Executive Summary

Conversational AI for Workforce

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 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 allows workers and teams to enhance interactions and improve productivity within organizations. It automates repetitive work, facilitates quick access to information and assists with tasks such as skill improvement, training and onboarding while providing real-time support for operational questions.

By enhancing communication and knowledge-sharing across departments, conversational AI for the workforce helps streamline processes and improve overall workplace efficiency. The AI-focused software assists or guides workers and customers in accessing precise information that is typically not easily accessible. The integration of conversational AI with agentic and generative AI (GenAI) 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. Through 2027, one-third of enterprises will need a workplace systems platform to monitor and act on the interactions of human and conversational AI systems.

Enterprises need conversational AI for the workforce to enable intelligent engagement and operational efficiency through accurate natural language understanding and personalized interactions that yield meaningful answers. As conversational AI for the workforce 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 the incremental investments made.

For enterprises to succeed with conversational AI, it is crucial to integrate this 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 the workforce 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 Workforce research aims to help enterprises navigate the rapidly evolving and complex landscape of communication and collaboration technologies, identifying software that best meets specific organizational 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 the workforce 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 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 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 Workforce 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. This research evaluates the following software providers offering products that address key elements of conversational AI for Workforce as we define them: 8x8, Appian, AWS, Cisco, Dialpad, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Pega, RingCentral, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Sprinklr, Tencent Cloud, Vonage, Zendesk 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 Workforce 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 changing how enterprises work by enabling natural, AI-powered interactions between people, systems and customers. Using tools like NLP and GPT, it helps automate tasks, answer questions and improve access to information. Over time, it has evolved from simple chatbots to advanced voice assistants that support daily work and improve customer service. When combined with other AI tools, it becomes a key part of digital workspaces. To get the most value, organizations should choose conversational AI that fits business needs, integrates well with individual and teamwork and boosts productivity.

Software Provider Summary

While all conversational AI for workforce software is rich in features, not all capabilities are equally valuable across enterprises. Beyond functionality, factors like budget and total cost of ownership play a crucial role in decision-making. The research categorizes software providers into four groups based on overall performance: Exemplary (e.g., Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, ServiceNow), Innovative (Appian, Pega), Assurance (Dialpad, SAP, Sprinklr) and Merit (8x8, Cisco, Tencent Cloud, Vonage). We emphasize that close rankings don’t imply products are equally suitable.

Product Experience Insights

Product Experience accounts for 80% of each provider’s overall score, based on five weighted categories: Capability (30%), Usability (20%), Reliability (10%), Adaptability (10%) and Manageability (10%). Leaders like Google, Oracle and ServiceNow excel in delivering scalable, secure and highly customizable solutions. Appian, Microsoft and Salesforce also perform strongly. Top performers demonstrate depth in AI features, integration and flexibility, making them better suited to meet varied enterprise demands. Broad platform support and the ability to operate across systems, devices and cloud are critical.

Customer Experience Value

Customer Experience is an essential assessment component and 20% of the evaluation, typically including Validation (provider’s stability, customer commitment, roadmap) and TCO/ROI (value and cost-effectiveness). These factors help determine how well a provider supports customer success and enables long-term value. Providers like Salesforce, ServiceNow and Verint are Exemplary and Overall Leaders. Clear information and strong service commitments are essential for long-term customer satisfaction and gaining value.

Strategic Recommendations

Enterprises should use this research to complement internal evaluations, focusing on matching software capabilities to specific business requirements. Prioritize solutions that balance strong product experience with proven customer support. Look for providers investing in AI, usability and governance, especially those integrating conversational AI with broader platforms for collaboration, communication and automation. Evaluate manageability, scalability and flexibility to ensure long-term fit. Ultimately, the right provider should simplify workflows, enhance the user experience and deliver measurable business value. 

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 Oracle atop the list, followed by ServiceNow and Microsoft. Providers that place in the top three of a category earn the designation of Leader. ServiceNow has done so in six categories; Oracle in five; Salesforce in four; Google and Microsoft in two; and Appian, AWS 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: AWS, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, RingCentral, Salesforce, ServiceNow, 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 re: Appian and Pega.

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 providers rated Assurance are: Dialpad, SAP and Sprinklr.

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: 8x8, Cisco, Tencent Cloud and Vonage.

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. Oracle, ServiceNow and Google were designated Product Experience Leaders. While not a Leader, Microsoft was 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, Oracle and Salesforce. 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 Workforce 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 Workforce requires software providers and products to have minimal capabilities, with a platform that supports intelligence and workflow, agentic AI, analytics and insights, AI overall, communication administration and integration and specific AI support for the workforce.

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.”