Chatbots have been used for a few years now for lead-gen and content marketing use cases. Brands have deployed both rule-based and AI-powered chatbots to share relevant content, set up demos, walk customers through sign-up and automate customer service workflows -- all in an effort to deliver consistent, seamless experiences across channels and geographies. But this barely scrapes the surface of what conversational chatbots can do. So what comes next for conversational AI (CAI)? Conversational AI solutions play a critical role in connecting the dots between various elements of customer experience (CX).

These solutions are especially popular with digitally native brands, which rely on more personalized customer interactions, figuring out a seamless way to handle customer service inquiries at scale, instant message technology that's complemented with some AI bot functionality has become a more popular choice. These companies receive a bunch of inbound website traffic because of the very nature of the direct-to-consumer business, and have found the increasing need to have a chat interface to answer customer questions. But instead of relying on the old AI-only models, they are using a variety of technology to better and more personally answer inquiries and lead clients on their purchase journey. For a DTC brand like Brooklinen, seamless customer service interactions are of the utmost importance. According to Jack Lorentzen, a customer experience manager for the bedding brand, the most important aspect of live chat is that customers are never talking to voiceless machines.