Beyond chatbots: How conversational AI makes customer service smarter

Respondents were offered small incentives as a thank you for time spent on the survey. Join leaders from Block, GSK, and SAP for an exclusive look at how autonomous agents are reshaping enterprise workflows – from real-time decision-making to end-to-end automation. DestinationCRM.com is dedicated to providing Customer Relationship Management product and service information in a timely manner to connect decision makers and CRM industry providers now and into the future. Beerud Sheth, cofounder and CEO of messaging leader Gupshup, recently announced three conversational AI acquisitions, including Active.ai and AskSkid, while adding, there are another two in the pipeline. Now, machines can not only better understand the words being said, but the intent behind them, while also being more flexible with responses.

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Quiq is a Bozeman, Montana-based AI-powered conversational platform that enables brands to engage customers on the most popular asynchronous text messaging channels. According to founder and CEO Mike Myer, first-generation chatbots lacked good natural language capabilities and often did not allow customers to access the right data. ” buttons on websites that promise a quick, helpful customer service experience. But heavily hyped AI-driven chatbots, an important part of the customer experience mix since 2016, have also proven to be a mixed bag. Meanwhile, enterprises often needed to provide far more costly care and feeding of chatbots than expected. “We’ve trained a variety of speech-to-text models on phone audio quality and customer service use cases.

• In today’s digitally competitive environment, understanding your customers is more important than ever.
• Messenger-based support has risen from the fifth most used support channel pre-pandemic to now second, overtaking both phone and in-person support.
• Customer support is a critical aspect of any organization’s operation, and it’s an area where conversational AI is expected to effect much change.
• Conversational AI is poised to become a competitive differentiator in the current business landscape.
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New Study: Rising Customer Expectations Drive Demand for Messenger-Based, Conversational Support Experiences

Co-founder and CTO Stefan Ostwald says that AI has been a core part of Parloa’s DNA since its inception six years ago. The company uses a mix of proprietary and open source LLMs to train models for speech-to-text use cases. Parloa is well positioned to capitalize on the “AI with everything” hype that has hit fever pitch these past couple of years as companies seek new ways to improve efficiency through automation.

“That means we can create much more sophisticated virtual assistants or customer care agents, whether they are text-based or voice-based,” Sutherland said. The company was founded in 2011 in San Francisco by Eoghan McCabe, Des Traynor, Ciaran Lee and David Barrett, with the mission to make internet business personal. Intercom was valued at $1.275 billion in 2018 and has secured $241 million in funding from investors including Kleiner Perkins, Bessemer Venture Partners and Social Capital. We’ve always had confidence in the excellence and competitiveness of our product, but the overwhelming and rapid success it achieved in the U.S. surpassed everyone’s expectations,” Kosub said. Put your brand in front of 10,000+ tech and VC leaders across all three days of Disrupt 2025.

Explore the future of AI on August 5 in San Francisco—join Block, GSK, and SAP at Autonomous Workforces to discover how enterprises are scaling multi-agent systems with real-world results. To download the full study titled “Drive Conversational Experiences For A Future-Ready Customer Support Strategy,” visit the website. An 82-year-old man in Pennsylvania, Luis Leon, was unexpectedly deported to Guatemala by ICE agents after visiting an immigration office. Despite being a law-abiding resident and political asylum grantee, he was arrested and taken away without explanation. His family was initially told he had died, but later found out he was in a Guatemalan hospital. Get live Share Market updates, Stock Market Quotes, and the latest India News and business news on Financial Express.

Why Businesses are Investing in Conversational AI

Thanks to open-source AI language models such as Google’s BERT and Open AI’s GPT, it’s now far easier for organizations and technology software vendors to build on top of these innovations. They can create more sophisticated conversational AI tools, from smarter chatbots and asynchronous messaging to voice and mobile assistants. And, depending on how they’re done, they might need only a small amount of training data, Hayley Sutherland, senior research analyst for conversational AI at IDC, told VentureBeat.

• What’s more, the way that businesses deliver customer support has changed.
• Conversational AI platform Parloa has nabbed $66 million in a Series B round, a year after it raised $21 million from a swathe of European investors to propel its international growth.
• According to founder and CEO Mike Myer, first-generation chatbots lacked good natural language capabilities and often did not allow customers to access the right data.
• However, with conversations happening across multiple channels, keeping track of them can be challenging.

Conversational intelligence helps businesses develop a deep understanding of the insights hidden within everyday customer interactions. No more guessing games—conversational intelligence allows you to truly understand your customers’ needs and motivations. By pinpointing their pain points and preferences, you can refine your marketing, sales, and customer service strategies, leading to happier customers, higher conversions, and a thriving business.

It’s a sign of the massive, fragmented conversational AI market in the customer service space, as well as the VC money flowing into it, that Sutherland told VentureBeat that she had not heard of Quiq. That is even though the company recently announced a $25 million series C funding round and last year acquired Snaps, another conversational AI tool. Roberti cites two primary types of buyers in the market for conversational AI tools for customer service and support. First, there are buyers who own the contact center or customer-facing support systems.

Investing in conversational intelligence can transform your business by effectively managing customer interactions and operations. For contact centres, leveraging conversational intelligence software can provide the insights needed to thrive in today’s digital era. The study surveyed more than 500 global customer support leaders on the changes seen in delivering support and how they’re future-proofing their strategies. Conversational AI is poised to become a competitive differentiator in the current business landscape. Recent advances have enabled innovators to evolve AI into a technology that can truly recognize the nuances of human conversation, interpret their meaning and act on them.

Amplify your reach, spark real connections, and lead the innovation charge. Aside form lead investor Altimeter, Parloa’s Series B saw checks from EQT Ventures, Newion, Senovo, Mosaic Ventures and La Familia Growth. Today’s funding brings the company’s total capital raised to $98 million, following its $21 million Series A, which was led by EQT Ventures, in 2023. Parloa had previously raised around $25 million, the bulk of which arrived via its Series A round last year. Now with another $66 million in the bank, it’s well-financed to double down on both its European and U.S. growth.

We’ve developed a custom telephony infrastructure to minimize latency — a key challenge in voice automation — as well as a proprietary LLM agent framework for customer service,” he said. “Our strategy has always been centered around ‘voice first,’ the most critical and impactful facet of the customer experience,” Kosub told TechCrunch over email. “As a result, Parloa’s AI-based voice conversations sound more human than any other solution.”