Conversational AI is transforming customer experiences

New disruptive technologies such as Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) are transforming how businesses deliver enhanced, personalized consumer experiences. To enable developers to build more engaging web and mobile applications, Kony, Inc., the cloud-based digital application and low-code platform solutions company, today announced the launch of its Conversational AI DevKit, which is now available on the Kony Quantum platform.

AI-based conversational interfaces represent the next wave of user interaction for a wide range of use cases. As demonstrated by Alexa, Siri, and others, the ability to simply converse with applications is now the easiest way to deliver an engaging user experience. Advanced AI also creates highly personalized experiences by enabling smarter and more enhanced human-to-human interactions through AI’s continuum of human and digital-based touchpoints.

By making conversational capabilities easy to use by developers of almost any skill level, Kony Quantum is opening the technology to be used for all types of applications and use cases.

“According to Gartner’s 2019 CIO Agenda, 31% of enterprise CIOs have already deployed conversational platforms. This represents a 48% year-over-year growth in interest and points to conversational platforms taking center stage in enterprises’ adoption of AI,” as stated in the Gartner Market Guide for Conversational Platforms report.

“Conversational AI can transform the customer experience by enabling people to use their voices, or text, to interact more immersively with their apps. We are excited to deliver prebuilt integrations of multiple Natural Language Processing (NLP) engines on the Kony Quantum low-code development platform. This innovation makes it much easier for developers to integrate Conversational AI capabilities into their applications. Now, developers can simply drag and drop a conversational experience directly into their development project, complete with the backend functionality. Whether it’s a smartphone or tablet app, a Progressive Web App (PWA), or a conventional online app, the Kony Quantum Conversation AI DevKit makes it much easier to integrate these advanced capabilities into an organization’s digital transformation initiative,” said Kony Chief Technology Officer Bill Bodin, noting that it can also empower a smarter and more personalized human-to-human engagement.

“Kony’s Conversational AI capabilities have given us the ability to simplify the search in Michael’s mobile app for both iOS and Android platforms. Users can simply now ask for what they need. They can search for products, learn how to use them in their next creative project, navigate through countless videos on our YouTube channel, and even find the product's location at their favorite store, all using just their voice,” said Himanshu Parikh, vice president of Digital Technologies at Michaels Stores, Inc.

There are several competitive and evolving AI and NLP engines on the market. Kony Quantum AI capabilities provide a unique abstraction layer, which enables developers to leverage any of these technologies, assuring customers have the greatest flexibility and range of choice in their solutions. Using the Kony Quantum Conversational AI DevKit allows users to mix and match industry AI and NLP engines to produce the best possible digital experiences.

Conversational AI Available on Kony Quantum

Key benefits of the Kony Quantum Conversational AI DevKit include:

• More personalized and engaging applications for customers, partners, and employees via an intelligent conversational interface
• A low-code platform integration that makes it easier, faster and more cost-effective to build applications with conversational interface capabilities
• A simplified development process with prebuilt integration of multiple NLP engines are available as a component in the Kony Marketplace; with out-of-the-box integration to Lex, LUIS, and Dialogflow and the ability to integrate new NLP engines
• Powerful speech-to-text and text-to-speech interactions
• The ability to deliver complex responses rapidly through integration to high-performance data integration and orchestration layers