Complete guide to understanding enterprise chatbots in 2024

Overview

Digital communication is rapidly evolving, and enterprise chatbots have emerged as indispensable tools for businesses aiming to streamline their operations and enhance customer experiences. As we navigate the complexities of the technological ecosystem in 2024, understanding the intricacies of these sophisticated conversational agents becomes crucial for organizations seeking to maintain a competitive edge.

In this article, we delve into the concept of enterprise chatbots‌, exploring their pivotal role in revolutionizing customer service, internal operations, and more. From the integration of chatbots with existing enterprise systems to practical use cases, this exploration aims to equip readers with a comprehensive understanding of how enterprise chatbots are reshaping the 2024 business landscape.

What is an enterprise chatbot?

Enterprise chatbots are digital conversational agents designed to assist businesses in various aspects of their operations, such as internal processes and customer service. These AI-powered digital assistants are programmed to understand natural language inputs and respond intelligently. This enables users to interact with them in a conversational manner through text or speech interfaces.

Enterprise chatbots leverage advanced technologies like natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence (AI) to interpret and generate responses to user queries or commands. They can handle an array of tasks, including answering frequently asked questions, providing real-time support, automating routine processes, facilitating transactions, and assisting employees with internal tasks. By harnessing the capabilities of enterprise chatbots, businesses can streamline operations, improve efficiency, enhance customer experiences, and drive growth.

Top ten chatbots for enterprise customer service in 2024

There are dozens of enterprise chatbot platforms on the market—how do you choose the right one? To help you decide, we’ve compared the top ten enterprise chatbots available.

1. Freshworks Customer Service Suite

Freshworks Customer Service Suite is an AI-driven omnichannel chatbot solution that delights customers and empowers agents. This bot uses NLP to understand and respond to customer inquiries effectively in real-time. The Freshworks CSS chatbot is fully customizable to your business needs and processes.

Key features:

• Freshworks Customer Service Suite bots automate resolutions to offer instant responses to common customer queries. 

• With the no-code bot builder, you can have your chatbots up and running on your website within a few minutes. 

• Freshworks Customer Service Suite bots know when to transfer the chat to an agent. This seamless agent transfer saves your customers from getting stuck in an endless chatbot loop. 

• Freshworks Customer Service Suite bots are highly scalable and support customers on messaging channels, including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Apple Business Chat, and more. 

2. Drift

The Drift chatbot primarily focuses on lead generation and is more suitable for sales teams. This chatbot engages with customers and prospects to qualify leads, book meetings, and provide instant customer support. It integrates with websites and uses personalized messaging to improve user experience. Drift’s chatbot also has the ability to recognize returning visitors and offers analytics so businesses can monitor its performance.

Key features:

• Customer engagement

• Lead generation 

• Schedule meetings 

• A/B bot testing

3. Kore.ai

Kore.ai is a conversational AI platform that enables businesses to build, train, and deploy bots that automate communication and tasks to improve customer engagement and operational efficiency. The platform supports multi-channel deployment, allowing businesses to integrate chatbots into websites, mobile apps, and popular messaging platforms. 

Key features:

• Unified platform with tools to design, test, train, deploy, analyze, and manage AI virtual assistants

• The platform's NLP approach accurately identifies the user's intent and provides quick resolutions

• No-code capabilities to develop intuitive conversational experiences

4. IBM Watson Assistant

IBM Watson Assistant is an enterprise conversational AI platform that allows you to build intelligent virtual and voice assistants. These assistants can provide customers with answers across any messaging platform, application, device, or channel. IBM Watson Assistant also integrates with an organization's existing data systems and applications, enabling personalized and informed responses. This platform supports development without extensive coding, making it possible for non-technical users to deploy effective chatbots.

Key features:

• Can have a natural, human-like conversation using NLP

• Provides personalized responses based on segmentation or past responses

• Allows companies to edit conversations to meet the unique business use case

• Low-code development

5. Aivo

Aivo is a customer service chatbot platform that uses AI to automate interactions and instantly respond to customer inquiries across multiple channels like websites, social media, and mobile apps. It can integrate with existing CRM systems to provide personalized responses based on customer data. Aivo not only provides analytics to track chatbot performance but also to monitor customer satisfaction.

Key features:

• Experience the same customer service 24/7 on any channel

• Offer a unique customer experience with an AI-generated avatar

• The conversational engine understands the intent behind your customers' questions and provides a relevant response

• Analytics to monitor chatbot performance and customer satisfaction

6. Qualified

Qualified is a chatbot platform specifically designed to help B2B companies accelerate sales by capturing and converting website visitors into leads. It integrates with Salesforce, allowing sales teams to identify high-value visitors in real-time and engage them through direct chat, voice calls, or scheduled meetings. This chatbot’s proactive engagement increases conversion rates by connecting sales teams with prospects while they are actively interested.

Key Features:

• Uses intelligent prompts based on visitor behavior and data to create personalized interactions and qualify leads

• Analytics for monitoring chatbot performance and insights into visitor engagement

• Uses intelligent routing to direct visitors to the most appropriate sales representative based on factors like account value, visitor location, and browsing behavior

• Allows sales representatives to share their screen or co-browse with visitors directly through the chat interface

7. Zendesk

The Zendesk chatbot is designed to enhance customer support. Using AI and NLP, it can understand and engage in human-like conversations, offering solutions, gathering customer information, and routing complex issues to the appropriate support agents. It enables seamless ticket management and follow-up by integrating with Zendesk’s customer service platform. This bot is also customizable to meet business needs and ensure a consistent brand voice across all customer interactions.

Key Features

• Can initiate conversations based on predefined triggers and behaviors to provide proactive support

• Supports multiple languages

• Provides detailed analytics and reporting tools that track chatbot interactions, measure performance, and identify areas for improvement

• Can be integrated with third-party apps to retrieve relevant information and perform actions across different software ecosystems

8. Intercom

The Intercom chatbot is an advanced communication tool that uses ML to understand and respond to user queries effectively. It offers instant support and qualifies leads by collecting and analyzing user data. It is highly customizable, allowing businesses to tailor its behavior and responses to fit specific scenarios and customer needs. The Intercom chatbot also enables seamless transitions from automated to human support, ensuring that more complex issues are escalated to live agents.

Key Features

• Delivers targeted messages based on user behavior, location, and engagement history

• Users can set specific rules for the chatbot to follow, determining how it responds to different types of inquiries and when to hand off the conversation to an agent

• Has A/B testing capabilities that allow businesses to test different messages and strategies within the chatbot to see what works best

• Supports messaging both within web and mobile apps and on websites

9. Sprinklr

The Sprinklr chatbot employs artificial intelligence to automate responses and engage with customers in real-time. It can handle a range of tasks, from answering FAQs to resolving basic issues, freeing up human agents for more complex inquiries. The bot also learns from each interaction to improve its accuracy and efficiency over time. 

Key Features

• Can be integrated with social media platforms

• Equipped with sentiment analysis capabilities, allowing it to detect the mood or tone of the customer's messages

• Omnichannel deployment

• Provides tools to create customized workflows for the chatbot

10. Genesys Cloud CX

The Genesys Cloud CX chatbot is designed to enhance customer experience through automated interactions using AI and NLP. The chatbot can escalate complex issues to live agents, ensuring a smooth transition and continuous customer support. Its integration with the broader Genesys ecosystem allows for unified communication across multiple channels. The chatbot can also learn from interactions to improve responses and personalize customer interactions.

Key Features

• Uses predictive analytics to anticipate customer needs based on their current and past interactions

• Allows customers to interact with it using voice commands or text

• Provides real-time analytics that monitor chatbot interactions

• Integrates with existing systems to access and utilize customer data for more personalized interactions and ensures that all customer information remains up-to-date

Why enterprise customers love Freshworks Customer Service Suite's chatbot

With so many features, capabilities, and benefits, there’s a lot to love about Freshworks Customer Service Suite’s chatbot, including:

Human-like personalized conversations

Freshworks Customer Service Suite’s AI chatbot lets you have meaningful conversations with your customers by engaging with them based on intent and context. You can:

• Automatically respond to FAQs with Freddy AI

• Create engaging, human-like conversational experiences driven by Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning

• Segment your customers based on their traits and behavior. 

• Use triggers to send the right messages to each segment at the right time to boost engagement.

Elevated agent productivity

Freshworks Customer Service Suite’s built-in generative AI features help your support team reduce resolution time and provide more consistent, engaging experiences. It can:

• Summarize support ticket conversations, predict agent responses and complete their sentences with a click, or convert replies to a formal or friendly tone, according to the brand voice

• Nudge customers to reply if they have not replied for a long time

• Auto-resolve tickets based on keywords

• Suggest next steps in the support process 

• Train agents for continuous improvement

Multiple channels and languages

Be wherever your customers are, and speak their native language. Freshworks Customer Service Suite offers:

• Native integrations with all major messaging channels (Website, app, WhatsApp messenger, Instagram, Facebook, Apple Business Chat, and LINE)

• A single inbox for agents to access conversations from multiple channels

• Conversation and FAQ support in over 40 languages

Intelligent assignment and routing

Unlike most messaging tools that only offer round-robin assignment to support agents, Freshworks Customer Service Suite’s IntelliAssign ensures that every conversation is assigned to the right agent using:

• Skill-based assignment

• Intelligent load-balancing

• Round-robin routing

Enterprise-grade security

Freshworks complies with international data privacy and security regulations. In addition, Freshworks never uses Personal Identifiable Information (PII) from your account to train AI models. These models are trained using anonymized customer service data only.

Freshworks is:

• GDPR-compliant
• ISO-27001-certified
• SOC 2 Type-II certified

How can enterprise chatbots benefit your business?

Enterprise chatbots can benefit your business in many ways, including:

Enhancing customer engagement

Using chatbots, businesses can provide immediate, personalized, and round-the-clock assistance. These digital assistants use NLP and ML to understand and respond to customer inquiries in real time, effectively reducing response times and ensuring prompt issue resolution. They can handle multiple conversations simultaneously and seamlessly integrate with other customer service channels, such as websites, social media platforms, and mobile apps, to make customer service efficient and accessible. Enterprise chatbots can also deliver tailored recommendations, product suggestions, and relevant information based on individual preferences and past interactions to enhance the overall customer experience. 

Increasing accessibility 

Enterprise chatbots provide a convenient and inclusive communication channel for users across diverse demographics and geographical locations. With their ability to interact through text or speech interfaces, these digital assistants cater to individuals with varying communication preferences and accessibility needs. They give businesses the opportunity to provide 24/7 support, ensuring customers can receive assistance whenever they need it, regardless of time zones or operational hours. 

This accessibility extends beyond customer service to internal operations. Chatbots enable employees to easily access information, submit requests, and complete tasks through intuitive conversational interfaces, which fosters a more inclusive, efficient work environment.

Reducing costs and increasing ROI

Enterprise chatbots reduce costs and increase return on investment (ROI) by automating routine tasks and minimizing human intervention. By handling a significant portion of customer inquiries and support requests, chatbots alleviate the burden on human agents, allowing businesses to scale their customer service operations without significant increases in staffing costs. Chatbots also lead to faster resolution times, reducing the need for prolonged interactions and minimizing potential revenue loss due to customer dissatisfaction or delays. 

Improving productivity and efficiency

By streamlining workflows, automating repetitive tasks, and providing instant access to information, enterprise chatbots significantly improve productivity and efficiency levels. They enable employees to offload time-consuming activities, such as data entry, scheduling, and basic troubleshooting, allowing them to focus on higher-value tasks that require human expertise. Chatbots are also centralized hubs for accessing information and coordinating activities across departments, facilitating seamless communication and collaboration. They allow employees to retrieve critical data and insights swiftly, enabling faster decision-making and problem-solving.

Continuously gathering data and reports

Chatbots provide businesses with invaluable insights by continuously gathering data and generating reports on user interactions, preferences, and trends. Through NLP and ML, they analyze vast amounts of conversational data to identify patterns, sentiment trends, and frequently asked questions. This information enables businesses to gain deeper insights into customer needs, preferences, and pain points, allowing them to tailor products, services, and marketing strategies accordingly. Additionally, the real-time reports they generate on key performance metrics, such as response times, customer satisfaction scores, and resolution rates, enable businesses to monitor and optimize chatbot performance over time.

How do enterprise chatbots differ from others?

Unlike traditional chatbots, which are designed to engage with customers in a general way, enterprise chatbots are customized to the needs of individual organizations, allowing them to provide the most accurate, relevant information possible. Let’s take a look at factors that can make enterprise chatbots more beneficial to your business than traditional ones.

Designed to increase operational efficiency

These digital assistants seamlessly integrate with existing systems and databases, enabling quick access to information and resources without the need for human intervention. By handling routine inquiries, processing transactions, and routing requests to the appropriate channels, chatbots minimize resolution delays and bottlenecks. Moreover, enterprise chatbots can be used as virtual assistants for employees, offering on-demand support for tasks such as scheduling meetings, accessing documents, and providing training materials to free up valuable time. 

Advanced customization to business needs

Enterprise chatbots offer unparalleled flexibility and customization options, allowing businesses to tailor them to their unique needs and requirements. Through modular design and configuration settings, chatbots can be customized to reflect a company's branding, tone of voice, and more. Businesses can define conversational flows, set up decision trees, and integrate custom functionalities to align with their processes and objectives. Enterprise chatbots can also be trained on industry-specific terminology and workflows, ensuring accurate and contextually relevant responses to user inquiries. With the ability to adapt and evolve over time, they encourage businesses to iterate and refine their conversational experiences continuously to provide their customers with maximum value.

Advanced security measures 

The built-in security features of enterprise chatbots safeguard sensitive data and ensure compliance with regulatory standards. These security measures have multiple layers of protection, including encryption protocols, access controls, and authentication mechanisms, to prevent unauthorized access and data breaches. Enterprise chatbots also employ techniques such as anomaly detection and threat intelligence to identify and mitigate potential security risks proactively. In addition, they can be configured to adhere to industry-specific compliance standards, such as GDPR or HIPAA, by implementing features like data anonymization and user consent management. 

Integration across departments

Enterprise chatbots foster integration across departments within organizations by providing a centralized platform for communication, collaboration, and information sharing. With their ability to seamlessly integrate with existing enterprise systems and databases, chatbots enable employees from different departments to effortlessly access relevant information and resources. Moreover, chatbots facilitate cross-functional workflows by routing inquiries and requests to the appropriate departments or personnel. By breaking down silos and promoting collaboration, enterprise chatbots enhance communication channels, promote knowledge sharing, and facilitate cross-departmental alignment.

Natural language processing

Unlike many traditional chatbots, enterprise chatbots use NLP to understand and respond to user inquiries in a conversational manner. Through sophisticated algorithms and linguistic analysis, NLP enables chatbots to comprehend the nuances of human language, including slang, colloquialisms, and context, allowing for more contextually relevant responses. Additionally, NLP paves the way for more advanced capabilities, such as sentiment analysis, entity recognition, and intent detection, that enable chatbots to interpret user intent and personalize interactions based on individual preferences.

Best use cases for enterprise chatbots

Enterprise chatbots are innovative technologies that can be used in many business scenarios, including:

Customer concern and question resolution

When customers raise concerns or pose questions, enterprise chatbots use NLP algorithms to understand the inquiry's intent and context. Then, the chatbots can offer relevant information, troubleshoot issues, and guide users through step-by-step resolutions. They can also escalate complex queries to human agents, ensuring swift and efficient resolution while maintaining a seamless user experience. By offering timely and accurate support, enterprise chatbots enhance customer satisfaction, reduce response times, and foster stronger customer relationships.

Lead generation and management

Enterprise chatbots can be used in lead generation and management by engaging with potential customers, qualifying leads, and nurturing relationships throughout the sales funnel. Through proactive outreach and interactive conversations, chatbots capture visitor information, such as contact details and preferences, to expand prospect-related data. They also utilize personalized recommendations and targeted messaging to guide leads through the decision-making process, addressing inquiries, overcoming objections, and highlighting value propositions. Additionally, chatbots automate routine tasks, such as scheduling appointments and following up on inquiries, allowing representatives to focus on high-value activities. Ultimately, using enterprise chatbots for lead generation and management can enhance efficiency, increase conversion rates, and drive revenue growth.

Helpdesk management

When users encounter issues or require assistance, chatbots can be used to triage inquiries, gather relevant information, and provide self-service solutions or escalate complex cases to human agents. They can also guide users through troubleshooting steps, access knowledge bases, and deliver real-time support, reducing resolution times and improving customer satisfaction. Moreover, enterprise chatbots streamline helpdesk ticket management by categorizing and prioritizing incoming requests, assigning them to the appropriate agents, and tracking their progress. 

Customer onboarding

Enterprise chatbots enhance onboarding processes by providing personalized guidance, answering inquiries, and facilitating interactions at every stage of the onboarding journey. Through interactive conversations, chatbots can collect relevant information from new customers, such as preferences, goals, and challenges, to tailor the onboarding experience to their needs. They also deliver onboarding materials, tutorials, and FAQs in a conversational format, making the information easily accessible and digestible for users. Additionally, chatbots can automate administrative tasks, such as form submissions and account setup, accelerating the onboarding process.

Data insights

Through interactions with users, chatbots collect large amounts of data, including customer preferences, behavior patterns, and feedback. By applying NLP and ML algorithms, chatbots can extract valuable insights from this data, such as sentiment analysis, emerging trends, and frequently asked questions. Enterprise chatbots can also generate real-time reports and dashboards, providing businesses with actionable insights into customer needs, market trends, and operational performance, empowering businesses to make informed decisions, optimize strategies, and drive continuous improvement.

What are the features of enterprise chatbots?

Conversational chatbots understand customer intent and quickly provide contextual information, saving time for your customers and agents. There are seven key features that offer tremendous advantages for enterprises:

1. No-code setup

An advanced no-code chatbot builder like Freshworks Customer Service Suite allows you to conceptualize, build, and deploy chatbots across channels using a visual drag-and-drop interface rather than traditional code. These AI-powered visual chatbot builders help enterprises set up different bot flows for various scenarios they may encounter. This bot builder can even generate flows, triggers, and API connections automatically.

Benefit

Saves time and effort. It is cost-effective as it doesn’t require a developer. Bot flows can be easily changed and managed with the visual editor.

2. Understand customer intent

Let’s consider Joan, a customer who wants to ask about an e-commerce store’s return policy. A bot built on conversational AI can detect natural language. Based on Joan’s query, the bot can capture customer intent (FAQ, returns, recommendations, etc.), and direct Joan to the appropriate bot flow.

Here’s what the bot should be capable of doing:

• Leverage NLP to understand natural language, multiple or complex queries, and reply in a conversational manner. Read more on NLP chatbots

• Understand customer intent and redirect to the appropriate bot flow

• Answer questions, give recommendations, or perform actions like returns

Benefit: With the above features and functionalities, enterprise chatbots can improve accuracy and resolution times, resulting in higher CSAT scores.

3. Personalize interactions

Advanced AI chatbots allow you to tailor interactions with your website visitors based on various characteristics. These characteristics include the type of visitor (new or returning), their location, and their actions on your website. Seamless integration with existing systems, such as CRM platforms and knowledge bases, is also essential for retrieving customer data and delivering personalized experiences.

AI can analyze customer behavior to create customized self-service journeys that cater to your customers' unique needs. The latest advancements in NLP and generative AI enable you to personalize interactions, offer recommendations, and provide assistance based on customers' preferences.

Benefit

More human-like and interactive chat experiences, enhancing customer engagement and satisfaction.

4. Deploy across channels

Enterprise chatbots cater to a wide range of customers, all of whom have their preferred communication channels, such as Instagram, Apple Business Chat, and more. Rather than setting up chatbots and flows on every channel separately, businesses can replicate the chatbot’s behavior consistently on every channel.

Benefit

It is available 24/7 across channels of the customer’s choice, including website, app, and social media, enabling the best possible customer experience on any channel.

5. Language support

For enterprises with global customer bases, the ability to offer customer support in a customer’s native language is a massive advantage. Multilingual chatbots can be trained to answer questions in different languages to accommodate every customer.

Benefit

Talking to your customers in their native language will improve your customer support and CSAT rating.

6. Insights to improve CX

Enterprises can measure the chatbot’s performance and optimize its flows for greater efficiency. To cater to your company’s requirements, create reports with custom attributes and visualizations. You can measure various metrics like total interactions, time to resolution, first contact resolution rate, and CSAT rating.

Benefit

Measure and target a set of key metrics to achieve your business objectives.

7. Security and compliance

As an enterprise, a chatbot provider needs to be compliant with global security standards, such as GDPR and SOC-2. These certifications ensure that user data is safeguarded and customer privacy is ensured.

Benefit

Limits exposure to data breaches, ensures data privacy for buyers, and avoids regulatory fines.