[shrdlu2]

Having worked on conversational AI (virtual agents/chatbots) for over a half a decade now, I can say that there are large differences in the capabilities of the solutions and the quality of implementations. Some are just bad and unhelpful. Some are very good. I'm personally familiar with several voice deployments doing millions of calls a month. Not only are there obvious cost savings but the calls handled (entirely) by the virtual agents get better average cust sat metrics than human agents on the same set of calls. The first time I saw that I was surprised, but, now it is pretty typical. They absolutely can be helpful even if they are still not near to passing the Turing test.

[annexrichmond]

> the calls handled (entirely) by the virtual agents get better average cust sat metrics than human agents on the same set of calls

does that take into account that the virtual agents are immediately available and human agents usually require a waiting room?

[shrdlu2]

I'm sure that is some of it. I'd certainly be happier having my problem solved in 30 seconds rather than waiting in a queue for even 5 minutes.

[petra]

Can you name a few of the best companies, to get an impression of the best looks like ?