In the mid-2010s, I finished and worked at one of Europe's top coding bootcamps. As we finished the course and began considering job prospects, we were advised that an excellent way to gain professional experience was to offer friends and family a landing page build. This guidance proved effective, as graduates who secured such projects gained valuable coding experience and entrepreneurial know-how, including client and deadline management. Many became full-time freelancers, working remotely and traveling the world.
However, what was once a vast market for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) needing landing pages and web applications — and seeking skilled programmers — has become increasingly saturated. Developers worldwide compete on platforms like Fiverr and Upwork, commoditizing service prices.
But fear not, ambitious freelance developers! A new opportunity has emerged: Conversational AI Agents. With Vonage's AI Studio, freelancers can corner their market share and build Agents quickly, scaling with ease. In this post, we'll explore 7 unique features of AI Studio that make it a powerful tool for today's freelancer.
AI Studio is a true no-code/low-code platform that allows you to build conversational AI agents quickly and easily. The platform's intuitive interface is designed for users who have experience building no-code applications. Additionally, AI Studio provides templated agents that can be easily customized to suit your needs.
The AI Studio Platform
To get started, freelancers need to understand their clients' desired conversation flows and quickly convert them into logical nodes within the Studio. For best practices on mocking up an Agent before building, refer to the article "How to Create a Conversational AI Mockup." Using mockups can significantly improve communication between freelancers and clients, resulting in faster and more efficient development.
Conversational AI agents empower SMBs to provide their customers with a seamless and efficient self-service experience, rivaling that of larger companies. By leveraging various channels such as SMS, WhatsApp, voice, and more, customers can easily interact with the AI agent and quickly find the information they need.
Studio empowers developers to scale their agents with features like Intent Classification and Flow Management. Starting with a well-designed agent, developers can continuously add subflows and user intents, improving the agent's capabilities and accuracy. As any freelancer knows, clients’ desires evolve as a project progresses. Studio makes it easy to keep adding as your client keeps requesting, allowing you to adapt to changing requirements.
For strategies that have proven to increase agent success rates by 80% and more, check out the article "How to Build an Intent Classification Hierarchy."
The Vonage APIs’ Team feature streamlines collaboration between freelancers and clients, enabling seamless sharing of agents. With this feature, freelancers can invite clients to join their team, granting them access to open and work on agents in conjunction. This means that clients can make changes themselves, without always relying on the freelancer, and can also view the agent's performance anytime using the Tester feature. This cuts down on unnecessary communication, allowing both parties to work together effectively and efficiently.
AI Studio Built-In Tester
AI Studio offers a robust experience for developers, not only with its friendly interface but also with its flexibility. The platform provides developers with two powerful features: the Custom Code Node and HTTP Agents.
The Custom Code Node allows developers to add JavaScript code on top of their agent, enabling them to customize their agent's behavior to meet specific requirements. On the other hand, HTTP Agents offer the flexibility to integrate AI Studio's powerful platform into any application and initialize it via an HTTP request. This means developers can leverage the platform's simplicity and power to create sophisticated conversational AI systems that can plug into any end-user interface.
Custom Code Node
With AI Studio, you can bypass the lengthy processes and costs associated with setting up infrastructure and implementing robust AI tools. Our platform offers self-hosted agents equipped with built-in ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) and NLU/NLP (Natural Language Understanding and Processing) capabilities, along with a wealth of features such as analytics and native testing.
Enjoy the flexibility of building and testing agents in the dashboard without any costs, and only pay when you're satisfied with your agent and ready to publish it (push to production).
AI Studio offers significant value as a standalone product for businesses looking to enhance their customer experience. However, when integrated with Salesforce and Generative AI, Conversational AI Agents can unlock exponential improvements. By leveraging these integrations, clients can provide unparalleled efficiency and personalization, elevating customer satisfaction to new heights.
With the Salesforce Actions Node, a business can directly connect any customer interactions they have in their Voice or Text agent with their Salesforce data. Using the Generative AI Node, an agent becomes infinitely more flexible with just a little more work.
See the “Endless FAQs on WhatsApp With Generative AI and AI Studio” guide to see just how easy it is!
Since becoming available in GA in 2022, the AI Studio team has been constantly pushing the platform. As the world rode the wave of Generative AI in 2023, Studio added the Gen AI Node. We’ve added a growing number of supported languages, currently 20! So too has the number of human-sounding voice options for voice agents increased. Major platform updates can be seen on the Platform Updates page.
Join the growing community of Studio developers on the Vonage Developer Slack, especially in the #ai-studio channel. You can ask questions, gain support from the community, and share insights on the project you're working on with others, including Vonage team members.
And of course, the developer blog (ai-studio tag) has tons of step-by-step tutorials to get you going fast!
Vonage's AI Studio presents a valuable opportunity for freelance developers seeking to offer SMBs a unique and innovative product. With AI Studio, developers can easily create conversational AI agents that enable their clients to differentiate themselves in the market.
As the demand for conversational AI continues to grow, freelance developers who adopt AI Studio will be well-positioned to meet the needs of businesses seeking intelligent, personalized, and efficient conversational experiences. Whether you're an experienced freelancer or just starting out, AI Studio provides a powerful platform to showcase your skills, build your portfolio, and attract new clients.
Don't miss out on this exciting opportunity to revolutionize the way businesses interact with their customers. Sign up for a Vonage API Developer Account today and start building the future of conversational AI. Stay up-to-date with the latest Vonage Developer news and updates by following VonageDev on X.
){kind=small}
Benjamin Aronov is a developer advocate at Vonage. He is a proven community builder with a background in Ruby on Rails. Benjamin enjoys the beaches of Tel Aviv which he calls home. His Tel Aviv base allows him to meet and learn from some of the world's best startup founders. Outside of tech, Benjamin loves traveling the world in search of the perfect pain au chocolat.
