The UK's Top Conversational AI Practitioners

Hi everyone! So, the time is upon us to launch the first top client voices in Conversational AI in the United Kingdom.

To remind you, a few months ago we asked readers to nominate individuals who they considered to be leading practitioners of Conversational AI in the country. The primary aim of doing this was to celebrate the great work people are doing to transform customer and employee experiences.

Now, it's important to highlight that with this list, our intent was to focus exclusively on those who are client-side and specifically responsible for the implementation and run of Conversational AI in their respective companies. That means that obviously, quite a lot of brilliant individuals working vendor-side aren't listed – that's the next list we're aiming to work on!

We'd like to thank everyone across the community who has reached out with their suggestions and ideas – and specifically the wealth of enthusiasm and goodwill that has been extended to us (especially Darren, who's done the absolute lion's share of the research, discussions and compilations).

Below, you will find the list of people who have been specifically nominated as raising the bar with Conversational AI technology to the degree that they are recognised by their peers. In some cases, individuals have self-nominated – and we felt this was an important aspect too, simply because of the still fragmented nature of the Conversational AI ecosystem.

The UK's Top Conversational AI Practitioners

Sorted alphabetically:

Last updated: 23 January 2026

Key Themes & Observations

Some of the key themes that have been mentioned to us around focus on:

1. We're seeing a significant amount of activity toward enhancing the approaches to layered conversational and communication design.
2. A lot of individuals discussed how they are placing heavy focus on leveraging internal data and using this to streamline experiences (i.e. don't ask the customer for information that's already known/stored).
3. We heard strong focus on moving Conversational AI activities toward supporting transactions as opposed to just information queries.
4. On the topic of Conversational AI analytics, we heard that many of the individuals are experimenting (or using) metrics that go way beyond the standard 'call centre style' containment metrics that tend to inherit a lot of false/positive claims.
5. We feel it's fair to say that, based on the discussions we have had with these individuals (and more), the ecosystem is on a fast track moving away from old style chatbots that deliver limited value, to a future state where digital assistants really support end-users with what they want to do.

Methodology & request for help

We are not aiming to claim any particular authority with this list. It is our best-guess attempt, crowd-sourced from all those who have contributed.

Our ongoing worry with with this list is that it's not as comprehensive as we expected it to be! We think we've missed people! We've had at least 100 nominations – but the majority of individuals were working either vendor-side or in a research, advisory, consultancy or non-customer manner, which is why we haven't included those. (We're aiming to produce a list of those very soon!)

We recognise there will be gaps and we've made mistakes so we will correct ongoing. If you're not included – or if your friend/colleague is not included, that's simply because we missed them. So please help us improve the list. To suggest corrections or additions, please email ewan@conversationalainews.com and we'll get them added!

Thank you

We would like to thank everyone who voted, and on course, those who were nominated which we spoke to. It would be great to build more awareness/appreciation and conversation around Conversational AI. Done right, Conversational AI is a key element of any organisations experience delivery, and it should be discussed/celebrated more.

We'll continue to update this ongoing and we're intending to produce a vendor/advisor list in very short order.

Keep up the amazing work you are doing & we will hopefully see you at the in-person event to be held at the start of March. More on this to follow.

Ewan & Darren

A note of thanks to Darren

Many, many thanks and appreciation are due to Darren Henry of Intelligenta Digital who, from the beginning, has been calling, interviewing, pulling strings, and working through the incoming suggestions with patience, diligence and enthusiasm. Super kudos to Darren who has been phenomenal in helping collate this list.