What are the best conversational AI platforms in 2025?

We’ve all grown accustomed to interacting with chatbots, whether it’s to guide us through simple actions or answer some basic questions. While no one can argue that they’re fast and convenient in the right situation, their limitations often leave us wishing for a human agent instead. That’s where conversational AI puts on its cape and jumps in to save the day!

If you’re a customer service manager trying to imagine a day when you can truly work smarter, not harder. Or, answer more customer queries in less time without sacrificing quality. Or, continue to deliver personalized and conversion-driven experiences as you scale, then conversational AI might be the ultimate solution you’ve been looking for.

Whether you’re just beginning your journey or looking to level up your AI game, this guide has you covered. We’ll dive deep into the most important concepts regarding conversational AI, and throw in a few of the best platforms redefining the future of customer service.

What Is Conversational AI?

Conversational AI systems are built on AI (artificial intelligence) models that are designed to mimic and interact with humans. This can take the form of either text or speech, as long as it has the ability to understand natural human language and generate responses.

Just like humans (getting there), they have the ability to maintain context across complex, multi-turn interactions, changing their responses as necessary. 

A conversational AI interaction relies on all the following working together:

Conversational AI vs Chatbots: Know the Difference

While many view conversational AI and chatbots as essentially the same thing, they are more like close relatives. Both strive to provide conversation-like interaction for humans and are often used in customer support. However, they differ in how “smart” (conversational AI) or “dumb” (chatbots) they are.

Chatbots tend to follow pre-determined rules and rely solely on canned responses to engage with users. While they do rely on keyword detection to identify the topic of a conversation, they have almost no ability to “understand” things like context or sentiment, much less change direction once they’ve chosen a path.

That being said, the benefits of chatbots are that they’re quick and easy to deploy, and do a decent job of quickly answering/solving the most common user queries.

However, this is in stark contrast to our definition of a conversational AI, which possesses some form of dynamic intelligence to choose its own path and alter its responses on the fly. Practically, this means that conversational AIs can automate significantly more complex queries than chatbots, delaying the need for human intervention even further.

What Is a Conversational AI Platform?

A conversational AI platform is a set of tools that enable businesses to create, deploy, and manage conversational systems, like virtual assistants, chatbots, etc. In other words, it’s the actual software that makes it possible to implement, manage, and deploy these technologies in a way that’s useful to your business and customers.

Today, it’s largely used in AI customer service to support agents and improve user experiences.

Conversational AI is at the cutting edge of software technology and is constantly evolving. So, another vital aspect of a conversational AI platform is to provide a layer of abstraction, shielding users from the complexity of the underlying technology.

It should allow users to modify and use the behavior of existing conversational AI models, without starting from scratch or being experts in it themselves. Using intuitive tools like drag-and-drop interfaces and APIs, users should be able to use these platforms to automate customer experiences and integrate AI with existing workflows.

How Conversational AI Platforms Work (Simplified for Busy Decision-Makers)

The best way to understand how a conversational AI platform works, and its true potential, is through example. So, let’s quickly go over the underlying components, and then take a behind-the-scenes look at how it actually functions in a real-world situation.

Main Components of a Conversational AI Platform

First, here are the main components that work together to make a conversational AI platform:

One of our goals with Customerly was to create a platform that makes harnessing the full power of conversational AI effortless.

Our Answer? An intuitive Chatflow tool with powerful AI “missions,” empowering your chatbots to handle complex incoming queries without any human intervention.

For example, a human customer can reach out with a complaint about the browser extension misbehaving with some website pages in natural language. Aura AI can then identify the main topic or intent of the message, and start digging for more information to provide a useful answer.

In this case, the AI might ask 

In this case, the AI mission automated the typical back-and-forth during the early data-gathering. Agents could be off handling other queries that require human interaction. If their intervention is needed, the AI can escalate it to an agent with a helpful summary, so they can jump straight into actually helping the customer find solutions.

The result? A win-win for everyone.

How to Build AI “Missions” Like a pro

If the idea of creating these AI “missions” sounds daunting, don’t worry—it’s incredibly simple.

Everything happens within Customerly’s intuitive and visual Chatflows Builder. Defining your AI’s journey is as easy as adding actions, connecting them, and training the AI with human-language instructions.

Here’s a general step-by-step process:

Automate Smarter with Customerly Aura

Harness AI-powered Chatflows to streamline support, reduce response times, and boost efficiency—without coding.

Top Reasons Your Business Can’t Afford to Miss Out on Conversational AI Platforms

According to Deloitte, at least 80% of organizations already use some form of AI to support agents, while 81% plan on increasing their capacity. There’s a good reason behind this, as AI (and conversational AI, specifically) offers some pretty groundbreaking possibilities for customer-facing businesses.

In a single investment, you can put a smile on the faces of your customers, shareholders, agents, and upper management. 

Here’s how conversational AI can benefit your business:

How to Choose the Right Conversational AI Platform for Your Business

Ok, so you’re already licking your lips at the prospect of what a conversational AI can mean for your business.

However, how do you actually make sure you choose the right one? How do you make sure that you look deeper than the marketing hype or buzzwords?

By using the criteria below, you can ensure that you not only shortlist the best conversational AI platforms but also the best fit for your business. 

Ease of Integration and Omnichannel Support

As a business operating in the digital age, you likely already have a well-thought-out and extensive ecosystem of business tools.

So, it’s absolutely vital that your chosen conversational AI platform slots seamlessly into your existing tech stack. This will make the initial setup go much smoother, minimize resistance, and limit the risk of compatibility issues down the line.

For most organizations, this means that you should assess its integration with your:

Another thing to consider is expanding your service to support voice recognition, if this is something you plan to implement.

AI Capabilities

You can’t have conversational AI, without “AI.” So, assessing the robustness of the underlying AI is essential to understand what it’s actually capable of and whether it can support your goals.

Even if you’re not an expert in AI, there are tell-tale features and capabilities to look for, such as:

Customization and Flexibility

The versatility of AI wouldn’t be worth nearly as much if you couldn’t adapt it to your needs. Whether it’s in terms of design, internal processes, or capabilities, you should be able to make it an indistinguishable part of your support operations.

Here are some things to consider:

This will allow you to repeatably deliver consistent, high-quality customer interactions powered by AI over the long term. 

Scalability

As a growing business, you can’t only focus on today’s needs, but you need to look to the future as well.

So, it’s vital that you select a conversational AI platform that can keep up. Otherwise, what may be a comfortable solution today could quickly devolve into a costly, outage-prone, and frustrating mess.

This can be harder to ascertain, especially on the technical side. However, you can often find valuable feedback in user forums or consumer sites, like G2. Or, you can simply ask the vendor about their infrastructure or performance benchmarks.

Either way, you’ll want to dig into all of the following:

Onboarding, Training, and Support

Just like a new car, it’s not only what’s under the hood that counts but also the service that comes with it. 

As a complex and multi-faceted system, a conversational AI platform should come with comprehensive onboarding and training resources. This will help empower your teams to get up and running as quickly as possible and actually use the platform to its full potential.

Also, reliable support—through live chat, knowledge bases, or dedicated account managers— is a must to minimize potential downtime. 

Finally, look at the platform’s developer roadmap and developer forums. Do they have a track record of acting on community feedback and feature requests? And, does it look like they are actively working on new features and enhancements?

The 11 Best Conversational AI Platforms in 2025 (Featuring Gartner’s Picks and Customerly’s Advantages 😊)

Not all platforms are created equal. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. We could go on and on with the platitudes, but instead, we curated a list of some of the most promising and exciting conversational AI platforms on the market.

From varying pricing to capabilities to integrations to ease of use, there’s a little something for everyone on this list:

1. Customerly

Customerly is the stand-out solution growing B2B SaaS companies that want to quickly, and simply, implement conversational AI to support their teams, delight customers, and embrace the future of customer service at scale. Our already powerful Aura AI also integrates seamlessly with our Chatflows builder, allowing an easy, no-code way to construct complex AI-driven workflows.

During interactions, Aura AI leverages its ability to identify user intent and automate complex queries with unmatched accuracy. What’s more, sophisticated generative AI further elevates the user experience, with quick summaries and real-time chat suggestions to support agents and speed up resolutions.

Customerly also has robust knowledge base tools that help you publish and maintain high-quality, frequently updated content. This helps feed into the intelligence of the conversational AI, and allows it to guide users to the best self-service resources where applicable.

Pricing: 14-day free trial with pricing starting at just $9/month

Key Features:

Cut Support Costs by 83% with AI

Customerly automates 60% of queries, reducing workload and saving up to €3.60 per ticket.

2. Google Dialogflow

Dialogflow is a conversational AI platform by Google that helps businesses create natural and smooth interactions with customers through text or voice. It uses advanced machine learning to understand and respond to user input across various platforms like Google Assistant, Facebook Messenger, and Slack.

This tool is perfect for businesses of all sizes, especially those in customer service, e-commerce, and tech, looking to improve how they connect with their customers.

Dialogflow makes it easy to build and manage AI-powered chat and voice assistants, even with minimal coding. 

It helps businesses handle customer inquiries efficiently, offering tools like the Vertex AI Agent Builder and support for multi-turn conversations. With support for over 20 languages, it’s a versatile solution for creating better customer experiences, earning strong reviews on Gartner.

Price: Starts at $20 per 100 sessions

Key Features:

3. IBM Watsonx Assistant

IBM Watsonx Assistant is an enterprise-grade conversational AI platform designed to deliver highly personalized and context-aware interactions. Its impressive spec sheet includes out-of-the-box support for LLMs, LSMs, NLP/NLU, and Intelligent Context Gathering, allowing it to understand and engage with users in a natural, human-like manner.

While it has a free tier, its complexity and pay-per-use pricing makes it more oriented toward large enterprises, like financial institutions where scalability and deep integrations are non-negotiable.

Another unique feature is its Retrieval-Augmented Generation, or RAG, which extracts accurate answers from your company’s knowledge base in real-time. It also supports voice and text in multiple languages. According to Gartner, IBM is a leader in creating “advanced solutions that reshape and redefine the world.”

Price: Free tier, with paid plans starting at $0.0025 per message.

Key Features:

4. Rasa

Rasa is a conversational AI platform based on an open-source project, focusing primarily on enterprise-grade solutions and deploying at scale. Uniquely, it offers both pro-code and no-code solutions, catering to teams with different levels of expertise and needs. 

Hence, Rasa favors enterprises or smaller teams with high technical expertise that need full control over AI agent customization, security, and deployment. Usually, this means industries with strict regulatory requirements, like healthcare financial services, or government.

This flexibility differentiates Rasa from other proprietary solutions, which tend to be more fixed. Businesses can also deploy Rasa locally or in the cloud, depending on compliance requirements. Gartner highlights this ability to provide organizations with a scalable, cost-efficient, and secure way to develop AI assistants.

Price: Free developer edition with custom enterprise plans.

Key Features:

5. Kore.ai

As the name suggests, Kore.ai is a versatile conversational AI-focused platform that allows you to create virtual agents to assist both customers and employees. It also bills itself as an A-to-Z call center platform, of which AI and automation are two of its key focuses.

With a higher initial price point, Kore.ai’s caters more to large, borderless organizations needing advanced AI-powered support. The robust AI platform is particularly attractive for businesses with a global audience  — its NLP supports over 100 languages. 

Kore.ai’s model-agnostic approach also gives enterprises a high degree of flexibility when it comes to setting up their data-cloud application pipelines. Gartner recognizes Kore.ai’s AI automation, even in a space that’s jam-packed with high-end competition. 

Pricing: A variety of paid paths, starting at $29/month.

Key Features:

6. Yellow.ai

As a conversational AI platform, Yellow.ai is primarily geared towards enterprise CX automation and improved engagement. Its multi-lingual AI can interpret and respond in over 135 languages and tonalities, tailoring its content for different channels and departments.

Yellow.ai will feel right at home for enterprises that seek high-scale, multi-lingual AI implementations. Plus, its no-code approach allows savvy businesses to rapidly deploy human-like AI agents. And, it offers up plenty of insights to refine customer satisfaction over time.

The platform leverages a multi-LLM architecture that provides superb versatility and adaptability. In fact, Yellow.ai’s proprietary Dynamic Automation Platform (DAP) and its DynamicNLP™ AI engine process around 2 billion conversations per quarter across multiple channels and languages.

Pricing: Quote-by-quote basis only.

Key Features:

7. Ada

Ada is a no-code conversational AI platform designed to automate customer support at scale. The company emphasizes packaging its platform in an easy-to-use solution that doesn’t require any prior experience or technical expertise.

SMEs and mid-sized businesses looking for a simple, no-code AI assistant might find Ada right up their alley. Particularly, if they’re struggling to handle high volumes of customer inquiries across multiple languages and channels. The tradeoff is that it’s not capable of handling all of the more sophisticated use cases enterprises typically require.

It’s especially good at simulating personalized conversations with proactive triggers to take advantage of customer intent recognition. According to Gartner, Ada has powered over 4 billion automated customer interactions since its founding in 2016. 

Pricing: 14-day free trial, custom pricing.

Key Features:

8. Boost.ai

Boost.ai is an enterprise-focused conversational AI platform known for its self-learning AI. It minimizes manual updates and training while consistently improving its performance. Businesses can quickly build and scale virtual assistants using Boost.ai’s advanced NLU engine.

If you work for a large company that mainly wants a scalable, high-automation AI assistant platform to handle large customer interaction volumes with minimal intervention, Boost.ai should be on your radar. According to Gartner, this is mostly thanks to Boost’s proprietary self-learning AI model.

However, Boost.ai is almost solely dedicated to conversational AI, so you’ll need other solutions to cover all your other customer service bases, such as knowledge management, ticketing, CRM, advanced analytics, and more.

Pricing: Custom pricing only.

Key Features:

9. Amazon Lex

Lex is a fully managed conversational AI service for voice and text-based chatbots, no doubt benefiting from Amazon’s R&D from its Alexa range. It leverages years of NLU and automatic speech recognition advancements to deliver a highly intelligent AI-powered chatbot with deep voice and text integration.

Naturally, Lex will appeal to businesses that are already embedded in the AWS cloud ecosystem. Leveraging its parent company’s vast cloud resources, it’s the perfect solution for enterprise-scale deployments that require near-limitless scalability.

Needless to say, Amazon’s Lex also scales seamlessly with many of its other products, like Lambda and Polly. So, businesses can efficiently automate interactions, while relying on AWS’ highly resilient and available infrastructure.

Pricing: $0.00075 per text and $0.004 per speech.

Key Features:

10. Alltius

Alltius is a conversational AI platform built on decades of research at CMU and Wharton, offering advanced self-serve AI assistants with a no-code interface. Alltius claims that it’s platform can solve most queries in under 10 seconds with minimal hallucinations and 95% accuracy.

The AI’s adeptness also comes from expertly integrating knowledge from disparate sources, such as APIs, databases, videos, and charts. Furthermore, the platform strives to help users achieve fast ROIs with one-day deployment and robust support for sales processes.

Pricing: Custom pricing only.

Key Features:

11. Dialpad

Dialpad works to unify communications and contact center operations while enhancing them with the power of conversational AI. Its in-house Dialpad Ai is capable of real-time speech recognition which it combines with NLP to transcribe calls and follow custom conversation workflows (built via a no-code builder).

Training aside, the AI retrieves answers from unstructured data like FAQ pages, documents, and past interactions to feed its deep learning. As an omnichannel solution, Dialpad enables agents to manage voice, messaging (e.g., WhatsApp), and social media interactions in one dashboard, too. 

Pricing: Starts at $15/user/month.

Key Features:

Let AI Handle the Hard Stuff – Customerly’s Got Your Back for Smarter Support

Just like the pill in the Limitless movie, Customerly’s conversational AI will help the full potential of your customer service, almost instantly!

The upside of investing in conversational AI now is that, once you get it up and running, it will continue to get smarter, faster, and “better” with minimal extra work. In fact, some estimate AI to facilitate 95% of customer interactions by 2025.

Furthermore, conversational AI will go multi-sensory. For now, only 17% of contact centers have deployed agent assist, virtual voice assistant, and chatbots in unison, which means that there’s still plenty of time to get ahead. But, I wouldn’t dally too long — only 20% don’t plan to continue investing in these directions at all, so competition is bound to get fierce soon.

As a result, the voice AI agent market is expected to grow by roughly 20x over the next decade.

However, conversational AI in isolation is not the only way customer service leaders are banking on AI. According to Gartner, 84% of leaders described advanced analytics and reporting as “very or extremely important” to achieving their goals. Conversational AI helps facilitate this with context-dependent CSATs and 24/7 data gathering.

Don’t take our word for it — just look at the results achieved by our partners, like TeamSystem, with Customerly:

​​✔️ ​​60% of interactions automated, freeing up valuable time for their support team.

✔️ Response times reduced to just 15 seconds, ensuring quicker resolutions for their customers.

✔️ CSAT scores improved by 20%, reflecting higher customer satisfaction.

✔️ Significant cost savings: per-ticket costs dropped from €4 (internal team) and €2.24 (outsourced) to just €0.40, achieving up to 83% savings!

Want to dive deeper into their success story? Click to read the Team System’s full case study.

These are just a few examples of what’s possible with Customerly. Join us on our mission to empower support teams by simplifying and democratizing AI adoption for all. 

Want to learn more? Visit our Academy for valuable resources on AI customer service and tips on how to maximize Customerly’s solutions.

Say goodbye to slow responses and hello to smarter, faster support. Try Customerly for free today or Join the Customerly Academy!

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