A Guide to Conversational AI
21st October 2025
Conversational AI is reshaping how organisations interact with customers — bringing speed, intelligence and personalisation to every touchpoint. Whether you’re exploring the difference between chatbots and AI, or looking to implement smarter service solutions, this guide breaks down the essentials. From practical examples to enterprise-ready tools like Liberty Converse, our omnichannel contact centre, discover how conversational AI can elevate your digital conversations.
We will cover (click to jump to topic):
What is conversational AI?
Conversational AI is the tech behind chatbots, voicebots and virtual assistants that can talk – and listen – like a human. It uses natural language processing (NLP), speech recognition and machine learning to understand what people are saying, figure out what they need and respond in a helpful way.
It’s not just about answering questions. Conversational AI can follow a conversation, pick up on intent, and carry out tasks like booking appointments, checking account details or routing a query to the right team. And it works across all the channels your customers use – from chat and email to voice, SMS and social media.
Chatbot vs conversational AI
Basic chatbots follow a script. They’re great for simple, repetitive tasks – but they can’t adapt if a customer goes off track or asks something unexpected.
Conversational AI is more advanced. It understands context, learns from data and can handle more complex interactions. It’s the difference between a bot that gives you a menu of options and one that actually understands what you’re asking.
Conversational AI vs generative AI
Conversational AI is built for structured, goal-based conversations. It’s designed to help people get things done – like resolving a billing issue or updating contact details.
Generative AI, like GPT models, is more creative. It can write content, summarise conversations, translate messages or generate responses on the fly. It’s not just following a script – it’s creating something new each time.
When you combine the two, you get the best of both worlds. Conversational AI keeps the conversation on track, while generative AI makes it more flexible, natural and intelligent.
Conversational AI examples
Conversational AI is already powering customer engagement across sectors.
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In healthcare, AI chatbots handle appointment scheduling and triage support
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Insurance companies use virtual assistants for claims enquiries and updates
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Local councils deploy voicebots for citizen FAQs and service updates
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At Netcall, Liberty Converse delivers advanced use cases like multilingual chatbots, omnichannel support and real-time customer sentiment analysis.
Discover how Hampshire Trust Bank is handling customer feedback with AI sentiment analysis
The benefits of conversational AI
Implementing conversational AI brings a wealth of advantages:
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Always-on customer service: Chatbots and voicebots provide continuous support – even off‑hours – and help customers self‑serve – this reduces wait times and staff pressure
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Faster resolution of routine queries: Customers get instant, personalised answers to common questions, without manual intervention.
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Operational efficiency and scale: AI handles high volumes of repeat interactions simultaneously, freeing human agents to focus on complex cases
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Cost savings: Automating repetitive tasks reduces staffing costs, training overhead and increases throughput
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Insight‑driven optimisation: Conversations generate data for analytics, enabling continuous improvement via trends, fallback rates and customer satisfaction monitoring.
5 tips for implementing conversational AI
To ensure a successful rollout:
1. Start small with a pilot
Begin with a focused use case or department. A controlled trial allows you to refine flows, gather feedback and prove ROI before scaling up.
2. Strike the right balance between bot and human
Use AI for routine enquiries, but design smooth handovers to agents when complexity arises. This improves efficiency while maintaining service quality.
3. Continuously update and train your knowledge base
Feed new FAQ documents, website updates, PDFs or support articles into your AI system. Use analytics and user feedback to identify gaps or misunderstandings.
4. Monitor performance with meaningful KPIs
Track response time, resolution rate, satisfaction score, fallback rate and abandonment rate. Test variations (A/B testing) and adjust flows accordingly.
5. Prioritise data privacy and lawful practice
Ensure compliance with GDPR or other relevant regulations. Implement encryption and anonymisation for user data. Work with legal oversight to manage data risks.
Liberty Converse: AI-powered conversations at scale
Liberty Converse is our AI-powered cloud contact centre solution, designed to meet the demands of enterprise service organisations. It combines omnichannel engagement, intelligent automation and AI-driven insights to transform how you interact with customers.
Here’s how Liberty Converse’s AI capabilities deliver value across key industries:
AI chatbots and virtual assistants
Liberty Converse provides generative‑AI‑powered conversational AI and chatbots that extract knowledge from websites, PDFs, documents and other data sources via an embedded knowledge base. These bots handle increasingly complex customer enquiries across channels and can transfer to human agents when needed.
All interactions – voice, chat, email, SMS, social media and video – are unified within a seamless customer journey. Intelligent routing ensures enquiries are directed to the right team member based on skills, context or issue type.
Generative AI summarisation and reporting
Post‑interaction, Converse can auto‑generate transcripts and contact summaries, detect sentiment and deliver operational insights. Managers can leverage this for coaching and continuous process improvement
Multilingual agentic AI
With chat translation available in over 70 languages, Converse supports global customer bases while allowing agents to respond in their preferred language.
AI Agent Assist
AI Agent Assist works by using conversational AI technologies to support customer service agents in real time. By creating collections from multiple different resources and using Liberty AI to leverage information, your agents can rapidly resolve customer queries and focus on takes that require more human intervention.
Unified data and secure, enterprise-grade compliance
Converse integrates seamlessly with CRM systems, ticketing, RPA and backend workflows. It provides a unified view of customer data, supports PCI‑compliant payments, GDPR controls, SSO and remote access – ideal for large, regulated enterprises.
Scale and flexibility
As part of the broader Liberty platform, Converse supports rapid deployment, process automation, workforce optimisation and scaling across departments and service lines. It’s designed to adapt to changing service demands quickly.
Why conversational AI and Liberty Converse matter for enterprise service organisations
For enterprise-level service organisations – such as councils, universities, healthcare, and financial services – Liberty Converse provides:
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Consistent, responsive support at scale while reducing operational overhead
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Seamless handover between channels (eg chat → voice → human agent) with preserved context and data continuity
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Intelligent automation that supports agents with real-time summaries, sentiment detection and process guidance
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Regulatory-compliant features suitable for organisations dealing with sensitive data
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Future-ready flexibility, able to evolve with increasing volumes, channels and service complexity.
Conversational AI is transforming how enterprises deliver customer service – making support faster, more efficient and more satisfying. When paired with Netcall’s Liberty platform and the AI-first capabilities of Liberty Converse, organisations can modernise contact centres into intelligent, scalable service hubs that meet both customer and operational goals.
About the author
Nicky Hjerpe
Head of Product Marketing and Campaigns
With over 25 years of experience in B2B marketing, Nicky has built a career around connecting people with technology in a way that’s meaningful and practical. The last decade and a half of her journey has focused on customer-facing software and service technologies – helping organisations improve how they engage with and support the people they serve. At Netcall, Nicky heads up Product Marketing and Campaigns, where she brings together product insight, market understanding and customer perspective to shape messaging and go-to-market strategies. She works closely with cross-functional teams to ensure that what Netcall delivers is both valuable and clearly understood.