Espressive, an innovator in artificial intelligence (AI) for enterprise service management (ESM), announced it had been titled as a leader in The Forrester New WaveTM: Chatbots For IT Operations, Q4 2020, published by Forrester Research. Espressive received the highest new score and different ratings in five criteria, including architecture/integration, deployment and security, chatbot readiness, market approach, and vision.

The Forrester New Wave was reviewed in the nine most significant chatbot providers for IT operations. The firm conducted an analysis based on a 10-criterion survey and a two-hour briefing with each evaluated vendor. Moreover, the market presence of vendors was also reviewed.

“We’re proud that Forrester Research recognized Espressive Barista as a Leader in the Forrester New Wave,” said Pat Calhoun, CEO, and Founder of Espressive. “We believe this recognition solidifies Espressive as a prominent innovator for enterprise service management. Unlike other vendors who focus solely on IT, our vision is to deliver frictionless employee self-help across the enterprise. To enable this, Barista recognizes employee phrases across 14 service teams and nine languages today. In addition, our unique omnichannel approach meets employees where they are, resulting in the highest adoption and call deflection rates in the industry.”

According to the Forrester report, Espressive “is a good fit for companies that need an easy-to-adopt, ESM-friendly chatbot.” The report also states, “With deep ESM integrations, premade workflows, and the Barista Employee Language Cloud, Espressive provides a chatbot focused on ease of adoption and time-to-value. It achieves this with vendor-driven workflows and language development and management, reducing adoption barriers.”

In the delivery of AI-based employee self-help, Espressive Barista represented a paradigm change. Barista can understand approximately 1.3 billion phrases across 14 major enterprise services teams and nine languages. Driven by an advanced engine for natural language processing (NLP) and advanced machine learning capabilities, Barista filled the gap between AI and human language semantics.

Espressive made an investment of about USD 30 million in Series B funding in March 2020 to enhance product innovation and boost company growth. The global venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners led the investment round with participation from Series A investors, Wing Venture Capital, and General Catalyst.