Adding Open-Ended Conversations to Your Products

TL;DR: If you build products, know that shifting from a tool to an open-ended companion rewires the user experience. Conversation becomes the most salient surface, users judge it like a person, and churn reasons get opaque. Treat it as a new primary product surface. Building an application with an embedded, conversational AI companion is an exciting idea, e.g., "a fitness app with a coach you can talk to." Many products can be more engaging and useful if people can talk to them in an open-ended way. Whether it is a fitness app, calendar app, Bible app, or any other app, a conversational companion can understand more about what the user really wants and provide a richer, more emotionally stimulating experience. In fact, AI companions are becoming the next interface for human-computer interaction. However, adding a conversational companion is also tricky. There's a simple spectrum: (A) No conversational experience. (B) A task bot: narrow, slot-filling, goal-bounded, e.g. "Tell me the cou