Market analytics leader Gartner has released its highly anticipated 2022 Magic Quadrant report for Enterprise Conversational AI Platforms.
Demand for such platforms is increasing as more CX teams turn to digital innovations to keep up with market leaders. However, choosing the right Conversational AI provider is often difficult.
Thankfully, Gartner identifies the strengths and cautions of many industry-leading platforms to isolate the market leaders.
In this year’s report, Gartner has assessed the Conversational AI offerings of more than 20 global providers, isolating six market leaders in the process.
The Definition of an Enterprise Conversational AI Platform
According to Gartner, an Enterprise Conversational AI Platform harnesses the power to build, orchestrate, and support the development of multiple bot use cases within the enterprise.
There are many vendors within this space. Each varies in terms of its vision and ability to execute. However, not every vendor takes the same approach. Gartner believes that they, typically, lean in one of three strategic directions.
- Natural-language-portfolio centric
- Business automation centric
- User-experience centric
Getting to grips with the strategy of each provider, the 2022 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Conversational AI Platforms divides each vendor into one of four segments: Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, and Niche Players. Here, we review them all.
Leaders
Leaders in the Magic Quadrant influence the direction of the Conversational AI market. By demonstrating a complete vision and an ability to execute, they lead the pack in terms of innovation, platform features, and overall viability. This year’s leaders are:
- Kore.ai
- Amelia
- IBM
- Omilia
- Cognigy
- OneReach.ai
Kore.ai
Kore.ai placed inside the top two for both its vision and ability to execute. In achieving such an impressive ranking, Gartner highlighted the vendor’s market understanding and enterprise support, market traction, and product capabilities as notable strengths. Supporting all major channels and use cases, Kore.ai’s large portfolio of Conversational AI offerings leads the field.
Talking exclusively to CX Today, Raj Koneru, CEO at Kore.ai, says:
Customer-centric enterprises are realizing that the future of their performance essentially rests on their ability to be omni-channel, conversational and most importantly, experience-driven. Conversational AI-based automation and augmentation will play a key role in all of this. That’s why Kore.ai’s Experience Optimization (XO) Platform is a trailblazer.
Amelia
The company, once known as IPsoft, ranked highest for its ability to execute, demonstrating how its platform is driving success within many enterprises. Embedding RPA into every part of its offering, the vendor integrates and automates experiences across a whole host of channels. Gartner lauds these automation skills, alongside Amelia’s conversational experience design expertise.
IBM
Perhaps the most recognizable vendor within the “leader” quadrant, IBM has operations in over 170 countries and a global partner network to meet a vast array of enterprise requirements. As such, IBM offers a nimble, innovative proposition. For example, its virtual agent solution – Watson Assistant – can handle topic changes, suggest alternatives, and detect when to bring a human into the loop.
Omilia
Headquartered in Cyprus, Omilia differentiates itself from other providers of Conversational AI platforms through its use of "miniApps". These are configurable natural language understanding (NLU) dialogue components, prebuilt to handle simple tasks and call center queries. Available through the Omilia Cloud Platform (OCP), the vendor customizes modules across many sectors, including banking, financial services, healthcare, and many more.
Cognigy
Praised by Gartner for its enterprise flexibility and sustainability, Cognigy.AI offers a low-code platform that provides voice capabilities through its Cognigy Voice Gateway. The vendor also boasts a stand-alone analytics offering, Cognigy Insights, which delivers a unique understanding of how the AI solution is performing. Finally, Gartner commends Cognigy for its customer references, as the company consistently achieves excellent feedback.
OneReach.ai
An early entrant to the world of conversational experiences, OneReach.ai has created a well-rounded solution with a use case for every department. As a result, the company enables businesses to create Conversational AI strategies instead of random bot-building projects. With that said, Gartner does pinpoint OneReach.ai’s voice capabilities as a particular strength, alongside its profound focus on the overall experience and impressive “architectural composability”.
Challengers
Challengers in the magic quadrant are well-placed to succeed and deliver upon the expectations of their clients. These vendors are undoubtedly market stalwarts, yet perhaps currently lack the vision to define its future and introduce truly innovative uses of Conversational AI. This year’s challengers are:
- Oracle
Oracle
The Oracle Digital Assistant (ODA) offers a complete set of out-of-the-box product functionalities, each tailored to unique industries and enterprise domains. With impressive intelligent chat and decision automation, Gartner commends Oracle’s innovation and product capabilities, alongside its experience in meeting enterprise needs. Yet, the analyst questions the visibility of its Conversational AI within its overall proposition.
Google offers an extensive Conversational AI suite, featuring Contact Center AI (CCAI), Dialogflow CX, Agent Assist AI, and much more. The innovation culture that ties these together fosters a world-leading AI research capability. However, Gartner notes that the company is still striving to mature its vision and become more than a sum of its parts.
Visionaries
For brands that are eager to innovate, visionaries offer an exciting path forwards. While these vendors are sometimes snapped up by larger players, they move the market forwards by pushing the boundaries and following a pioneering vision. Yet, their ability to execute such a vision is perhaps a cause for concern. This year’s sole visionary is: