The concept of chatbots is as old as computing. With interest in the work of Alan Turing, in 1966, Joseph Weizenbaum, a German computer scientist and professor at MIT, created the ELIZA programme - the first-ever chatbot. The chatbots gained momentum with AI getting mainstream. Simply say "book a cab" or "arrange a meeting," and your very own virtual personal assistant will be at your disposal. That undoubtedly adds to the 'wow factor,' since you can get your daily routine tasks done by a conversation with a bot.  

The adoption of Conversational AI solutions is gaining pace with industry experts and analysts peg the Conversational AI market to grow to USD 18.4 billion by 2026, rising to USD 29.9 billion by the end of 2028.   

We reached out to Gaurav Kachhawa, Chief Product Officer, Gupshup, to understand how the Conversational AI domain is evolving and transforming the way brands do marketing. "Conversational engagement solutions help companies connect and establish personalized, contextual and interactive experiences with customers, in real-time," said Gaurav. 

Prominent uses cases 

Across industry sectors, conversational AI solutions are helping several businesses drive more tailored consumer experiences. For example, Gaurav pointed out how Gupshup's conversational engagement solutions have helped brands deliver better to their customers. This include: 

• The solutions helped two leading personal care brands - Livon and Vicco - deliver an end-to-end shopping experience to consumers on Instagram using a smart chatbot. Shoppers can easily discover products, add to cart, checkout, pay, and get support instantly - from right within their Instagram channel. This is one of the first such solutions in India, where consumers can get a complete and seamless conversational commerce experience on Instagram.  
• Another good example is Doubtnut, a subscription-based EdTech platform that helps students clarify STEM subjects' doubts. Earlier, students had to take pictures of any questions and upload them to the website or mobile app. However, Doubtnut quickly realized that limited access to high-speed mobile internet connectivity in rural India impacted their service. To tackle this, the company developed a smart WhatsApp-based chatbot. Today, students simply send questions via WhatsApp and receive links to videos with answers to those questions, in their preferred language, in about 10 seconds.

Acquisitions and the sense behind

Just halfway down the year, Gupshup has already made four acquisitions, including Knowlarity - a cloud telephony startup, Active.ai, AskSid, and AI-enabled customer engagement platform OneDirect being the latest. The acquisitions further strengthen the services Gupshup can offer to its customers to accelerate the growth journey.  

Say, for example, with the acquisition of Knowlarity, the company is offering the industry's best mix of voice, video and messaging solutions to their enterprise customers, empowering businesses to drive multi-channel conversations over voice. "Knowlarity's voice solutions and Gupshup's messaging capabilities can function in tandem to help businesses reimagine the customer experience," said Gaurav.

Gaurav explained the voice plus messaging interplay with an example. Many of us have dialled a bank's customer care for a quick query and had to wait for several minutes to speak to a customer care representative. Imagine if the bank had a smart voice-enabled chatbot, which could not just alert you about all customer care representatives being busy but ask you to instantly select the next available slot for a 1:1 conversation - via a voice message - to schedule a callback. What if you could get a text notification confirming the time slot, with an option to block your calendar. The seamless transition between voice and messaging interfaces can redefine customer service altogether.

Filling the gaps

Brands understand the importance of meeting consumers where they are - in a language, time and channel of the consumers' choice. So, AI-powered business-to-consumer communication is evolving and will continue to encompass multiple channels while involving a combination of voice, video and texting with the right synergy. Challenges do exist, but the company is helping to tackle them, some of which are:

• For any AI project to succeed, let alone Conversational AI, accurate and timely availability and data analysis are important. 
• Businesses need to look at AI more holistically as a science. So, an iterative, trial-and-error approach is key to making one's AI project successful. 
• Often, brands struggle to drive personalization at scale, and conversational AI is a quick and simple way to get started. 
• A lot of businesses think of AI as an all-or-nothing proposition. The best way to build AI-powered customer experiences is to use a hybrid approach, where AI handles what it can with high confidence and escalates the rest to a human agent.

Sneak peek into the product development roadmap

Gupshup is a product-led growth company, and Gaurav shares the roadmap as:

• The base layer of the product stack provides connectivity across voice, video and text (i.e. messaging) across 30+ messaging channels. 
• The middle layer of the stack enables businesses with conversational automation tools, using which they can build conversational experiences and chatbots. 
• The top layer comprises deep-domain conversational AI solutions specialised in industry verticals like BFSI, Retail/e-commerce etc.  

"Our mission is to make it as easy for a business to connect with consumers as chatting with friends or family. In line with this, we are building the most advanced, comprehensive conversational engagement platform. Our acquisition strategy aligns with this larger product goal," concluded Gaurav.