Executive Summary

Conversational AI for CX

The digital transition to artificial intelligence-enabled (AI) software is transforming enterprises in unprecedented ways. While many AI initiatives in business focus on data processing for analytics and operational efficiency, there is a notable shift with the rise of conversational AI. This advancement goes beyond traditional human-computer interactions, as sophisticated digital assistants and chatbots leverage large language models (LLMs) and generative pre-trained transformers (GPT) to engage in meaningful dialogues. These technologies have revolutionized question-and-answer interactions, paving the way for a new era of conversational AI. As businesses adopt these innovative applications, the workforce benefits from streamlined workflows, fully harnessing the potential of AI-driven conversations.

ISG Research defines conversational AI as a method that enables workers to engage using human language, enhancing interactions through natural language processing (NLP), LLMs, and GPT to answer questions, gain insights and take actions.

ISG Research defines conversational AI as a method that enables workers to engage using human language, enhancing interactions through natural language processing (NLP), LLMs, and GPT to answer questions, gain insights and take actions. Conversational AI assists or guides workers and customers in accessing precise information that is typically not easily accessible. It enables interactions and immediate responses, providing personalized engagement and support through a variety of online channels via chatbots and virtual assistants.

This consumer- and customer-facing software operates standalone or integrated with a contact center or customer service system, supporting members of the workforce as human agents handle escalated interactions. The integration of conversational AI with agentic and generative AI platforms has now become a foundational requirement for enterprises to support the workforce effectively.

Conversational AI has experienced significant advancements since the 1950s, evolving from simple, text-based interactions like ELIZA to sophisticated systems that maximize AI and machine learning. In the 1990s, the introduction of voice recognition technologies enabled simpler engagements, followed by a shift in the 2000s to AI-driven NLP, which improved the understanding of context and intent in conversations. The rise of consumer virtual assistants like Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa over a decade ago demonstrated the potential for generalized interactions.

Today, conversational AI for the workforce capitalizes on a new generation of AI capabilities to revolutionize business processes and interactions across the workforce and with consumers. The transformation to natural, human-like dialogue—powered by NLP, machine learning and speech recognition—has evolved from basic chatbots to more sophisticated virtual assistants, including those with voice interfaces to assist everyone in the workforce. As the digital workspace for conversational AI becomes essential for every enterprise, it increasingly enables smarter self-service applications. By 2028, automated systems will be able to contain two-thirds of customer interactions within self-service due to advancements in conversational AI and knowledge retrieval.

Enterprises need conversational AI for CX to enable intelligent engagement and operational efficiency through accurate natural language understanding and personalized interactions that yield meaningful answers. As conversational AI becomes more sophisticated, it is essential that it can draw knowledge from across business processes and organizational information to provide valuable insights. Moreover, explicit guidance is necessary to enhance productivity and ensure that the use cases and organizational changes required for success align with incremental investments.

For enterprises to succeed with conversational AI, it is crucial to integrate the technology into applications and systems to ensure that knowledge is easily accessible to the workforce. This integration will facilitate interactions with consumers and customers, allowing them to access information efficiently and engage meaningfully. Additionally, conversational AI for CX software must address the growing demands for privacy and security, as well as digital sovereignty across different countries and regions. As the adoption of conversational AI increases, the need for enhanced performance and responsiveness will scale alongside the importance of ensuring robust security and governance of the enterprise's information.

This Conversational AI for CX research aims to help enterprises navigate the rapidly evolving and complex landscape of communication and collaboration technologies, identifying software that best meets specific organizational CX requirements. This comprehensive research evaluates a full spectrum of offerings and can be used in conjunction with research on collaborative AI platforms, suites and AI agents. Unlike separate evaluations that focus on individual software categories, this research specifically explores how these technologies integrate to create unified digital workspaces that enhance productivity and engagement. 

Enterprises should view conversational AI for CX as a strategic investment that enhances worker efficiency and transforms productivity in unexpected ways. When evaluating software providers, buyers should prioritize applications that seamlessly integrate interactions with consumers and customers into the digital workplace and support daily activities. It is important to consider the provider's innovation roadmap, especially regarding integration with agentic AI and AI agents to perform tasks and generate outcomes. By selecting the right conversational AI for CX software, enterprises can establish a cohesive foundation that simplifies workflows and interactions for the workforce. Additionally, organizations should focus on developing new AI-infused digital experiences to achieve long-term communication excellence in an increasingly complex and regulated digital environment.

The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Conversational AI for CX evaluates software providers and products in key areas, including platform support, intelligence and workflow, agentic AI, analytics and insights, AI overall, communication administration and integration and specific AI support with conversational AI. The research evaluates the following software providers offering products that address key elements of conversational AI for CX as we define them: [24]7.ai, 8x8, Avaya, Cisco, CM.com, Dialpad, Genesys, Google, Gupshup, Infobip, IntelePeer, LivePerson, NiCE, OpenText, Pega, RingCentral, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Sinch, Sprinklr, Talkdesk, Tata Communications, Tencent Cloud, Twilio, Verint, Vonage, Yellow.ai, Zendesk, Zenvia and Zoom.

Buyers Guide Overview

For over two decades, ISG Research has conducted market research in a spectrum of areas across business applications, tools and technologies. We have designed the Buyers Guide to provide a balanced perspective of software providers and products that is rooted in an understanding of the business requirements in any enterprise. Utilization of our research methodology and decades of experience enables our Buyers Guide to be an effective method to assess and select software providers and products. The findings of this research undertaking contribute to our comprehensive approach to rating software providers in a manner that is based on the assessments completed by an enterprise.

ISG Research has designed the Buyers Guide to provide a balanced perspective of software providers and products that is rooted in an understanding of business requirements in any enterprise.

The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Conversational AI for CX is the distillation of over a year of market and product research efforts. It is an assessment of how well software providers’ offerings address enterprises’ requirements for conversational AI software. The index is structured to support a request for information (RFI) that could be used in the request for proposal (RFP) process by incorporating all criteria needed to evaluate, select, utilize and maintain relationships with software providers. An effective product and customer experience with a provider can ensure the best long-term relationship and value achieved from a resource and financial investment.

In this Buyers Guide, ISG Research evaluates the software in seven key categories that are weighted to reflect buyers’ needs based on our expertise and research. Five are product-experience related: Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability, and Usability. In addition, we consider two customer-experience categories: Validation, and Total Cost of Ownership/Return on Investment (TCO/ROI). To assess functionality, one of the components of Capability, we applied the ISG Research Value Index methodology and blueprint, which links the personas and processes for conversational AI to an enterprise’s requirements.

The structure of the research reflects our understanding that the effective evaluation of software providers and products involves far more than just examining product features, potential revenue or customers generated from a provider’s marketing and sales efforts. We believe it is important to take a comprehensive, research-based approach, since making the wrong choice of conversational AI technology can raise the total cost of ownership, lower the return on investment and hamper an enterprise’s ability to reach its full performance potential. In addition, this approach can reduce the project’s development and deployment time and eliminate the risk of relying on a short list of software providers that does not represent a best fit for your enterprise.

ISG Research believes that an objective review of software providers and products is a critical business strategy for the adoption and implementation of conversational AI software and applications. An enterprise’s review should include a thorough analysis of both what is possible and what is relevant. We urge enterprises to do a thorough job of evaluating conversational AI systems and tools and offer this Buyers Guide as both the results of our in-depth analysis of these providers and as an evaluation methodology.

Key Takeaways

Conversational AI is reshaping how enterprises operate by enabling natural, human-like interactions through expanding technologies that use agentic and generative capabilities from NLP, LLMs, and GPT. Moving beyond basic chatbots, it now powers advanced voice and chat assistants that streamline workflows, support self-service and improve customer engagement. For customer experience and when integrated into contact centers and business systems, conversational AI boosts productivity and enables access to information and resolution. This research guides organizations in choosing conversational AI for CX software.

Software Provider Summary

The evaluation found that, while all conversational AI software providers offer feature-rich applications for CX, not all capabilities hold equal value. A larger feature set can be beneficial if needed but may add complexity. Factors such as total cost of ownership (TCO) can also influence decisions. Providers are rated on Product and Customer Experience performance: Exemplary (e.g., NiCE, ServiceNow, Salesforce), Innovative (e.g., Tencent Cloud, Vonage), Assurance (OpenText) and Merit (e.g., Tata Communications, Avaya). Individual placement reflects balanced performance across Product Experience and Customer Experience.

Product Experience Insights

Product Experience evaluation criteria was Capability (30%), Usability (20%), Reliability (10%), Adaptability (10%) and Manageability (10%), comprising 80% of the total. Leaders like NiCE, ServiceNow and Google demonstrated strength across all categories. Adaptability focused on integration and customization, where ServiceNow, Salesforce and NiCE stood out. Capability highlighted platform functionality and AI integration, with NiCE, Zoom and RingCentral as Leaders. Manageability covered governance, privacy and security, again led by ServiceNow, NiCE and Salesforce. Reliability and Usability emphasized accessibility and intelligence, where providers like NiCE, Tencent Cloud and Google showed strong results.

Customer Experience Value

Customer Experience contributed 20% of the overall rating and was evaluated through Validation and TCO/ROI, each weighted at 10%. Leaders in this area—NiCE, Verint and ServiceNow—excelled in customer commitment, success documentation and clarity in cost-benefit communication. Strong providers offered detailed customer case studies and tools to calculate TCO/ROI, helping buyers build investment justification. In contrast, weaker performers lacked transparency and support in customer commitment and value.

Strategic Recommendations

Enterprises should use this research alongside internal evaluations to select software that aligns with both operational needs and business outcomes. Focus on software that integrates conversational AI for CX seamlessly into existing systems. Prioritize providers with clear roadmaps for AI, usability and manageability, as well as those investing in agentic and generative AI for enhanced automation. This ensures that conversational AI becomes a long-term asset for productivity, engagement and enterprise growth.

How To Use This Buyers Guide

Evaluating Software Providers: The Process

We recommend using the Buyers Guide to assess and evaluate new or existing software providers for your enterprise. The market research can be used as an evaluation framework to establish a formal request for information from providers on products and customer experience and will shorten the cycle time when creating an RFI. The steps listed below provide a process that can facilitate best possible outcomes.

1. Define the business case and goals.
   Define the mission and business case for investment and the expected outcomes from your organizational and technology efforts. 
2. Specify the business needs.
Defining the business requirements helps identify what specific capabilities are required with respect to people, processes, information and technology.
3. Assess the required roles and responsibilities.
Identify the individuals required for success at every level of the organization from executives to front line workers and determine the needs of each. 
4. Outline the project’s critical path.
What needs to be done, in what order and who will do it? This outline should make clear the prior dependencies at each step of the project plan. 
5. Ascertain the technology approach.
Determine the business and technology approach that most closely aligns to your organization’s requirements. 
6. Establish technology vendor evaluation criteria.
Utilize the product experience: Adaptability, Capability, Manageability, Reliability and Usability, and the customer experience in TCO/ROI and Validation. 
7. Evaluate and select the technology properly.
Weight the categories in the technology evaluation criteria to reflect your organization’s priorities to determine the short list of vendors and products.
8. Establish the business initiative team to start the project.
Identify who will lead the project and the members of the team needed to plan and execute it with timelines, priorities and resources. 
   
   

The Findings

All of the products we evaluated are feature-rich, but not all the capabilities offered by a software provider are equally valuable to types of workers or support everything needed to manage products on a continuous basis. Moreover, the existence of too many capabilities may be a negative factor for an enterprise if it introduces unnecessary complexity. Nonetheless, you may decide that a larger number of features in the product is a plus, especially if some of them match your enterprise’s established practices or support an initiative that is driving the purchase of new software.

Factors beyond features and functions or software provider assessments may become a deciding factor. For example, an enterprise may face budget constraints such that the TCO evaluation can tip the balance to one provider or another. This is where the Value Index methodology and the appropriate category weighting can be applied to determine the best fit of software providers and products to your specific needs.

Overall Scoring of Software Providers Across Categories

The research finds NiCE atop the list, followed by ServiceNow and Salesforce. Providers that place in the top three of a category earn the designation of Leader. NiCE has done so in seven categories; ServiceNow in six; Google, Salesforce and Verint in two; and RingCentral, Tencent Cloud and Zoom in one category.

The overall representation of the research below places the rating of the Product Experience and Customer Experience on the x and y axes, respectively, to provide a visual representation and classification of the software providers. Those providers whose Product Experience have a higher weighted performance to the axis in aggregate of the five product categories place farther to the right, while the performance and weighting for the two Customer Experience categories determines placement on the vertical axis. In short, software providers that place closer to the upper-right on this chart performed better than those closer to the lower-left.

The research places software providers into one of four overall categories: Assurance, Exemplary, Merit or Innovative. This representation classifies providers’ overall weighted performance.

Exemplary: The categorization and placement of software providers in Exemplary (upper right) represent those that performed the best in meeting the overall Product and Customer Experience requirements. The providers rated Exemplary are: Dialpad, Genesys, Google, Infobip, LivePerson, NiCE, Pega, RingCentral, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Sinch, Sprinkler, Talkdesk, Twilio, Verint, Yellow.ai, Zendesk and Zoom.

Innovative: The categorization and placement of software providers in Innovative (lower right) represent those that performed the best in meeting the overall Product Experience requirements but did not achieve the highest levels of requirements in Customer Experience. The providers rated Innovative are: 8x8, Cisco, CM.com, Tencent Cloud and Vonage.

Assurance: The categorization and placement of software providers in Assurance (upper left) represent those that achieved the highest levels in the overall Customer Experience requirements but did not achieve the highest levels of Product Experience. The provider rated Assurance is: OpenText.

Merit: The categorization of software providers in Merit (lower left) represents those that did not surpass the thresholds for the Assurance, Exemplary or Innovative categories in Customer or Product Experience. The providers rated Merit are: [24]7.ai, Avaya, Gupshup, IntelePeer, Tata Communications and Zenvia.

We warn that close provider placement proximity should not be taken to imply that the packages evaluated are functionally identical or equally well suited for use by every enterprise or for a specific process. Although there is a high degree of commonality in how enterprises handle conversational AI, there are many idiosyncrasies and differences in how they do these functions that can make one software provider’s offering a better fit than another’s for a particular enterprise’s needs.

We advise enterprises to assess and evaluate software providers based on organizational requirements and use this research as a supplement to internal evaluation of a provider and products.

Product Experience

The process of researching products to address an enterprise’s needs should be comprehensive. Our Value Index methodology examines Product Experience and how it aligns with an enterprise’s life cycle of onboarding, configuration, operations, usage and maintenance. Too often, software providers are not evaluated for the entirety of the product; instead, they are evaluated on market execution and vision of the future, which are flawed since they do not represent an enterprise’s requirements but how the provider operates. As more software providers orient to a complete product experience, evaluations will be more robust.

The research results in Product Experience are ranked at 80%, or four-fifths, of the overall rating using the specific underlying weighted category performance. Importance was placed on the categories as follows: Usability (20%), Capability (30%), Reliability (10%), Adaptability (10%) and Manageability (10%). This weighting impacted the resulting overall ratings in this research. NiCE, ServiceNow and Google were designated Product Experience Leaders. While not Leaders, Infobip and Zoom were also found to meet a broad range of enterprise product experience requirements.

Customer Experience

The importance of a customer relationship with a software provider is essential to the actual success of the products and technology. The advancement of the Customer Experience and the entire life cycle an enterprise has with its software provider is critical for ensuring satisfaction in working with that provider. Technology providers that have chief customer officers are more likely to have greater investments in the customer relationship and focus more on their success. These leaders also need to take responsibility for ensuring this commitment is made abundantly clear on the website and in the buying process and customer journey.

The research results in Customer Experience are ranked at 20%, or one-fifth, using the specific underlying weighted category performance as it relates to the framework of commitment and value to the software provider-customer relationship. The two evaluation categories are Validation (10%) and TCO/ROI (10%), which are weighted to represent their importance to the overall research.

The software providers that evaluated the highest overall in the aggregated and weighted Customer Experience categories are ServiceNow, Verint and NiCE. Salesforce was also found to meet a broad range of customer experience requirements. These category leaders best communicate commitment and dedication to customer needs.

Software providers that did not perform well in this category were unable to provide sufficient customer case studies to demonstrate success or articulate their commitment to customer experience and an enterprise’s journey. The selection of a software provider means a continuous investment by the enterprise, so a holistic evaluation must include examination of how they support their customer experience.

Appendix: Software Provider Inclusion

For inclusion in the ISG Buyers Guide™ for Conversational AI for CX in 2025, a software provider must be in good standing financially and ethically, have at least $225 million in annual or projected revenue verified using independent sources, sell products and provide support on at least two continents, and have at least 100 customers. The principal source of the relevant business unit’s revenue must be software-related, and there must have been at least one major software release in the past 12 months.

The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Conversational AI for CX evaluates software providers and products in key areas, including platform support, intelligence and workflow, agentic AI, analytics and insights, AI overall, communication administration and integration and specific AI support with conversational AI.

The research is designed to be independent of the specifics of software provider packaging and pricing. To represent the real-world environment in which businesses operate, we include providers that offer suites or packages of products that may include relevant individual modules or applications. If a software provider is actively marketing, selling and developing a product for the general market and it is reflected on the provider’s website that the product is within the scope of the research, that provider is automatically evaluated for inclusion.

All software providers that offer relevant conversational AI products and meet the inclusion requirements were invited to participate in the evaluation process at no cost to them.

Software providers that meet our inclusion criteria but did not completely participate in our Buyers Guide were assessed solely on publicly available information. As this could have a significant impact on classification and ratings, we recommend additional scrutiny when evaluating those providers.

Products Evaluated

Providers of Promise

We did not include software providers that, as a result of our research and analysis, did not satisfy the criteria for inclusion in this Buyers Guide. These are listed below as “Providers of Promise.”