After less than 2 hours in the sky, having taken off from London City Airport, I landed in Berlin. I was looking forward to CCW2024 for a number of reasons:

  • Catching up in-person with our partner sogedes and discussing trends, opportunities and how we can continue to build on our relationship
  • Networking and connecting with potential new clients and partners, and hearing about their challenges and views on conversational AI
  • Hearing from industry experts and the outlook, trends and challenges forecast for the coming year

The first thing I noticed when stepping into the hall at the ECC (Estrel Congress Centre) was the energy and buzz swirling about the place. I could immediately sense it was going to be a great two days.

From the many conversations I had with fellow industry players, customers, industry experts and commentators, and our partner sogedes, a number of recurring themes emerged: 

Big topic, lots of noise, limited coherence

Big topic

There was an overwhelming consensus that conversational AI is a huge topic and is being discussed at all levels within organisations. Without doubt there is an understanding of its benefits, but in theory only. It seems that when it comes to practical implementation there is a hesitancy and reluctance to commit. From the conversations I had, there was one key reason for this and that was fear.

  • Organisations are all too aware of the potential risks associated with AI, especially given the ‘scare’ stories they have read in the media.  Because of this they do not feel they can fully ‘trust’ AI to correctly and appropriately represent their brand. Many organisations said they felt that the potential reputational damage was too great to risk.

This is one of the reasons that Creative Virtual adopts a blended approach to conversational AI. This approach ensures that humans are firmly and truly in control of the AI, mitigating risk and alleviating any fears that organisations may have. At the same time it delivers the required personalisation, accuracy and natural conversation capability that AI promises.

Lots of noise

With so much being written and spoken about AI, there is a feeling of massive information overload, with AI being positioned as some great panacea to solve all ills. But organisations are saying that there is too much of the same thing being claimed and said by ‘everyone’ and whilst the claims may be valid, there is little evidence, proof of live use case examples.

  • The main gripe is that there is a lot of industry talk but very little to show beyond proof of concepts (PoCs). The promise is not yet the reality. And without reality there is no ‘business value’ measurement. Because of this the ‘fear’ factor mentioned earlier remains the overriding ‘decision’ influencer.

Creative Virtual has live use cases up and running, having progressed past the PoC stage. When Large Language Models (LLMs) first came to mass consciousness with the launch of ChatGTP over a year ago, we offered free PoCs to our customers and these have now matured into commercial solutions that are operational.

Limited coherence

Organisations are not interested in siloed conversational AI and are insisting it is fully and seamlessly integrated into an organisation’s technology ecosystem. To enable the best customer and employee experiences, conversational AI must be linked to all internal and external data sources, ensuring better personalisation and enabling better decision-making.

  • Whilst it is important that organisations are able to use the best solution for individual business requirements, each of these solutions must be compatible with and fully integrated into a unified technology environment.

Creative Virtual is an award-winning conversational AI company, with 20 years’ experience. We understand that the best conversational AI solutions seamlessly integrate with an organisations business and operational systems, connect effortlessly with all external data sources, and are able to enable personalised conversations to happen on any platform, at any time, and via any device.

What organisations want

The enormity of conversational AI as a topic of interest, and the potential and promises it presents, means that organisations are taking it very seriously. But they are taking small steps, as they search for the answer.

It is clear that organisations are looking for:

  • Counsel and guidance on conversational AI – the benefits, pitfalls, and risks
  • Demonstrations on live use cases
  • Education on AI fact and fiction, myths and truths

I am looking forward to joining our partner sogedes at CCW2025, and hope to see you there too.