Bland AI vs. Sierra AI: A Comprehensive Comparison of Conversational AI

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1. Introduction

The internet is awash with AI solutions. With such a broad scope of applications and sophistication most enterprises are struggling to grasp what can be implemented today, and what the organizational costs of getting started will be.

Naturally the executive or co-founder will need a way to understand and rank the thousands of solutions out there, all claiming to be the “next generation” of automation for their company.

So how does one evaluate an AI Agent solution for their specific use case? This article will show you an in-depth comparison of two platforms (Bland and Sierra), and more importantly provide you with a solution evaluation rubric to make your own assessments on other AI agent-based solutions.

What is Conversational Artificial Intelligence?

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Conversational AI, and AI Phone agents are in the same bucket of the AI industry. 

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Conversational AI simply means using artificial intelligence (large language models) in a way that simulates real conversations with users (think Chatbots and AI Phone agents).  AI Phone agents like the ones Bland AI and Sierra offer are a specific type of Conversational AI.

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Bland AI Overview:

Bland AI focuses on creating highly customizable conversational workflows. It empowers businesses to design dynamic, context-aware conversations that adapt seamlessly to user inputs.

Features include intuitive drag-and-drop pathway builders, robust API integrations, and powerful natural language understanding (NLU).

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Sierra AI Overview:

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Sierra is an AI agent platform that caters to growing businesess. According to the case studies they have published, their core competency is in support chatbot style agents at the enterprise level.

Listed on their website are other products such as Voice, and Platform OS (create your own agents with integrations), but nothing else could be found.

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Voice AI Agent Feature Breakdown: Bland vs. Sierra

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We have a confession to make... this won't be a complete feature by feature breakdown comparing these two platforms.

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Why not?

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Because despite all of our best efforts, we can't actually get a glimpse of the Sierra AI platform yet.

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We scoured the internet for features lists, demos, customer reviews and anything we could get our hands on. Nothing. Aside from a few generic explainer videos and some incredibly broad marketing speak. We would love to be able to give you a direct comparison, but unfortunately that just wouldn't be honest.

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What follows is a comparison made from what could be found from reading through their website and case studies (no reviews or non-promotional youtube videos exist yet).

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Getting Started - Onboarding and Startup Costs

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Bland

It takes about 30 seconds to sign up for an account with Bland.ai, and make your first prompted agent. We recommend you spend a little more time than that learning how to build great AI phone agents, but the Bland team has tried to make it as frictionless as possible to get started building.

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Sierra

There is no registration or signup on their site. All requests are submitted via contact form with no ability to schedule a demo or test drive the platform. We submitted a request about a week back, and still haven't gotten to speak with anyone...

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Enterprise Readiness and Scalability

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Bland

Bland has scaled their infrastructure globally to support enterprise clients. Even the largest customer can crank up the throughput in their call volumes and not see a hint of performance issues.

Security wise, Bland has completed certifications for SOC-II (Type I & Type II), as well as HIPAA, to meet the needs of their larger customers.

Sierra

According to their website, Sierra is tailored for enterprise. They have several large case studies published handling a variety of text-based customer service data.

For security, they state to use encryption, and supervise their AI agents using guardrails.

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Interface and Ease of Use

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Bland

Bland has released and meticulously refined their flagship interface Conversational Pathways. With Conversational Pathways, users can click/drag to build even the most complex AI Phone agents complete with integrations, transfer options, and infite decision trees.

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Sierra

Sierra advertises for Platform OS, a system meant to allow customers to create their own (text and possibly voice) AI agents in a graphical interface. We have not seen this yet (and there is nothing available online showing the design), so unfortunately we can't comment on it's usability.

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Documentation and Community

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Bland

Bland touts an ever-improving API documentation suite, complete with "Bland University" that teaches both technical and non-technical users alike the ins and outs of creating elegant AI agent phone solutions.

Bland fosters a growing community of developers and integrators on Discord, a free and Bland moderated place to share solutions and ask questions.

Sierra

Documentation is not publicly available. Neither is any kind of community or support network.

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Integrations

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Bland

Out of the box Bland can integrate with any API enabled system. From Shopify to Hubspot to Microsoft Outlook, users are building complex integrations from Blands general connectivity featuresets.

Sierra

There is nothing published on available intergrations or capabilities. However several Shopify logos are found throughout the website and it's safe to assume there is direct connectivity via apps/integrations available to customers.

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Natural Language Understanding (NLU) and Voice Capabilities

Bland

Bland AI: Fine-tuned NLU models with industry-specific training for greater accuracy in interpreting user inputs. Bland's architecture (Multi-LLM workflow trained and built in-house) is well documented in their Bland University training course.

Sierra

Still unclear exactly how and what comprises Sierra's 'Voice' product.

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Conversational Design Capabilities

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Bland

Offers drag-and-drop workflow design, advanced conditionals, and dynamic branching for tailored user experiences.

Sierra

No info on how their workflows function could be found.

Analytics and Reporting:

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Bland

Built for Enterprise detail, but simple enough to setup for basic implementations. Bland provides a robust and dynamic analytics suite designed to capture and quantify the sentiment of all ongoing ai agent conversations.

Sierra

Nothing could be found directly, but it's almost a certainty that Sierra offers some form of reporting and analytics to their enterprise customers.

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Pricing and Scalability

Bland

Bland scales with your implementation, and only charges your for minutes spent using your agents (fine tuning and other data processing related services can cost extra depending on the use case).

Sierra

Pricing not available on their website. Given their focus on enterprise this makes sense somewhat.

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Use Cases and Industry Fit

Both platforms have well documented case studies across industries. Sierra's case studies tend to lean very heavily towards consumer facing brands (E-commerce) and text based support, while Bland seems to gain favor with enterprises performing heavy marketing/sales and live phone calls with customers.

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Final Verdict

We think we've done enough to outline the features of Bland's AI Phone Agents and Conversation Pathways interface. If you're curious to learn more, you can sign up directly for the platform and start building, or you can speak to one of our engineers this week about your business and potential use case.

As for Sierra, we apologize for not having made this more detailed on their end. The information about their platform (and looks into it) are simply not made available online or to us mere mortals. We hope the lack of public information tells you all you need to know.

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