Forrester TEI study finds Watson Assistant customers saw $24 million in benefits over three years

Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer science fiction, but an increasingly mainstream capability with which consumers interact daily in their homes, workplaces, and on the go. Usually known as bots, chatbots, or virtual assistants, this conversational AI makes up a crowded and confusing enterprise market, leading buyers with many “bot” versions that may not talk to each other effectively. 

Watson Assistant is IBM’s chatbot that allows users to interact with business systems using natural human language. IBM has married a technically robust conversational platform with developer and line-of-business-friendly tools with the breadth of the broader Watson portfolio. Enterprises can build and train the AI solution to serve a wide range of use cases across applications, devices, and channels.  

IBM commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study and examine the potential return on investment (ROI) enterprises may realize by deploying Watson Assistant. The purpose of this study is to provide readers with a framework to evaluate the potential financial impact of Watson Assistant on their organizations.  

To better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with this investment, Forrester interviewed several customers with years of experience using Watson Assistant across three use cases: customer self-service, employee self-service, and agent assist. Prior to using Watson Assistant, the customers provided traditional human-serviced chat, email, and call services. These methods were slow, clunky, and costly. The interviewed organizations struggled with routing questions efficiently to appropriate agents, high volumes of simple queries, and long response times. These factors coalesced into poor customer and employee experience. Interviewees invested in Watson Assistant with the goals of reining in costs with lower cost digital channels, empowering agents with a knowledge assistant, and enabling self-service for employees and customers — all without negatively impacting experience.