Executive Summary
Key Takeaways
Conversational AI is emerging as an interface layer that enables natural language interaction with enterprise systems, data and workflows. These platforms connect user intent with task execution, reducing reliance on structured interfaces and manual processes. Integration, governance and workflow orchestration define platform effectiveness as organizations scale conversational interaction across operations and engagement models.
Software Provider Summary
The ISG Buyers Guide™ for Conversational AI evaluates 23 software providers offering products that support natural language interaction, generative and agentic AI, workflow execution, analytics, governance and enterprise integration. The research ranked the top three overall leaders as Google, Oracle and Microsoft. Providers were classified using weighted performance in Product Experience and Customer Experience for ISG quadrant placement. Automation Anywhere, AWS, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, RingCentral, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Zendesk and Zoom were rated Exemplary, with Cisco rated Innovative. Dialpad was rated Assurance, and 8x8, Anthropic, Bandwidth, Fractal, Glean, OpenAI, OpenText, Tencent Cloud and Vonage were rated Merit.
Product Experience Insights
Product Experience, representing 80% of the evaluation, focuses on Capability (40%) and Platform (40%), which includes adaptability, manageability, reliability and usability. Microsoft, Oracle and Google achieved the highest performance as Leaders in this category, supported by advanced natural language processing accuracy and enterprise-grade platform capabilities across adaptability, manageability, reliability and usability. Leaders demonstrated enterprise-grade platform capabilities across varied roles and contexts.
Customer Experience Value
Customer Experience, representing 20% of the evaluation, focuses on validation and TCO/ROI. Google, Zoom and Salesforce were the Leaders in this category, demonstrating strong customer advocacy and clear investment in success outcomes. Providers with lower performance often lacked publicly available customer validation or failed to demonstrate structured ROI measurement and proactive lifecycle engagement.
Strategic Recommendations
Enterprises should evaluate conversational AI as an interface layer that connects interaction with execution across systems and workflows. Selection should prioritize natural language accuracy, integration depth, workflow orchestration and governance controls. Adoption requires alignment across IT and business teams to define use cases, integrate with enterprise data and ensure consistent, policy-driven operation at scale.
The Findings
The software providers and products evaluated in this research offer product and customer experiences, but not every feature is equally valuable to every enterprise or is needed to support the relevant business processes and use cases. Moreover, having too many product capabilities may be a negative factor for an enterprise if it
introduces unnecessary complexity. Nonetheless, you may decide that a more comprehensive set of capabilities is important and meets your enterprise’s requirements.
An effective customer relationship with a software provider is vital to the success of any investment. The overall customer experience and the full lifecycle of engagement play a key role in ensuring satisfaction and long-term success. Providers with dedicated customer leadership, such as chief customer officers, tend to invest more deeply in these relationships and prioritize customer outcomes in line with TCO and ROI expectations. It is equally important that this commitment to customer success is evident throughout the provider’s website, the buying process and the customer journey.
Overall Scoring of Software Providers Across Categories
The research finds Google atop the list, followed by Oracle and Microsoft. Providers that place in the top three of a category earn the designation of Leader. Google has done so in five categories, Microsoft in four, Zoom in three, Oracle in two and Salesforce in one category.
