Item: IBM watsonx Assistant
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

My use case was simple - to explore building a conversational AI chatbot. Being a drag and drop builder, IBM Watson assistant seemed like a perfect enabler for me.
The business problems to be solved was - In my organization, we had been receiving a lot of user queries regarding various grades of steel. We wanted to make some sort of a conversational AI chatbot which could help with the initial screening of leads and also answer some ready to answer FAQs.

Pros and Cons

Drag and Drop Builder so no knowledge of in depth coding required
Very intuitive interface
Subscription based service so can be used only when required, instead of lump sum purchase
Uses NLP to understand the user queries. Very less bugs in deployment
Great tool to qualify sales leads

A tad bit expensive
more subscription options can be provided, especially for subsidiary companies
training data is difficult to collect and structure

Return on Investment

Better qualification of sales leads
First touchbase for user queries - almost instantaneous
Increased cost (at least initially)

Usability

IBM Watson assistant has come a long way in last few years, and is handling the generative AI chatbot building really well. It is of immense importance to sales strategists like me who are average in coding but have real world cases of lead qualification for sales.
IBM Watson is also very intuitively designed with the amazing drag and drop feature. Testing is easy, deployment is pretty straightforward. I could have worked with a little more sales support, but then the whole point of making a conversational AI chatbot is to reduce the sales support intervention - so I guess I will live with that.

AI Capabilities

Like i mentioned in the last answer, I used both AI feature and NLP (Natural Language Processing) feature of IBM Watson to create the conversational chatbot for my organization. Text integration feature of the NLP helped me with categorising the user generated queries into specific buckets which later on could be answered based on a guiding document on FAQs. Intent recommendation, although used in a very basic way, helped us in lead qualification.

Alternatives Considered

IBM Watson Studio on Cloud Pak for Data

They are related - coming from the stable of IBM only. IBM Watson assistant specifically suited my pilot project because it was pretty straightforward and intuitive. IBM Watson Studio seemed to me like more of a super set, which could easily have all the features of IBM Watson Assistant - but then, the price also would be higher.

Key Insights

Do you think IBM watsonx Assistant delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with IBM watsonx Assistant's feature set?

Yes

Did IBM watsonx Assistant live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of IBM watsonx Assistant go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy IBM watsonx Assistant again?

Yes

Likelihood to Recommend

As I was a part of the sales team, I explored IBM Watson for creating a conversational AI chatbot. It was amazing for creating a first filter which could not only answer basic questions coming in from the contact database, but could also qualify leads in to hot, warm, and cold. In my opinion, IBM Watson requires very structured data to give meaningful outputs. If the user switches language which asking questions, sometimes the IBM watson assistant generated chatbot provides gibberish answers. That is less appropriate.

Great to build a conversational AI chatbot for sales lead qualification!

Overall Satisfaction with IBM watsonx Assistant