We Explored the Best Intelligent Virtual Agents in 2024

• Overview: We explored the best intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) for 2024, highlighting tools like Chatling that automate customer interactions and enhance operational efficiency.
• Why trust us: Our credibility stems from our meticulous research and industry experience. Count on us for impartial insights to help you make informed decisions about integrating Chatling into your hotel operations.
• Why this is important: IVAs are important for businesses to provide hassle-free customer support, improve efficiency, and adapt to digital advancements.
• Action points: Our top picks are Chatling, Botsify, Tidio, Engati. ManyChat, and Chatfuel.
• Further research: Check out the Chatling blog for more helpful chatbot guides and how-tos.

Looking for the Best Intelligent Virtual Agents?

Intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) are a powerful tool for businesses looking to enhance their customer engagement and operational productivity. But it can be tricky to sift through the different options and find the right fit for your specific business needs. 

That's where we come in—in this Chatling guide, we’ve done the hard work for you by evaluating and selecting the top IVAs on the market. We’ll go over features, pricing, benefits, and more to help you find the perfect solution for your business.

Let’s get started.

Why Listen To Us?

At Chatling, we’ve helped more than 2,000 businesses implement simple (but highly effective) IVAs and improve their customer service and boost sales. We know what works, what doesn’t, and which providers stand out from the rest.

What Are Intelligent Virtual Agents?

Intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) are essentially AI chatbots that are mainly used in customer service settings. 

Why aren’t they called AI chatbots, then?

It’s partially branding—many businesses have preconceived notions about chatbots being clunky and unhelpful. But IVAs are far from that. They’re smarter, more versatile, and better equipped to handle complex customer interactions.

And beyond that, IVAs tend to make use of more advanced technology than simpler AI chatbots. That means they can often engage in longer, more complex conversations, adapt to human emotion, and provide more personalized and accurate responses.

There are all kinds of use cases for IVAs, including:

• Customer service: IVAs can handle common customer inquiries and issues, freeing up human agents to handle more complex tasks.
• Sales assistance: IVAs can assist with product recommendations and provide information about promotions or deals.
• Technical support: IVAs can troubleshoot technical problems and guide users through step-by-step solutions.
• Appointment scheduling: IVAs can book appointments for services like doctor visits or car maintenance.
• Virtual assistants: IVAs can act as personal assistants, helping with tasks like setting reminders, making reservations, or ordering food.

Benefits of Using Intelligent Virtual Agents

• Enhanced Customer Support: Intelligent virtual agents excel in providing instant and efficient customer support, offering timely responses to queries and issues, ultimately improving overall customer satisfaction.
• 24/7 Availability: Say goodbye to limited business hours. Intelligent virtual agents tirelessly work round the clock, ensuring your customers have access to assistance whenever they need it, fostering a seamless and always-on customer experience.
• Cost Efficiency: With intelligent virtual agents handling routine tasks and frequently asked questions, you save time and cut down on operational expenses, allowing your human workforce to focus on more complex and value-added tasks.

Criteria To Consider When Choosing Intelligent Virtual Agents

Customization Capabilities

A state-of-the-art virtual agent should seamlessly embody your brand, embracing its distinct personality and aligning with the unique essence of your business. 

Look for solutions that offer the flexibility to finely customize the bot's appearance, language, and interactions, guaranteeing a cohesive and personalized experience for your customers.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) Proficiency

Your IVA solution’s expertise in natural language processing is important for understanding and responding to user queries in a way that mimics human conversation. 

A strong command of NLP allows the IVA to capture language nuances, comprehend context, and deliver intuitive and authentic responses.

Analytics and Reporting Features

By choosing an IVA with advanced analytics tools, you get a valuable perspective on user interactions, gaining an in-depth understanding of how your audience engages with the system. 

These analytics track IVA performance metrics and offer actionable insights, empowering you to make data-driven improvements with confidence.

6 Best Intelligent Virtual Agents

1. Chatling
2. Botsify
3. Tidio
4. Engati
5. ManyChat
6. Chatfuel

1. Chatling

Chatling is an advanced AI chatbot solution that makes it easy for anyone (regardless of coding experience) to train a functional chatbot in minutes.

Training your IVA is as simple as linking the data sources you’d like it to train on—help centers, knowledge bases, documents, and text inputs. Chatling will then train itself to respond to complex customer requests using the provided data in minutes.

Our platform also offers a range of tools for customizing and fine-tuning your IVA, so you can make sure that it accurately represents your brand and meets the unique needs of your customers. 

Key Features

• Train on Your Data: Train Chatling on websites, documents (PDFs, DOCs, etc.), and texts in minutes.

• Embed Anywhere: Embed Chatling on any website by copying and pasting a single code snippet.

• Multilingual Support: Chat with customers in any language to give them a personalized experience.
• Conversational AI: Use advanced LLMs like GPT-4 to enhance your IVAs contextual understanding.
• Real-Time Analytics: Gain insights into common questions and fine-tune your IVAs answers to help it learn.

• API & Integrations: Use Chatling's robust APIs and integrations with WordPress, Squarespace, Shopify, and more to connect with your existing systems.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• 24/7 availability
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Cost-effective
• Enhanced engagement
• Efficient setup

Cons

• Limited messages on the free plan

2. Botsify

Botsify is a chatbot platform that offers businesses a “done for you” approach to building and managing chatbots. If you’d like, the Botsify team will create a customized chatbot for your business based on your specific needs and industry.

Botsify chatbot can be integrated with multiple platforms, including websites, mobile apps, Telegram, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. This helps you give customers a seamless and consistent experience across various channels.

Key Features

• Done for You: Get a customized chatbot built specifically for your business by the Botsify team.
• Multilingual Support: Communicate with customers in over 100 languages to cater to your global audience.
• Integration with 3rd Party Platforms: Integrate with a range of third-party tools and platforms like Slack, Sheets, WordPress, and more.
• Omnichannel Platform: Provides a unified chatbot experience across multiple channels, including Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, and more.

Pricing

Botsify offers three plans—Do it yourself ($49/month), Done for you ($149/month), and Custom (custom).

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Ease of use
• Omnichannel
• Lead generation
• 24/7 customer support

Cons

• No free plan

3. Tidio

Tidio is an AI-driven customer service platform designed to help businesses grow by automating sales and support.

It offers both rule-based chatbots and an AI chatbot product called Lyra AI that can fully automate up to 70% of customer inquiries. Lyro is able to understand customer intent, ask follow-up questions, and provide personalized responses that lead to faster resolutions.

When necessary, Lyro can also route conversations to a human agent for further assistance.

Key Features

• Live Chat & Helpdesk: Offers real-time communication with customers and consolidates messages from various channels into a single dashboard for efficient management​​.
• Lyro AI: Automates up to 70% of customer inquiries by using natural language processing and machine learning to understand customer intent and provide personalized responses.
• Automation: Uses chatbots to proactively engage visitors, manage leads, offer discounts, and more.
• Multichannel Integration: Simplifies customer communication by integrating emails, live chats, Facebook messages, and Instagram DMs in one place.

Pricing

Tidio’s pricing is fairly complicated, with different packages for its customer service product, chatbots, and Lyro AI. 

Their chatbot product is available in three plans:

• Free (up to 100 visitors monthly)
• Chatbot ($29/month)
• Tidio+ ($398/month)

Pricing scales based on the number of visitors reached monthly. Lyro AI is an add-on that will cost you roughly $39 per 50 conversations.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Comprehensive integrations
• Advanced AI capabilities 
• Multilingual support
• Flexible pricing

Cons

• Gets expensive quickly
• May be overly complicated for small teams

4. Engati

Engati is a comprehensive AI chatbot and live chat platform designed to enhance customer communication and engagement across various channels.

It offers a no-code solution for building AI-driven chatbots, facilitating 24/7 lead generation, support optimization, and personalized customer interactions. Advanced AI capabilities help Engati chatbots understand and respond to customer queries accurately.

Key Features

• Omnichannel Engagement: Engati supports a wide array of platforms including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Shopify, enabling businesses to interact with customers wherever they are​​.
• Multi-Lingual Conversations: The platform offers multilingual support, making it easier for businesses to cater to a global audience without language barriers​​.
• Low-code Bot Builder: Engati's user-friendly interface allows for the easy creation of chatbots with a drag-and-drop builder, requiring no prior coding knowledge​.
• eSense GPT: Engati utilizes eSense GPT technology, allowing for more human-like conversations with chatbots​.

Pricing

Engati offers three plans—Standard, Enterprise, and Partner.

Pricing is bespoke, though. You’ll need to reach out to sales for a quote.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Ease of use
• Supports a wide range of messaging platforms
• Offers email support for all plans
• Customization and scalability

Cons

• Pricing not publicly available
• Priority support is only available on Enterprise plans

5. ManyChat

Manychat is a powerful chat marketing platform designed to help businesses automate and personalize their conversations with customers across multiple channels, including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger.

Key Features

• Multichannel Support: Manychat supports a variety of platforms, including Instagram, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, SMS, and email.
• Advanced Automation: Create complex chat flows and automate conversations for support, sales, and marketing purposes.
• Personalization: Use data and customer information to provide personalized experiences for each user.
• Integrations: Manychat offers integrations with popular tools like Google Sheets, Zapier, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, ConvertKit, MailChimp, PayPal, Stripe, and more.

Pricing

ManyChat offers three plans—Free, Pro (starting at $15/month), and Premium (custom). The price scales with the number of contacts you have. 

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Ease of Use
• Comprehensive Integration
• Offers plans suitable for both small businesses and large enterprises.
• Multichannel Support

Cons

• The free plan restricts some features once the 1,000 contact limit is reached.
• Learning Curve

6. Chatfuel

Finally, Chatfuel is a no-code chatbot building solution for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and web.

It features a ChatGPT integration to support natural language processing, making it capable of understanding and responding to complex queries. Plus, it integrates with tools and platforms like Shopify and Kommo CRM to streamline business processes.

Key Features

• Multi-Platform Support: Allows businesses to automate conversations across Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and websites.
• Bot Building Service: Offers a custom bot-building service where Chatfuel experts create a tailored chatbot to meet specific business needs​​.
• Integration Capabilities:Integrates with a range of tools and platforms, including Shopify, Kommo CRM, Sheets, and more.
• Rich Messages: Let customers make bookings, share feedback, place orders, and more—all conversationally.

Pricing

Pricing for Chatfuel starts at $14.39/month for Facebook & Instagram, and $41.29/month for WhatsApp. Enterprise plans are available for all channels for $300/month.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Easy to use
• Supports major messaging platforms
• Offers extensive integration capabilities
• Custom bot building service

Cons

• The pricing for extra conversations can add up

Conclusion

Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVAs) are transforming the way businesses communicate with customers. They play a key role by ensuring customer support is hassle-free, making operations more efficient, and adapting to the ever-evolving digital landscape.

With its ability to offer customizable and natural language processing-driven chatbot features, Chatling provides businesses with a tool that reflects their brand identity and engages customers in a manner that feels human.

Build your custom AI chatbot for free today!