Conversational Artificial Intelligence is changing how we interact with technology and each other. The technology enables more human-like interactions than ever before, thanks to the ability to understand context, react to tone of voice, and respond intelligently based on previous conversations. It’s also getting increasingly sophisticated at analyzing unstructured data such as audio or video inputs—making the technology useful for things like mining through multimedia content to find answers to questions. 

While these developments offer exciting opportunities for organizations looking to better serve people in the digital space, the complexities of the technology can make implementation intimidating, especially for organizations looking to implement quickly and often. Our advice to anyone looking for the fastest way to launch conversational AI experiences at scale: find yourself a partner.

Identify a strong technology partner with experience building, launching, and maintaining Conversational AI experiences

It’s difficult to build a conversational AI experience from scratch. Unless your organization plans to build in-house expertise focused on artificial intelligence and conversational modeling, it makes sense to leverage that expertise from a partner so that you can stay focused on your core business.

Your technology partner should have deep domain expertise, as well as an understanding of how CAIs fit into your organization’s broader business strategy. Beyond the nuts and bolts of the implementation and launch, a good partner helps you strategize and architect the best way to meet your needs using CAI. This can look like discussing your goals and requirements early on while they help you validate that they’re feasible – saving time and money in the long run by ensuring everyone is aligned around what success looks like before starting development work.

If your organization is looking to launch hundreds or thousands of experiences, you’ll want a partner with the ability to standardize operations and automate processes wherever possible.

Look for a partner that can help you leverage pre-built models with industry and vertical specific know-how

If you’re looking to build for a vertical with industry specific jargon and needs, a partner with pre-trained models by vertical industry can dramatically shorten your time to launch. You might worry that a pre-trained model will mean a lack of personalization but with conversational AI, that’s not the case. 

Pre-trained conversational models actually shorten setup time and ensure that the majority of likely scenarios and conversations are covered automatically. They have the industry specific knowledge necessary to avoid misunderstandings and ensure accuracy in your customer interactions. A generic model might not know how to respond to, “do you do molding?” but a model trained specifically for a home renovation or remodeling company, would.

Find a Conversational AI Platform that gives you control when you want it

Any operation focused on scale is going to have outliers, so you’ll want to find a partner with enough flexibility in their product and process to make adjustments where necessary. Rather than spending time reinventing the wheel, you can optimize and customize for specific use cases and needs. These customization capabilities also allow you to build accommodations for things like branded products and services, a vital consideration when you’re looking to build for multiple different companies or brands.

The balance between the broad vertical industry knowledge and the ability to customize for different use cases and brands is key for organizations like small business service providers, who often work with high volumes of brands in a small number of verticals.

Look for a partner that’s launched quickly and often

The best proof that a partner can launch new conversational AI experiences quickly and often? Having done it before. If your partner has optimized processes, platforms, and pre-trained models, they should be able to launch many new conversational AI experiences in hours or days. With the right team and planning in place, that can be replicated time and time again.

Organizations looking for that ability to replicate and scale successful launches quickly should find a reputable partner with deep knowledge and experience in the conversational AI space. If you’re reading this, you’re in the right place.