A digital assistant (also called a Conversational AI bot, Virtual Customer Assistant or just a smart chatbot) is a piece of software that can understand and have conversations with people. Basically just like you would chat with a human, you can chat with a digital assistant. It is a way to automate processes and tasks so that people can quickly get useful information.
Digital assistants understand user intent from free text. You can ask a question and it understands what you are saying.
A digital assistant can understand what the user wants from analyzing their message (usually written inside a chat window on a website or mobile app) and then perform the task by executing some back-end action (e.g. pull up customer data, fill in a form etc).
The main reason to use digital assistants is to increase customer and employee satisfaction. By simply stating their wish (writing it in the chat window), the assistant takes that query, understands it and executes it with measurable results. This saves significant amounts of time for customers and employees.
We went through dozens of software providers and compiled a list of the top digital assistant software tools on the market today.
AlphaChat is a Conversational AI platform allowing companies to build digital assistants for their website and social channels. Aside from Natural Language Understanding, the AI is capable of authenticating users with deep RPA automations for online customer service and sales.
Top Features:
What’s special about this tool: Powerful tool with no-code interface for anyone to build digital assistants. Launch an AI chatbot in minutes. API available for advanced users with deep insight into bot content and AI suggestions on how to improve the Conversational AI. SLA and Alpha Operating System with custom code available for enterprise bots.
Pricing: 10-day free trial. Paid plans from €399/month.
Hyro is a digital assistant software platform that analyzes conversational data to create a basis for conversational interfaces.
Top Features:
What’s special about this tool: Focus on the healthcare, government and real estate sector.
Pricing: Paid plans price available on request.
Netomi is a customer service automation platform with Natural Language Understanding for building digital assistants.
Top Features:
What’s special about this tool: Netomi has built automation solutions for chat and email through its intent detection and ticket clustering capabilities.
Pricing: Pricing available on request.
Mindsay is a software automation tool which gives Software as a Service companies the possibility to build and train chatbots.
Top Features:
What’s special about this tool: With Mindsay it is possible to train the virtual assistant in multiple languages, connect to third party tools and analyze interactions.
Pricing: Pricing available on request.
Capacity is an AI-powered helpdesk and Q&A automation product that is geared towards automating support for your employees and also your customers.
Top Features:
What’s special about this tool: Capacity helps automate internal support and provides intelligent virtual assistants to provide insight and answers to users’ questions.
Pricing: Pricing available on request.
E-bot7 offers a digital assistant software for customer-facing conversation automation
Top Features:
What’s special about this tool: E-bot7 uses smart routing for transferring customers from the chatbot to human agents when escalated.
Pricing: Paid plans price available on request.
Activechat is an automated digital assistant platform for customer interaction automation through building smart AI chatbots that are bundled with a live chat tool and a conversational intelligence module.
Top Features:
What’s special about this tool: Activechat gives a tool for training the chatbots and connects them to built-in live chat.
Pricing: Prices from $33/agent/month with extra agents $299/year.
Meya is a chatbot software product for developing customizable digital assistants and virtual customer assistants.
Top Features:
What’s special about this tool: Meya offers its own Bot Flow Markup Language for developers in building their chatbots.
Pricing: Paid plans starting from $799/month.
Aivo is an RPA chatbot product for omnichannel customer service automation.
Top Features:
What’s special about this tool: Aivo provides a chatbot training engine and connections to multiple platforms including Genesys, Zendesk, Zapier, Slack and Salesforce.
Pricing: Paid plans starting from $99/month + $0.15/conversation.
Verloop product allows creating chatbots and digital assistants for customer service automation and marketing chatbots.
Top Features:
What’s special about this tool: Verloop has features for e-commerce companies seeking to automate support and increase sales.
Pricing: Pricing available on request.
