SIT-Eval: Situation-Based Interactive Turn-by-Turn Evaluation of Conversational Agents

Abstract: The rapid proliferation of conversational AI agents necessitates evaluation methods that assess performance across diverse dialogue scenarios, utilizing multiple situational criteria, as appropriate behavior depends on context and encompasses various aspects. Existing dialogue benchmarks typically use static natural conversations, which underrepresent rare situations---a critical safety gap, as low-probability events become frequent failures at production scale. However, limited sample sizes force a choice: either maintain natural dialogues for realism or turn to adaptive situation sampling for comprehensive yet statistically reliable coverage. We introduce SIT-Eval, an adjustable framework for evaluating situation-based conversational agents. We formalize an agent's desired behavior as situational rules: if situation is P, follow rules Q. At each conversation turn, an LLM-interlocutor enacts a uniformly sampled situation. A context-aware LLM-judge leverages all conditionally applicable rules as criteria to evaluate the agent's reply for that situation. The judge is validated using human-verified synthetic golden dialogues. Benchmarking 8 LLMs on 1292 conversation turns reveals failure modes hidden by aggregate metrics: models with similar overall scores vary widely in their adherence to individual rules. All models struggle most with ambiguity clarification and Socratic questioning.