Dossier: chatbots and AI

This is Ziptone's dossier on chatbots and AI. On this page you will find an overview of all relevant articles about chatbots and AI. The file is regularly updated. Ideal if you want to keep up with this topic.

Last update: July 8, 2025

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The latest developments
Everything you need to know about chatbots
Research into and views on chatbots
Tips & tricks when using chatbots
Cases: concrete applications of chatbots

The latest developments

From helping to handling yourself: the future of AI in customer contact Handling complex conversations and responding empathetically? AI can’t do that, you need people for that. But what can AI do? An exploration.

Endless choice, opaque rates, fragmented supervision – AI in customer contact in 2025 – Companies see opportunities, but the difficult to estimate costs also makes them cautious when it comes to AI in customer contact.

AI Agents in customer contact: still limited deployment, but limitless ambitions AI and AI agents in customer contact: everyone is talking about it, but few organizations are doing anything with it at the moment. Is that image correct?

“AI solutions abound – so look beyond just FTE reduction” – The windows of tech suppliers are bulging with AI solutions. Stef van den Oever fears that companies are mainly looking at options for FTE reduction.

Agentic AI can perform tasks – and what comes next? Agentic AI – AI that can perform tasks – is a real contender to become the ‘next big thing’ in customer contact. What will be the next step?

High Tech meets High Touch: the significance of generative AI for CX – By 2026, 1 in 4 interactions will be supported by AI, according to predictions from Gartner. As far as TP is concerned, that is already becoming reality.

LLM + knowledge graph = promising – Solutions such as ChatGPT can mean a lot for customer contact, if they are used in combination with knowledge graphs.

Customer contact too expensive, chatbot quality too low Annoying for the customer and promising for companies: the chatbot has an important role in customer contact, according to the National Voice Monitor 2023.

Customer contact of the future: messaging apps combined with AI chatbots Messaging apps are on billions of smartphones; on the other hand, chatbots are on the rise. How will the two developments reinforce each other?

AP on ChatGPT: “We are following developments” – The Dutch AP is following developments, a spokesperson told Ziptone, but there are no plans for formal steps yet.

Italy bans ChatGPT; tool falls short in many areas – ChatGPT raises many questions, says IT lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet. For example, the privacy statement does not address data processing when vacuuming the entire internet.

Applying ChatGPT in customer contact – the intermediate position How can you apply ChatGPT in customer contact? Several CX providers have already developed services. Ziptone draws up the (interim) balance.

Cheerful chatbot does not always contribute to CX Experiments show that using positive emotion in chatbots is challenging, especially if customer expectations are not clear. It is advisable not to make chatbot dialogues too exuberant.

ChatGPT-4 will be mind blowing - but not for customer service – The application possibilities of ChatGPT are the same as with the current AI-based chatbots, according to a Gartner analyst. This article explains what the current limitations of ChatGPT's underlying design are.

“ChatGPT will not contribute to CX for the time being” Sander Hesselink of Telecats sees opportunities for dialogue development, but limitations for personal services involving customer data. There is also still a solution for the unreliability.

Using ChatGPT for customer contact: promising or hype?– ChatGPT has recently attracted a lot of attention in the media. Can Google, copywriters and customer contact employees go home?

Sam, VGZ's successful chatbot, has broadened its field of activity. In addition to text (web chat), he can now also handle speech. And in order to properly understand customer demand, VGZ has switched from IVR to routing based on speech recognition: speech routing.

Within five years, chatbots will be the primary customer service channel for about a quarter of all organizations. Currently, according to Gartner analysis, 54% of organizations already use some form of chatbot application for customer contact. Read more

How to deal with an airline or hotel chatbot — and how to get a human? Travel companies turned to AI during the pandemic. It's here to stay. Article in Washington Post.

European rules approaching for the use of AI – Will developing and using AI-powered solutions such as chatbots become more complicated in the coming years? It is certain that effective AI starts with a good data set. It is precisely the use of (especially 'human') data for AI that will be subject to new rules. Ziptone spoke with Menno Weij (Partner Tech & Privacy Law at BDO Netherlands) and with Arjan van Hessen (Telecats/UTwente).

New legislation is in the works for the use of data for the development, training and deployment of AI applications, such as chatbots. In this article we look at the most important trends: where are the laws and regulations going?

Europe is lagging behind in chatbot technology – The application of conversational in Europe is lagging far behind the rest of the Western world – especially in the field of chatbots and voicebots. The European market is saturated with first-generation chatbot technology. This does not contribute to higher acceptance by consumers and better adoption by companies.

Two-thirds of consumers are not satisfied with chatbots – Consumers are not pleased with the use of chatbots as helpdesk employees. This is evident from a survey by the Consumers' Association among more than 10.000 panel members. No less than 78% of the respondents who sometimes had to deal with such a robot assistant did not receive a complete answer to their question, according to the Consumers' Association.

Case: Chat and voicebot analytics at Rabobank – The use of analytics is important for the optimization of voice and chat channels. A look at the set-up of conversational analytics at Rabobank and the use of data sources to continuously fine-tune all channels. (Emerce)

VGZ continues with voicebot In order to increase innovative capacity, health insurer VGZ has deployed an innovation team between IT and the business since 2012. Stefan Visser (data catalyst and innovation architect) and Niels Scheurleer (project manager) talk about the working method of this team and about the most recent innovation project: voicebot Sam. Sam now handles over a thousand calls a week. The next step: linking the voicebot to voice routing.

Overview of chatbots in the insurance world of international IT service provider Cognizant (pdf, 2019). Cognizant sees chatbot technology as a major game changer in CX for the insurance market. Download the report.

Everything you need to know about chatbots

GPT-4 can do anything. For example, answering (apparently analytical) questions about images offered: 'is this device properly connected'? That offers opportunities for customer service! Or is there also a downside? Food for thought for customer contact and CX professionals.

Chatbots: from business case to implementation and management In this extensive basic article you can read everything about chatbots: from definition to the importance of a clear objective and from implementation to pitfalls and results.

The difference between rules-based and AI-based chatbots (in English) – Forbes describes the pros and cons of both types of bots.

Current generation of chatbots sets the clock back More and more companies are opting for automation of customer contact via chatbots. However, that is at odds with the pursuit of excellent customer experience, because the first generation of chatbots consists of automated FAQs or at most a pre-scripted dialogue about a specific task. Gartner warns that a significant portion of the chatbots in use today could go to waste in a few years.

Poor integration chatbots biggest irritation – A lack of integration between chatbots and human support is the biggest irritation when using chatbots. This is according to an independent survey by Chatbots.org, commissioned by eGain, among 3.000 consumers in England and the US. The research group used a chatbot for customer service in the previous 12 months.

Build trust in chatbots – The British professional association CCMA advises contact centers that want to work with chatbots to opt for the strengths of the chatbot: handling simple questions and routing questions.

Research into and views on chatbots

Researchers wipe the floor with municipal chatbots Research into 36 municipal chatbots shows that they underperform. They are rarely up to date and claims are not fulfilled.

Better the phone than a bumbling chatbot – The Dutch consumer “prefers telephone over bumbling chatbot”, according to the KSF in the press release accompanying the announcement of the results of the fifth edition of the National Voice Monitor of March 2024. Main conclusions: chatbots are in need of innovation and waiting times remain a source of annoyance.

Dutch consumers have little confidence in chatbots – Although Dutch companies are at the forefront of automating customer contact, the Dutch see little positive in chatbots. According to the research, 88 percent of Dutch consumers have had a problem with chatbots and 37% see no benefits.

Chatbot can add value to self-service for patients – Using a chatbot can help reduce patient uncertainty. This is shown by research based on more than 158.000 interactions with the Buoy Chatbot, a free platform. The results of the study were recently published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The study also found that patients using the platform were more likely to lower their demand for care.

Capgemini: chatbots and voice assistants are gaining ground – Research from the Capgemini Research Institute (Fall 2019) shows that consumers increasingly prefer to interact with chatbots. This is especially the case when it comes to researching products, getting to know new services and asking questions to the service desk after a purchase.

Consumer distrusts chatbot Chatbots do not inspire confidence among Dutch consumers. Roughly half do not trust chatbots and roughly a third prefer not to do business with companies that communicate via chatbots. This is evident from a Trustpilot poll of 1.900 consumers (autumn 2019).

Frustrations of customer service agents examined For customer service representatives, inadequate technology and processes are two major aspects that limit the effectiveness and level of customer service. This causes a lot of frustrations. It's one of the findings of a recent Pegasystems survey of 7.000 consumers, 1.900 decision makers, and 3.600 service agents, published in September 2019.

Chatbots not (yet) popular with customer service 34 percent of Dutch office workers expect chatbots as a means of communication to grow the fastest within customer service. Whatsapp and web chat share second place with 24 percent each. This is evident from research, according to this article from December 2018. However, chatbots are not really going through a storm at the moment: only 10 percent of Dutch office workers are currently using them.

“Chatbots still too stupid for real work” Most chatbots are not yet smart enough to meet the high expectations of consumers. This is the conclusion of a global survey of 3.500 consumers in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia by Pegasystems (end of 2018). Although they are quick and handy in some situations, they are also not very intelligent. 65 percent still prefer human interaction on the other end of the chat.

Forrester: chatbot drives out call and email At the end of 2017, Forrester predicted that by 2018, one-fifth of companies would use AI to make decisions and to roll out new forms of customer service based on automated communication. By now has Forrester tempered his enthusiasm.

“The KCC has had its day” Within the foreseeable future, chatbots and other technology will answer the most common and simple questions from residents and entrepreneurs. The more complex questions end up with specialists with a heart for customers. The KCC is therefore out of the game. That is what Patrick Nelen predicts in early 2018. Nelen is co-initiator of 'The Future Begins Now', which prepares public organizations for the future.

Tips & tricks when using chatbots

26 KPIs for chatbots – If the chatbot has to replace employee conversations, can you use similar KPIs?

How do you convert chatbots from text to speech? Will we still need service employees in five years' time? Will Amazon's Alexa customer contact completely change? And is a written chatbot easy to convert to speech and therefore suitable for telephony? Arjan van Hessen (Telecats/University of Twente) responds to statements.

Want to start a chatbot? Think big but keep it simple Suppose you want an overview of recent expenses with your credit card company, or a travel schedule from your holiday organization, or you want to search for and book a flight with an airline, in all those cases a chatbot will do just fine. More and more organizations are therefore using chatbots to service customers, but chatbots are primarily suitable for simple tasks.

Implementing bots more difficult than expected Companies see great potential in automating their operational processes with robots. 67% indicate that robot automation is even more effective than initially expected. Only 8% find it less effective than previously estimated. This is shown by worldwide research by PegaSystems.

Build your own customer/bot dialogue After three hours a chatbot on your own mobile: tangible result of a chatbot workshop organized by Pegamento. Although there is still work to be done on a good customer experience, developments are moving quickly. Companies that do not want to miss out in the future are advised to claim their 'invocations' in the short term. Report of a workshop with targeted tips and advice for working with bot technology.

“An organization that wants to digitize everything simply misses the boat” Ernst Kruize and Arne Keuning have previously worked together at the KSF social service expert group, the Marketingfacts Jaarboek and the Social Service Congress. Now they are working together on the realization of a new book about digital customer contact. They speak out about chatbots and live contact.

Who will soon have the best voice-controlled platform? Which voice-enabled service is the fastest to become the best voice-enabled platform for interactions and transactions? The race between Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon matters to chatbot developers and users alike. Which ecosystem are you hooking up to? With the breakthrough of machine learning, voice-driven applications are getting smarter.

Google is developing a new generation chatbot – Google claims that the company has developed a new generation of chatbot, which enables completely natural dialogues. The new chatbot called Meena uses a neural network with 2,6 billion parameters. The bot has been trained with 40 billion words (341 GB of text). In addition, Seq2seq, a neural network that compares words from nearby paragraphs, was used to understand the relationships between words.

Cases: concrete applications of chatbots

No chatbot for Rituals for the time being – Outsourcing is no obstacle at Rituals to be declared the most customer-friendly company in the Netherlands.

Goes “first municipality with AI-powered chatbot” Goes has supplied a limited number of web pages to OpenAI for the ChatGPT version of the chatbot.

IndiGo and Air India launch multilingual chatbots – Competitor Air India has also launched a bot where only 15% of questions have to be forwarded to a live agent.

ChatGPT shortens after-work time at NN by three minutes: saving 50 FTE NN Group (16.000 employees worldwide) uses ChatGPT to summarize customer conversations in a few keywords.

Real-time speech translation enters customer contact – Translating real-time speech into customer contact is no longer music in the future. Transcom uses it for various international clients.

ContactCare uses ChatGPT for contact registration Facility contact center ContactCare uses DaVinci, a paid option of ChatGPT, to record conversation notes during customer contact.

Government-wide chatbot in the making The municipality is the primary point for citizens to come into contact with the government. That is why VNG Realisatie is working with municipalities and partners on the development of a government-wide chatbot that should be placed on the websites of municipalities. The ultimate goal: a chatbot that, as a virtual assistant, shows citizens the way within the government.

Amazon helps companies with their own voice for voicebot – Companies can make an existing voice of their own brand suitable for use in Alexa. This service is offered under the name of Amazon Polly.

Positive experiences with virtual agent Wout – The trial with virtual agent Wout has ended. The police have now evaluated Wout's efforts. The test has shown that the technology behind the chatbot has potential, according to a message from the Politie. The results of this test will be submitted to the police force management, who will decide whether Wout will be further developed and ultimately used as a fully-fledged service channel.

Zwolle police starts trial with chatbot 'Wout' Until November 30, 2019, residents of Zwolle can easily report noise nuisance to the police by chatting with virtual agent Wout. It's a test. Via www.politie.nl/wout, residents can let us know what kind of noise nuisance they experience, how long it has been going on and other circumstances.

Police further expands experiment with virtual chatbot Wout The police have further expanded the experiment with chatbot Wout. Residents of Hengelo can now also report noise nuisance via the "virtual agent". This was previously possible for residents of Zwolle and Rotterdam IJsselmonde. In addition, the police announced at the beginning of this month that victims of ransomware and help desk fraud can now report to Wout.

Amsterdam UMC launches chatbot – From 24 July, the digital assistant (chatbot) will answer questions from visitors to Amsterdam UMC. This makes it the first hospital in the Netherlands with a site with so-called 'conversational chatbot technology'. With the introduction of the conversational website, a digital assistant gives visitors an immediate answer to their question.

Centraal Beheer launches AI chatbot – Insurer Centraal Beheer, a forerunner with the use of innovations in its sector, will release a chatbot under the name CeeBee in six to eight weeks that works on the basis of artificial intelligence. The bot can handle natural language, both listening and in the responses that CeeBee gives.

Sogeti develops chatbot Nikki for health insurer DSW in six weeks – Sogeti has developed a chatbot for DSW that answers customer questions on the health insurer's website via a pop-up window. Chatbot Nikki is expected to answer about 75 percent of all customer questions. Thanks to the smart algorithm that is part of the chatbot, Nikki is constantly trained.

Atos and Google Cloud develop AI-powered chatbot for T-Mobile Netherlands – IT service provider Atos and partner Google Cloud have jointly won a contract to develop a new, AI-powered chatbot for T-Mobile Netherlands. The use of the chatbot is part of T-Mobile's digital transformation strategy.

Vodafone increases productivity with chatbots – Mobile operator Vodafone wants to double the use of bots next spring. They have been shown to increase customer service productivity by six times. Emerce concludes this from the notes to the half-year figures of Vodafone Group. The ambitions for the helpdesks are outlined there.

Overstappen.nl introduces chatbot – Comparison site Overstappen.nl has started using the chatbot Lot. With this, the comparison site wants to relieve the telephone helpdesk. The company also wants to respond to the trend that more and more services are arranged via mobile chat. According to Overstappen.nl, almost half of the unique visitors to the website come via mobile.

UPS integrates self-service with chatbot – Logistics service provider UPS has integrated its chatbot with UPS My Choice, the service where customers can fully determine how and when their shipment is delivered and where customers can receive interim status updates.

Teleperformance launches advanced chatbot for 35 languages – Teleperformance has developed a chatbot in a strategic partnership with technology company Artificial Solutions that functions in 35 languages. The service provider in customer contact currently works in 265 languages. The developed chatbot uses artificial intelligence and functions in natural written language.

Alibaba makes chatbot available to resellers – The Chinese online retailer Alibaba has introduced a smart customer service chatbot that can be used by resellers using the Alibaba platform. The name of the chatbot is Dian Xiaomi, Chinese for shop assistant. The retailers on Alibaba can set up the chatbot according to their own preferences.

Anne Frank House launches chatbot – The Anne Frank House has released a chatbot for Facebook Messenger. Users can ask the bot about the history of Anne Frank, or information about the museum. The bot was announced during a Facebook event at the Anne Frank House. It can be used immediately on Facebook Messenger.

After a chatbot, Univé is now testing video chat with customer service – After the use of WhatsApp and the pilot with a chatbot, Univé is starting a new digital experiment: video chatting with customer service. For six months, the insurer will test whether customers appreciate the video chat. Univé wants to know which topics customers want to discuss with advisers via video chat.

KLM robot Phil mainly does stupid jobs – Extensive article in the FD about how KLM (internationally) works with Phill, the chatbot that actually helps with the automated filling in (Fill In) of forms. Phill asks the passenger for the booking details and forwards that information and the rebooking request to customer service.

Phil does a good job, but can't do much yet. The developers have discovered over the years that it is better to work with small steps. In 2017, for example, Bluebot, BB, was introduced with much fanfare. The robot helped book a flight. He did what he had to do, but programming BB was a huge job. “It is better to cut the booking or rebooking process into small pieces and see which parts can be automated. It costs less, so we can do more projects, and it pays off quickly.”

Any suggestions for additions to this file? Email the editor.