Conversational AI is a mainstream technology. Billions of AI conversations are taking place daily, and this number will only grow. Large and small organisations, across all industries, are using chatbots, voicebots and virtual assistants to engage with customers and employees alike. Used for customer service, employee support, contact centre agent support, as well as sales and marketing activities, conversational AI solutions are playing an important role in enhancing reputation, growing revenue and building loyalty.  Multilingual and multicultural conversational AI Conversational AI done right is much more than just an exchange of words and sentences. To be of value, conversational AI

Protecting customer data is the responsibility of every company. Doing so is a legal requirement and crucial to creating a customer experience that builds trust and loyalty.  Digital customers are open to sharing personal data with companies on the proviso that it will be kept safe and secure. This data is extremely valuable for organisations committed to delivering precise levels of personalisation, executing effective engagement strategies, and building strong customer relationships.  Security and privacy for conversational AI solutions Most conversational AI solutions are handling large volumes of customer data which must be kept safe and secure. Organisations must insist that

We have all seen that AI systems are impressive. We have also seen they can mess up. There are many stories of wrong information being shared – some humorous, some dangerous and some having severe financial implications. The intelligence in AI has its limitations. That limitation is human intelligence (HI).  Human AI partnership The days of speaking in terms of AI and humans competing or AI taking over from humans have passed. Conversational AI solutions are most effective when humans and machines work together in partnership. Leveraging and balancing the complementary strengths of AI and HI unlocks the full potential

Working at the frontline of conversational AI for over two decades and with the copious amounts that is written about AI, I am often asked what advice I would give teams and departments considering an implementation. The conversational AI solution you may be considering could be for customer service, HR, internal support, sales, or marketing. Additionally you may be looking for a virtual assistant, chatbot or voicebot for a website, app, social channel, or voice-enabled agents for a contact centre. Irrespective of the how your conversational AI solution is being used, organisations and teams will benefit by being aware of

AI is not one thing, nor is it linear. Ensuring that organisations can maximise the value from their investments, requires multi-disciplinary, multi-skill, multi-technology, multi-experience inputs. As award-winning conversational AI experts, Creative Virtual takes the view that bringing together experts that complement our skill sets and experience to offer an AI ecosystem to our customers that is highly interconnected and productive, is the way to best serve their needs.  This view has driven our partner ecosystem approach to conversational AI, which is centred on two key principles: Addressing genuine business problems  Delivering real business value  Our partners are a crucial part

At the end of February, I hopped on a train to Berlin to spend three days at CCW2025. This event, held annually, brings together industry leaders, market players, and technology service providers related to all things customer experience and customer interactions.  Catching up with our partner First stop on my agenda was meeting up with Creative Virtual partner, SOGEDES, at their stand to catch up in person with the team, as well as to see live their latest innovations in customer experience solutions. On show were their AI-powered customer interaction solutions which included chatbots, voicebots and omnichannel communication, as well

This year, the promise of more human-like, natural chatbot and voicebot interactions will only happen if organisations give the subject of ‘content’ the respect and attention it deserves. The technology advancements are all well and good, but the mantra from the early days of databases still holds true – what comes out is only as good as what goes in.  Building chatbot and voicebot interactions that are virtually indistinguishable from human-to-human interactions requires, of course, the right backend technology architecture and a modern composable management platform to enable automatic user analysis, data analytics and content adaptation real-time. It must be

Why oh why The exasperated pleas from customers and employees, no matter the industry or role they work in, often starts with … “I just want to …” followed by: Get an answer to my question Re-arrange a delivery Cancel an order Make a booking/reservation Find information on .. Pay for… Check a balance… Change … See what I am entitled to The list goes on. These pleas are always communicated with a sigh and a sense of frustrated resignation that it is going to be quite the rigmarole, and a rather tiring time is ahead if they are to

Conversational AI process and design differentiation Customer experience is personal. So many companies are driving strategies that chase customer experience as the differentiator, but to have any chance of succeeding businesses must understand that conversational AI needs to be personal. On top of knowing, they also need to ensure the conversational AI acts personally. This means the customer experience must be a human experience. Critically, conversational AI strategies and the accompanying implementation processes and design have to avoid any sense of ‘artificiality’ in the conversations between chatbots or voicebots. These conversations have to be natural sounding, flowing, dynamic, and highly

The thing about cars is that from the very beginning, before someone has even bought one, every part of the experience is tied to relationships. These relationships, whether it is the seller’s or the buyer’s relationships, will impact the car ownership experience.  The automotive industry is no different to any other industry when it comes to the importance of a great customer experience and its impact on revenue, profit and reputation. In the automotive industry, using AI to create a better customer experience requires a fully thought-out AI strategy that seamlessly spans the customer and employee experience, and should include

Contact centres play a crucial role in enabling customers to communicate, interact and engage with brands, and for brands to develop long-lasting relationships with customers. Unfortunately, there are many negative perceptions of contact centres, for example: long wait/hold times, constant transfers to someone else who can supposedly help, not keeping a commitment to call back, and untrained agents, to name a few. When any of these are experienced, the customer relationship is badly damaged and brand reputation negatively impacted.  To ensure a great customer experience, brands must provide great customer service. This requires contact centres to be expertly designed with

In the public interest AI in healthcare has garnered many headlines over the years. There are countless articles, analysis and reports highlighting a myriad of AI promises; delivering positive outcomes for patients, helping healthcare professionals in diagnosis, prevention and treatment of diseases and illnesses, achieving efficiencies in administrative processes, and even enabling virtual coaches that encourage behavioural and lifestyle changes as a part of preventative healthcare. Ethics, privacy, security The same concerns and challenges that are raised about AI generally, are also being scrutinised through the healthcare lens. The abundance of patient data worldwide and accessibility and use of it

Content Expectations Accurate. Relevant. Helpful. Concise. Immediate. Any content that we seek out needs to be all these things and more. It must also be trustworthy, consumable and relatable.  We all have expectations about the content that we receive. When we engage with a brand, we expect that what we are told, the information that is shared with us, and what we are shown, meets all these descriptions. We also expect to be able to source content from brands on any communication platform of choice and for it to be presented in the most relevant format.  Conversational AI More and

Anyone who has had their face, voice, comments or ‘supposed thoughts’ hijacked and dumped into the wilds of social media will probably say AI is the villain. It is making up lies, spreading untruths and manipulating society.  Anyone involved in using AI for good, and there are an abundance of ways AI is advancing society, economies and environmental causes, will say AI is the victim. How could AI used in cancer screening and to improve healthcare screening generally, or used to analyse billions of data points to enable perfect crop, seed and fertilizer timing to combat world hunger be classified

The way an organisation approaches and views conversational AI will determine the extent of its success in delivering real business value. The path to conversational AI success must, therefore, start with an internal reckoning and deep interrogation of what an organisation actually wants to achieve when implementing a conversational AI solution. Jumping on a trend or ticking a box to be able to say ‘we use conversational AI’ without knowing why, what, how and who for will inevitably lead to disappointment. Working with an experienced conversational AI provider and their team of experts in UI, conversation design and dialogue management,

The future of conversational AI is not an AI takeover. Afterall, everything artificial is in fact human made. Intelligent businesses will leverage conversational AI that is controlled by HI (human intelligence). With humans in control, conversational AI delivers much better business outcomes. These include: more sales, rich personalised experiences and improved efficiencies. Businesses and consumers can only trust the AI and by extension a brand/company if they trust the humans providing it. Despite the scaremongering, calls for development pauses and doomsday job annihilation pronouncements AI is not going anywhere.  If anything it will become more prolific. How businesses manage this,

We would all do well to heed the warning “with great power comes great responsibility,” when it comes to ChatGPT.  Today, industries of all sizes are making use of AI chatbots, voicebots and virtual assistants to great effect in delivering better customer and employee experiences. Consumers the world over have gotten used to and accept interacting with these ‘human-imitation’ tools to answer their questions, help them complete tasks, and guide them to resolve issues. The face of AI chatbots, voicebots and virtual assistants is continually changing as technology advances, customer and employee demands and expectations increase, and how we communicate

These days everyone is stunned by the generative power of the GPT models, including myself. However, today I want to discuss a GPT feature that is largely overlooked in media coverage: the embeddings endpoint in the OpenAI API. This feature ‘translates’ any text into a 1536-dimensional numerical vector. Personally, I prefer to use the term ‘vectorisation’ instead of ’embedding’. The idea to turn individual words into vectors is about 10 years old now. These word vectorisations were trained on large corpora – or what we thought were large corpora 10 years ago. They are useful because the way words are

Since the official announcement in November 2022, there has been an enormous amount of buzz and excitement about OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Industry experts are publishing articles about it, social networks are filled with comments about it, and local, national, and global news organisations are reporting stories about it. From students using ChatGPT to complete assignments for class to me getting a little help from ChatGPT to write my latest ‘Virtual Viewpoint’ column, it certainly seems like everyone is testing it out. As a specialist within the conversational AI space, Creative Virtual is excited about what ChatGPT and the technology behind it