What do people actually want from a digital experience? 

Not what impresses them or investors, or what designers like, but what genuinely makes their lives easier, or their interaction with an organisation better?

The answer, increasingly, is conversation.

Whether it’s the influence of ChatGPT and Claude or just our predilection for convenience and connection, the truth is there is a growing trend for a UX that feels like you are having a natural, back-and-forth exchange with a system that understands what you're asking, knows enough to be genuinely useful, and meets you where you already are. 

When chatbots first emerged, they quickly became loved and hated in equal measure. More often than not, they were poorly trained, thinly sourced, and trapped in loops. Sometimes you got what you needed painlessly, but more often than not, you just wasted time typing back and forth, only to be told you needed to speak with a person.

But thankfully, that is no longer the case. These emerging conversational experiences are nothing like those of the early days. What we are talking about now is the ability to go to a website and ‘communicate’ with an AI in a more holistic way, as though you are speaking to a particularly well-informed staff member with all the answers. They don't force people to learn commands, navigate complex menus, or follow predefined journeys. They understand intent, adapt to context, and help people achieve their goals through natural interaction. For example, imagine you are looking to buy new hiking boots. In this instance, not only would you be able to get recommendations on boot selection, but you could also get tips on hiking, what else to bring, where to go, and whether any permits are required for certain areas. 

There are plenty to choose from, but I chose these four because they serve very distinct and different markets. 

#1 Macy’s “Ask Macy”

We’ve all been there… You go online to do a bit of shopping, and then suddenly there’s just too much choice, and inevitably this leads to making no choice at all. And that’s what Macy’s set out to prevent as part of its AI deployment. Working with Google, it built Ask Macy, an agent that is multimodal, capable of handling text and images, and also has a unique virtual try-on feature. 

According to Google, Ask Macy can “show what they’re thinking of buying will look on them – and it can even provide different backgrounds so they can see what it might look like at the office, in a restaurant, or trackside at the Kentucky Derby.” 

And the response was incredibly positive.

Again from Google, “Macy’s is seeing people engage more conversationally as they start to realise the agent’s capabilities, with prompts like: “I’m a 50-year-old petite woman. High-quality material is very important to me – I love good cottons and natural fabrics. Can you suggest an outfit that works for the office but transitions to an evening dinner?”

And those using Ask Macy are spending more. Per Google, early beta data show that revenue per visit was roughly 4.75 times higher among customers who used Ask Macy’s.

#2 London Transport Museum- AI Digital Poster project

Perhaps the most striking example of conversational UX at work comes from an unlikely setting: a 1927 Art Deco poster in the Global Poster Gallery at the London Transport Museum.

As part of a larger initiative, Hearing the Riches of London, a Frederick Charles Herrick design from a series of five, has been transformed into something extraordinary: a multilingual, interactive guide that can hold natural conversations with visitors about the poster, the Art Deco movement, and the history of London transport. It speaks 60 languages. It responds quickly. And amazingly, it was all done for under £10,000.

For a deep dive into how they did it, please read Bringing a museum collection to life with conversational AI.

#3 Meta’s Business Agent

I’m including this one because this showcases how conversational experiences are now also key to more efficient workflows when the function serves both interests- the consumer and the business. In this situation, Meta's Business Agent is designed to automate commerce workflows natively inside Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. According to AI News, it works like this:

Consumers frequently discover merchandise on Instagram and initiate a Messenger chat regarding sizing variations. The agent intercepts the query and guides the buyer through the checkout process inside the host application. This architectural model eliminates the high cart-abandonment rates associated with external payment portals.

What makes this so interesting is that because the agent is embedded natively, it has access to the person’s social graph and historical interactions. I liken it to that person at your local cafe who has gotten to know how you like your drinks over time. So, if you decide to try something new, they have an idea of whether you will like it. 

#4 Apptio Conversational Insights 

If you think conversational experiences are designed primarily for the B2C market, Apptio recently announced the launch of its enterprise-grade conversational interface. As reported by IBM, the new interface is designed to connect financial, operational, and business data across systems to help leaders better manage IT costs, optimise cloud spending, and align strategic portfolios

How?

Again, as stated by IBM, it will allow stakeholders to ask plain-language questions about project status, resource allocation, and financial performance and get immediate, data-backed answers.

Why?

“Organisations need a natural language conversational tool powered by AI to gain better insight into their technology spend and can directly connect costs to measurable business outcomes”, said Jevin Jensen, research vice president, IDC. 

I like this idea a lot. Often, SaaS platforms have far more capabilities and features than are ever utilised, but the ability to ask the platform about itself might highlight some of these underutilised features. 

There are plenty more examples currently that tell me we’ve only begun to see where this new UX can go. 

However, I’m incredibly aware that people are inundated with suggestions and recommendations for how best to use AI for their brand.

So here are my top reasons for encouraging you to move in this direction.

#1 Conversation reduces friction 

Whether it's eliminating the need to navigate a website, abandoning a checkout flow, or struggling through a language barrier in a gallery, being able to converse can remove obstacles between a user and what they actually want.

#2 Usefulness earns trust 

When did you last go on a site and have a UX and go, " Yep, this is a great brand, and I want to spend my money here? Probably never. However, if the UX is smooth or even better, exceeds your expectations, then typically it will mean a return visit.  

#3 Context is a competitive advantage 

There is nothing worse than going to a site and getting the wrong answer. Well, there are plenty of things worse, but in this context! Your brand has a lot of IP and a lot of market knowledge - use it. Impress customers and potential prospects. The more specific the knowledge, the more valuable the conversation.

#4 Unlocks opportunities

Your audience is global. A multilingual AI guide can serve visitors from every country in the world, at any hour.  The conversational model doesn't just improve experience; it democratises it.

Our clients are already asking us for these capabilities. One of our projects included building an AI planner for Fáilte Ireland that helped people enjoy a more personalised search experience. 

You can read all about it here.

And now, as part of Flow, our enterprise digital delivery model powered by AI, we offer Flow Experience. Flow Experience adds an intelligent conversational layer to your digital estate, one that understands context, surfaces the right information and drives users toward action. And this is not a chatbot. It brings together your content, services, products and functionality in a single unified experience, even across complex legacy estates that were never built with this kind of integration in mind.

If you have questions about how Flow Experience can work for you, you can book a demo here.