Beyond IVR: Why Conversational Apps are The Platonic Ideal of SaaS and e-Commerce

The platonic ideal of a B2B website: give the visitor everything they need to fulfill their intent without talking to a human.

That could be:

- Learning what a product offers and determine if it's a match for them
- Purchasing that product or service
- Installing / setting up that product or service to fulfill their desired outcome
- Getting support / answers to their questions when something doesn't work or they're confused

The most sophisticated B2B and ecommerce brands go to great lengths to reach for this platonic ideal. Almost all of them eventually need humans in the mix to answer pre-sales questions, facilitate complex sales and implementations, or deliver answers to routine and complex support questions.

If LLMs continue to evolve at their current pace, Generative IVR (a cute name for conversational apps that use a mix of generative AI and IVR-like deterministic workflows) offers the perfect framework to deliver on websites' platonic ideal: a self-service system for fulfilling every stage of the customer realtionship minimal involvement from humans.

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