Conversational AI: What's Real, and What's Hype?

Thank you for calling …" A sad sort of human-to-computer stalemate has played out over countless fruitless interactions. Companies adopted IVR (interactive voice response) systems over the last decades, possibly in an attempt to reduce the cost of hiring and training costs for human customer service reps that have high turnover rates. Or, perhaps some forward-thinking executives thought a robot-voiced CSR would make a company appear more'advanced' in comparison to its competitors. Whatever the reason, our earliest conversations with IVR menus and chatbots left most of us humans feeling let down, like we weren't having a conversation at all. Despite the fact that voice recognition and computer speech have improved dramatically in speed and sophistication, it's hard for some of us to shake that feeling that nobody is on the other end of the line to help.