Siena AI Agent vs. Chatbots: 11 Reasons Why CX teams choose Siena

It's 2024 and a fully embedded, human-like AI customer service agent finally exists.

Meet Siena, the autonomous AI agent that combines human empathy with machine learning to support customers and fully resolve tickets like a human. 

You may be wondering, isn’t Siena just a more modern, more powerful chatbot? 

The short answer: No. Siena’s capabilities go far beyond those of chatbots, which are tethered to manually created “if/then” rules. In fact, that's why chatbots don't work. They can't handle the unpredictable nature of customer service, and they sound robotic. On the other hand, Siena actually understands context and responds with human-level reasoning and empathy. Siena solves complex queries instead of deflecting them — a giant leap forward in AI customer service.

A truly autonomous AI solution for customer service–Siena–comes with a host of benefits. 

In summary, Siena…

• Is empathic, not robotic
• Is here to solve customer inquiries, not deflecting them
• Helps drive sales, not just answer questions
• Takes hours to set up, not weeks or months

The long answer: Keep reading to learn the 11 reasons why Siena's AI agent outperforms chatbots, fully resolving tickets with humanity, speed, and precision.

1. Siena’s empathetic responses resonate with customers

So why have previous AI systems failed us?

The answer is simple: They promised convenience but made users run straight to “talk to a human” because they were unable to solve customer issues. 

With Siena, we wanted to create an AI system that truly understands context, responds with empathy, and solves complex problems instead of adding to the support workload by deflecting tickets. Siena is both a response to the problem and an improvement upon the solution. 

Chatting with Siena couldn't be more different than interacting with clunkier tools. If a customer complains about a product "that went missing again," Siena will: 

• Validate the customer's experience ("that must be frustrating")
• Outline clear steps toward resolution ("we'll send another")

That's because Siena doesn't scan messages to identify keywords. Instead, she comprehends the situation, applies her reasoning, and decides the best course of action – like a human being. Each response is totally unique and feels like it's coming from an actual person on your support team, which diffuses customer frustration. She even understands jargon, vague, or indirect questions. Above all, she can understand images through its multi-modal capabilities. 

Her empathetic communication resonates with customers, and she connects with customers to elevate CSAT scores and inspire positive reviews. 

Siena averages a 4.81 CSAT score – based on 50,000+ customer satisfaction surveys.

2. Customers love interacting with Siena (and they hate chatbots) 

Ultimately, people dislike using chatbots because it’s like talking to a robot–but sometimes people get things wrong, too. Siena gives you the best of both worlds: accuracy and humanity. The proof? Customers love talking to her. 

In an interaction with one of Everyday Dose’s customers, their Siena persona Victoria offers a helpful answer that leads to an order. When the customer needs detailed medical advice on their mushroom coffee, Siena responds with specifics while cautioning that individuals should reach out to healthcare professionals for further information. 

Customers who interact with Siena in any form love her, and it shows in their feedback:

Users can scroll through our comment sections and see the knowledgeable, scientific, and very friendly comments that Siena leaves on behalf of our brand. - Beatriz Lopes, Head of Customer Experience at Everyday Dose

3. With Siena’s Persona Studio, create on-brand omnichannel responses

Using Siena's Persona Studio, every response is perfectly on-brand with the option of different personas for every channel. 

With a chatbot, you’re stuck with a single templated answer across support channels. But today’s brands want each channel to its own vibe. For instance, your social media voice might be unbuttoned and witty. Meanwhile, your live chat voice might be more concise and polished. 

Customizing each channel’s chatbot code increases implementation time. You’ll have to write responses for:

• Owned channels: website, SMS, email
• Social channels: Facebook Messenger, X, WhatsApp, Instagram Direct 
• Any additional CX touchpoints

With Siena, you simply create a unique brand persona for each channel -- complete with singular personality attributes, voice guide, and context. (You can even give each persona a different name.) Siena will then filter all her replies through this persona, ensuring the message is as on brand. 

For example, Swoveralls created the Jessie persona with Siena which  is an expert on living the comfiest life and loves Swoveralls, thus wears them every day. Jessie finds a lot of joy in helping people learn more about Swoveralls, and also finding the perfect pair for them.

Siena can even automate social media and respond to comments on ads. 

Plus, thanks to Siena’s omnichannel customer support, you can reduce the strain on your team during peak demand by distributing the support workload across your entire CX ecosystem. 

4. Chatbots deflect tickets, Siena resolves them (just like a human agent)

If Siena’s hardwired for one thing, it’s resolution.

Chatbots are rule-based engines that use keywords to trigger predetermined responses. And every customer gets the same generic response – even if it doesn't answer their question. Siena goes beyond keywords to resolve customer issues.

For instance, when a customer says, "I ordered 3 boxes and only got 2," a chatbot might respond, "I'm glad to hear it," or might not reply at all. Why? Because chatbots rely on keywords (like “I ordered”) to reply with canned phrases (like "I’m glad to hear it.") They can't generate contextual, dynamic responses. 

Even worse, if no keyword is identified in the customer's message, chatbots deflect by saying something like, “I didn’t quite get that. Can you repeat the question, please?” Or, they’ll send an informational article that has nothing to do with the question at hand. 

Either scenario (the wrong response or no response) leaves customers frustrated. In fact, 78% of consumers have talked to a chatbot in the last 12 months. Only 20% were satisfied with the interaction. The remaining 80% left frustrated. That does not give a good impression of your brand. 

80% of customers who have used chatbots report feeling frustrated with them⎯Forbes

In customer service, there are many real-time variables like customer data, sentiment, priority, chat context, business policies, CS policies, and many more. Any human human must comprehend all of those angles, apply reasoning, and decide the best path forward. 

What makes Siena special? She can do just that. 

Instead of relying on keywords or specific pre-programmed questions, Siena communicates with customers like a human. Siena's AI agent effectively and efficiently handles requests — only delegating tickets when absolutely necessary, which isn’t often. 

Siena automates and resolves 80% of all tickets — 90% faster than traditional chatbots or no CX automation tool at all.

By automating 80% of all tickets 90% faster than chatbots, Siena helps brands grow without fear that they’ll outpace the abilities of their customer service team — a common challenge for growing ecommerce brands. That’s a game-changer!

Siena’s ability to resolve tickets also means that human reps can dedicate more time to solving complex issues, which further improves the customer experience because more customers are getting the level of support they need, when they need it. In addition, when top customer support talent is freed from repetitive, time-consuming tasks, they can devote more time to strategic projects and have a greater impact on the business.

Having Siena do things like cancel orders makes sure our customer has a better experience. They know their problem is taken care of and they don’t have to wait for a response. – Devyn Engasser, Customer Service Manager at Kitsch

But what happens during that other 20% of the time, when Siena can’t resolve a ticket by herself or doesn't know the answer?

5. Siena works and collaborates with CX teams for seamless, smart routing

Siena works hand in hand with your team. She knows when to ask for assistance from a human rep, like any other agent who may need a hand from time to time.

When Siena can’t answer a customer question–which isn’t very often–smart routing ensures a smooth handover when human agent intervention is needed. As Siena continuously learns and auto QAs herself, she understands when she’s hit a knowledge gap and smartly routes tickets to agents. 

Here’s how smart routing works: 

• Siena receives an email ticket, and uses her reason-based logic to determine what it’s about. For example, it could be an inquiry about a late delivery where the customer wants the order status. 
• Siena understands that the package is stuck, but she can’t determine why – she doesn’t have the carrier info, only Shopify access through the integration. 
• Siena informs the customer that she’s escalating the ticket before routing the issue to the team.
• A human agent smoothly steps in to provide the customer an update on their order. 
• Siena also learns from the responses that the best agents deliver, so she gets smarter each time.

This synergy boosts agent efficiency by at least 50%, allows for more personalized interactions, and frees up your agents to focus on more complex tickets and higher-level business tasks.

Our six customer experience support specialists were overwhelmed by the volume of tickets. We needed something to handle those initial responses to free them up for more complex questions. – Katie Mitchell, Customer Experience Specialist at Simple Modern.

Siena can also give your agents a hand by helping them reduce the time it takes to craft a response. Rather than meticulously writing accurate, easy-to-follow responses that may take several minutes each, your agents can take advantage of Siena Copilot. Take a few seconds to give Siena 1-2 sentences of instruction and she’ll generate a well-formed response that your agents can send to their customers. Writing responses to customers that would have taken several minutes now takes under 30 seconds. See examples here.

6. Siena AI agent uses human-like reasoning that goes beyond blindly taking action based on ‘if X then Y’ rules

The key to Siena’s abilities is her reasoning engine for complex actions, called CoRE, which stands for Cognitive Reasoning-Based AI Engine. As Siena’s proprietary AI engine, handles the complexities of customer service using reasoning rather than rules. That’s because CoRE evaluates a large number of data points and makes real-time decisions with human reasoning. 

For the first time, companies can rely on an AI to use reasoning to take human-like actions that are rooted in both business policies and live data. 

Until Siena, companies used rules-based engines for customer support governed by the principle “if input is X, do Y.” 

That reasoning structure is limited because there is ultimately no way for users to leverage it if they’re trying to devise a human-like strategy – the way people communicate is too dynamic and layered. 

Let’s say a human agent is handling a basic refund request. Despite being faced with a trivial end goal, the agent must consider several variables, such as:

• Order specifics (like high-value vs. low-value)
• Customer specifics (like first-time vs. VIP.)
• Refund policies
• Urgency of the query
• Sentiment and context of the conversation (such as identifying an angry customer threatening with a chargeback)

Customer interactions like this are inherently unpredictable, so rules-based engines (aka chatbots) can never handle such tasks. 

Siena, on the other hand, can.

A lot of AI solutions would just deactivate the subscription when a customer asked to cancel. But if a customer just renewed or has a multi-month subscription, what are they really asking? Siena is great at sussing out those differences.– Kelan Bonislawski, Senior CX Manager at Bokksu

7. Siena takes action and works with human agents

Siena takes action and resolves complex tickets end-to-end, with fewer back and forths with customers. Her AI flows optimize customer and brand productivity — without involving a support agent. 

For instance, Siena’s one-click API integration layer includes Shopify, Skio, Recharge, Smartrr, and more. These integrations allow Siena to handle actions on behalf of customers that would otherwise require human agents to make manual changes.

Let’s use Recharge as an example. A customer wants to cancel their subscription to a product: 

• Siena responds with empathy to validate the customer’s feelings and acknowledge the issue. 
• Siena decides which options would best fit the situation — like a discount, skipping an order, or requesting feedback. 
• Based on the customer’s response, she then helps them resolve the issue, whether that’s delaying, canceling, or updating shipment information. 

In these scenarios, the customer doesn’t have to dive into their account and perform the action themselves, and customer support agents don’t need to get involved at all. 

With the Shopify module, Siena is similarly independent and capable. Because she has access to orders and the product catalog, she can help customers with actions like tracking their orders, updating their shipping address, and canceling orders that have yet to be fulfilled, issuing refunds, and much more.

Siena doesn’t need human intervention to complete any of these actions. And, new flows are always in the works. For example, Siena can now also automatically send free replacements to customers who receive damaged products.

8. Like a human, Siena can inspect visual evidence and take action

CX agents review countless pieces of visual evidence to address customer questions and decide on the best course of action. They review order forms, receipts, product photos, shipping labels, warranties, and the list of customer-provided evidence goes on and on.

Blurring the lines even further between human and machine, Siena can review visual evidence in the form of an image or screenshot and take action based on the data. Siena Vision is the first-of-its-kind in customer support technology, integrating advanced image processing capabilities with AI reasoning to provide more accurate and personalized support. 

Here a just a few examples of how Siena Vision goes far beyond the capabilities of a chatbot when the support request requires visual inspection:

• Based on your instruction, Siena will ask for a visual, like a screenshot or photo, and take appropriate follow-up action.
• When orders get lost, Siena can inspect tracking information and decide when to send a replacement.
• Siena can view product condition through an image and intelligently send a replacement by analyzing images of damaged products.
• Siena can use image-based evidence to confirm wrongfully delivered or incomplete orders and issue a refund or send a replacement.

Those examples only scratch the surface. Siena Vision unlocks a wide range of new use cases, enhancing how support teams can leverage human-like AI to resolve customer queries.

9. Getting started with Siena takes hours, not days or weeks

Siena recognizes natural language at every level. Not only can she empathize with customers in the same way your human customer support reps field tickets. But she also receives feedback in natural language. The result? The easiest to train, fastest learning AI customer support tool available. Here’s how it works.

Siena AI uses Large language models (LLMs), for natural language processing (NLP), which allows users to input commands or queries in normal type (rather than computer code) to generate a result. In other words, you can talk to Siena just like it’s a real person — even when programming her responses. 

LLMs also enable human-like conversation and reasoning with users. This alone far surpasses the capabilities of chatbots and previous iterations of AI support. The best part is, LLMs learn continuously. That means Siena gets better and better at her job with every interaction.  

Implementing Siena is very similar to onboarding a new remote employee. You’ll get back what you put in. The more you communicate with Siena and give it specific feedback, the faster she’ll learn. Which is just like working with any member of the team! – Madison Must, for Director of CX, Terra Kaffe

10. Workflows take minutes to set up (because there are no workflows) 

Siena’s human reasoning extends to your company’s interactions with her as well. You give her directions on policies and instructions in written language, just as you would to a human coworker. 

A chatbot flow is more like a choose-your-own-adventure, where each customer response sends them down a predetermined path and prompts another pre-written response. For every possible avenue a customer might go, your team needs to define a detailed workflow–a pre-drafted reply ready to go for every possible conversation scenario.

Here’s a simplified example of a chatbot “if this, then that” flow:

As a result, one use case (for example: "Where's my order?") can take weeks or over a month to build out and implement. And most brands have hundreds of flows they need to build. 

Not to mention, you'll need people in-house who are trained on the chatbot platform to implement and maintain the dialogue flow – in addition to the platform's costs. (For reference, each CX hire costs $48,000 a year on average.) 

Compare this to Siena's no-code, no workflow platform. There aren’t any decision trees, charts, or dialogues to contend with; you guide Siena with text-based context and instructions, like onboarding and training a new hire. You can build and deploy automated responses to your most common customer requests in mere minutes. 

And because customers sometimes request service through social and other channels, Siena is automatically omnichannel and easily understands the difference between email, text, and social media.

Even better, anyone on your CX team can implement these intelligent automations. Siena accepts instructions like a human written in everyday English (or French, if you prefer).

11. Siena drives conversion, pays for herself, and customers love interacting with her!

When customers feel validated by Siena rather than annoyed by the chatbot, that positive emotional response drives revenue. Siena doesn’t need to upsell – instead, her unbiased, swift responses give customers the answers they need right when they’re in the mood to purchase. Our customers see big results. 

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Kitsch generated over $46k in revenue in 90 days with Siena

Customers like Kitsch receive positive feedback from users saying that Siena provided a “very prompt response, even ‘after hours.’ ” This sort of comment demonstrates how quick, personalized communication builds a sense of trust between your company and the customer that drives conversion. 

Read the full case study.

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Simple Modern yielded a 98% satisfaction rating + decreased return rates with Siena

For another one of our customers, Simple Modern, Siena improved conversions in a different way. Her always-on, autonomous responses handled order cancellations immediately, which significantly reduced returns. 

Read the full case study.

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Automate your customer experience with Siena AI agent

Most chatbots are designed to deflect tickets. Siena is built to resolve them. 

Trusted by CX leaders at K18, Kitsch, Immi Eats, Simple Modern, and more, Siena is the empathic AI customer support tool that gives people instant, accurate responses – no matter which channel they reach out on. 

But no need to take our word for it – book a quick demo to see what Siena can do for your team today.

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