Google named Gartner conversational AI leader again

Google has been named a Leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Conversational AI Platforms for the second consecutive year.

According to Google, Gartner also positioned the company furthest on the vision axis and highest on the execution axis, and ranked it first in three of four Critical Capabilities use cases.

The recognition comes as large companies shift from basic chatbots to AI agents that can interpret customer requests, draw on internal knowledge, and complete tasks across business systems. That trend has pushed software groups to explain how their products can move from pilots to day-to-day customer service operations.

Google linked the ranking to Gemini Enterprise for Customer Experience, its offering for companies building customer service tools with generative AI. At the centre of the product is CX Agent Studio, which it said can be used to create voice and chat agents, support service staff in real time, analyse customer conversations, and speed deployment with pre-built tools for sectors including retail, food ordering, and automotive.

Product focus

The platform is designed for production use rather than experimentation, Google said. It combines Gemini models from Google DeepMind with Google Cloud infrastructure and includes tools for orchestration, enterprise retrieval, and developer workflows.

Google said companies want systems that can do more than answer straightforward questions. The goal is to handle complex requests, pull trusted information from enterprise sources, work through several steps, and take action inside existing systems.

One example cited is The Home Depot, which is using AI voice agents for customer support in stores. The retailer said the system helps callers reach solutions up to four times faster than traditional phone menus and identifies the reason for a call in fewer than 10 seconds.

Jordan Broggi, Executive Vice President of Customer Experience and President of Online at The Home Depot, described how the system works in practice.

"AI does a tremendous job at recognizing customer intent and taking direct action to help complete a purchase or even start a service request. And of course, if they need to speak with an associate, we'll quickly connect them," said Jordan Broggi, Executive Vice President of Customer Experience and President of Online at The Home Depot.

Market shift

The market for conversational AI has broadened as companies try to automate more of customer service while keeping a route to human agents when needed. Voice remains a difficult area because delays can disrupt interactions, while inaccurate answers can create commercial and reputational risks.

Google argued that this is pushing buyers to examine not only model quality but also security, governance, operational reliability, and the ability to run systems across multiple markets. Those are areas where cloud providers and specialist software companies are competing for large enterprise contracts.

In its account of the ranking, Google said its customer experience tools run on its own AI stack, from custom infrastructure to data and security layers. It said that structure allows enterprise users to benefit from improvements in models and hardware without changing the underlying customer experience design.

The broader contest in conversational AI includes cloud groups, contact centre software providers, and dedicated AI platform companies, all seeking a place in enterprise customer operations. Analyst rankings such as Gartner's can carry weight in procurement discussions because buyers often use them as one reference point when narrowing supplier lists.

Google's emphasis on customer experience also reflects a wider effort among technology companies to connect generative AI tools to direct business uses that can show measurable outcomes. In customer service, those outcomes usually centre on faster call handling, fewer hand-offs, improved self-service, and lower support costs.

For Google Cloud, the ranking supports its pitch to large organisations that want to combine generative AI models with existing business systems and support channels. Google said organisations can use its tools to build multimodal agents, assist service teams in real time, and analyse interactions to improve business outcomes.

Google said modern customer experiences require AI that can understand context, reason through multiple steps, and act across enterprise systems.