Conversational Analytics: natural-language answers in Looker

As data usage expands across your organization, teams need faster, more intuitive ways to get answers from trusted data sources without learning SQL (Structured Query Language) or waiting in a backlog. Conversational Analytics meets that need by letting users ask questions in natural language and receive accurate, governed answers powered by Gemini Enterprise for Google Cloud. With Looker’s Conversational Analytics grounded in your LookML semantic layer, you can enable your organization to access accurate and explainable insight.

Conversational Analytics explained

Conversational Analytics enables users to ask questions in your native language and get back charts, tables, and narrative explanations that are based on in Looker’s semantic model and governed by your existing permissions model. Because it runs on your LookML Explores, including those provided by Looker Blocks, the experience uses the same trusted definitions and permissions you already govern, this ensures consistency across every dashboard, report, and AI-generated answers. Additionally, lightweight data agents can be created with domain-specific guidance, curated data fields, and context awareness, enabling them to deliver answers tailored to each department or user type.

Key benefits

• Accessibility: natural-language questions make data approachable for every role, no technical skills required.
• Trust & governance: answers are produced on top of your LookML model and row-level permissions, preserving consistency and compliance.
• Speed to insight: reduce ad-hoc request queues and accelerate everyday decisions with conversational queries and instant visualizations. 
• Flexible deployment: Bring Conversational Analytics to where the users already work embed it via API into internal apps, chat interfaces, or 
•  portals so they can access insights and query Explores without leaving their workflow.
• Scalability: Easily scale Conversational Analytics across teams, regions, and data domains. Leverage your existing LookML models and governance framework to support growing user bases and data volumes without additional setup or loss of performance.

How it works

Users ask a question in Looker’s Conversational Analytics experience, or via a Gemini Enterprise chat entry point configured to call your analytics agent. 
Behind the scenes, the agent leverages Gemini’s natural language understanding to interpret intent and context. It then consults Looker’s semantic layer to generate the right query and returns a concise answer with charts, tables, and narrative insights.

The chat can run over your existing Explores, and agents can include up to five Explores in scope; the agent automatically selects the most relevant Explore for each question. For complex tasks, the agent can route to BigQuery (with Gemini assistance for text-to-SQL) and bring results back. All while preserving the same governance and permissions that secure your BI environment.

Use cases and applications

Conversational Analytics caters to diverse use cases, including:

• Executive briefings: “What was Q3 revenue in Europe?” - single KPI with an optional drill to country.
• Go-to-market: “Which segments underperformed last week and why?” - ranked segments plus a drillable chart.
• Operations & support: “NPS by channel this month?” - quick breakdown with suggested follow-ups.
•  Self-Service BI: speed up exploration by turning natural language prompts into starting points analysts can refine.

Conclusion

Conversational Analytics turns your governed BI into a true dialogue, empowering anyone in the business to ask questions, explore insights, and make decisions instantly. You can even combine Looker’s semantic layer with Gemini Enterprise to deliver accurate answers at the speed of a conversation, without compromising control.

At Datwave, we help companies build the solid data foundations that make this possible: reliable LookML models, scalable architectures, and AI-enabled analytics experiences tailored to each business domain. With the right setup, Conversational Analytics becomes more than faster reporting, it becomes a new, intuitive paradigm for interacting with data.

Author

Alejandro Aguilar | BI Delivery Manager @Datwave

Ready to see it in action?

Book a session to see a demo and explore Conversational Analytics with Looker and Gemini.