the other hand, because traditional, rule-based bots lack contextual sophistication, they deflect most conversations to a human agent. This will not only increase the burden of unresolved queries on your human agents but also nullify the primary objective of deploying a bot.

In this context, however, we’re using this term to refer specifically to advanced communication software that learns over time to improve interactions and decide when to forward things to a human responder. However, as a business leader, you should differentiate between the two at the earliest so that you can be sure which of the two can best help optimize processes and improve customer experiences (CX). It’s therefore obvious to see a spike in the usage and implementation of chatbots and conversational AI. At the same time, however, there also appears some confusion in regard to various aspects of both technologies, particularly given how many consider both to be the same, which is not the case. ‍Learn more about Raffle Chat and how conversational AI software can enable human-like knowledge retrieval for your customers, thus enabling self-service automation that enhances your customer support function.

Conversational AI can be used to power chatbots to become smarter and more capable. But it’s important to understand that not all chatbots are powered by conversational AI. It’s no shock that the global conversational AI market was worth an estimated $7.61 billion in 2022. From 2023 to 2030, it’s projected to grow at a whopping 23.6% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

It aims to create chatbots, virtual assistants, and other conversational agents capable of understanding user inputs, generating relevant responses, and simulating natural conversations. Conversational AI, on the other hand, utilizes machine learning algorithms and NLP to enable more advanced interactions. These systems can learn from user interactions, understand complex intents, and provide contextually relevant responses. By leveraging large datasets and sophisticated algorithms, conversational AI platforms continuously improve their understanding and adapt to user preferences over time.

The flexibility and machine learning capabilities means you can continuously customize and optimize your chatbot and further enhance the experience for your shoppers. So what are the most common types of chatbots that can be put to good use for your brand? We’ve highlighted three of the most common examples in order to help you determine which platform is best suited for your business needs.

For learning

So when Epic Sports, a US-based eCommerce firm that specializes in sports apparel and accessories in the US wanted to scale their customer base, they looked at one solution – chatbots. Presently, businesses around the world are using it mostly in the form of chatbots only. However, there still are many other forms in which different industries are deploying this technology for benefit. There are companies that make chatbots and voicebots to perform functions like hiring cabs, online shopping, booking appointments, tracking fitness, etc. Facebook Messenger has integrated peer-peer payments along with a chatbot. Chatbots and conversational AI are often lumped together, but there are other differences besides the obvious one of medium- chatbots display written text, while conversational AI mimics human communication.

They use natural language processing concepts to understand an upcoming query and respond according to that. Traditional chatbots are rule-based, which means they are properly trained to answer only a specific set of questions, mostly FAQs, which is basically what makes them distinct from conversational AI. Conversational AI is the technology that allows chatbots to speak back to you in a natural way. It uses a variety of technologies, such as speech recognition, natural language understanding, sentiment analysis, and machine learning, to understand the context of a conversation and provide relevant responses.

• And this chatting ability is the reason a chatbot can be used across marketing, sales, and support for creating better experiences for customers anytime.
• And conversational AI chatbots won’t only make your customers happier, they will also boost your business.
• Conversational AI specifically deals with building systems that understand human language and can engage in human-like conversations with users.
• Conversational AI chatbots can ask follow-up questions, offer product guidance, and even route customers to the support team for more complex issues and questions.
• The subject, verb, and object are all examples of sentence parts that must be identified.

Read more about Chatbot vs Conversational Differences You Should Know here.