Verint Conversational AI Named to Constellation Research ShortList

Hands up if you admit you’ve yelled at a speech-enabled automated customer support application. (It’s OK, we’ve all done it.) Poorly designed natural language solutions often accomplish the opposite of what they were implemented to do: understand customer sentiment and direct callers to the right resources.

Customers actually like solving their own problems without the need for human intervention, so their frustration is often directed at sub-par speech applications. To help spotlight the better solutions – the ones that don’t leave us screaming “agent!” over the telephone to a machine – research company Constellation has created its inaugural Constellation ShortList for Conversational AI. This week, customer engagement company Verint (News - Alert) announced it has been named to this coveted list.

Supported by a natural language understanding library of over 90,000 intents, Verint Conversational AI goes beyond simple question-and-answer interactions to provide actionable responses across channels – including voice, social media channels, and smart speakers.

Constellation Research considers a number of criteria when choosing solutions for its shortlist. Conversational AI solutions must integrate natural-language-understanding (NLU) capabilities, understand users and personalize conversations for each user, enable a live agent escalation option if and when needed, and provide customizable workflow management, to name a few.

“Conversational AI (CAI) has moved away from traditional chatbots to intelligent virtual agents, often matching, or surpassing, the human agents. In many instances, humans can now have intelligent conversations with machines without realizing they are talking to a machine,” said Andy Thurai, VP and principal analyst at Constellation Research. “Today’s CAI systems are purpose-built for a specific domain and can solve customer problems without the need for human intervention. The combination of sentiment, tone, and emotional intelligence allows them to determine if a customer is upset and prioritizes solving their issue which helps reduce agitation.”

Constellation Research advises leaders on leveraging disruptive technologies to achieve business model transformation and streamline business processes. Products and services named to the Constellation ShortList meet the threshold criteria for this category as determined through client inquiries, partner conversations, customer references, vendor selection projects, market share, and internal research.

Edited by Erik Linask