As we plan for 2024 and a series of VON: Evolution events throughout the coming year, I wanted to look at what’s driving some of the sectors the Salon Series focused on this past year and will continue to in the next year ahead.
It’s great to see how the telecommunications industry is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) in various ways to enhance customer experience. Here are some key applications that are there now in various forms and flavors globally:
- Personalization: AI enables telecom companies to offer personalized experiences to their customers. This includes custom service plans and offers based on customer data such as order history, data consumption patterns, call frequency, and duration. AI can also help telecom companies segment customers based on their preferences, behaviors, or needs and provide them with tailored offers, promotions, or recommendations.
- Customer Service: AI is used to improve customer service in several ways. For instance, AI-powered chatbots can handle common customer queries, requests, or complaints and provide relevant information, solutions, or recommendations. AI can also power voice assistants or self-service portals, enhancing the speed and convenience of customer support.
- Network Performance: AI can help telecom companies monitor, manage, and optimize their network performance in real-time. AI can analyze large amounts of data from various sources, such as sensors, devices, traffic patterns, and customer feedback, and provide insights and recommendations to improve network performance.
- Predictive Analytics: Telecom companies can use predictive analytics and machine learning to provide personalized solutions, reduce churn, and increase revenue. Predictive AI-driven analytics allows companies to anticipate customer behavior and needs by tracking cross-channel engagement.
- Self-Healing Solutions: Advanced AI applications aim to minimize the need for customers to contact telecom companies for preventable issues and maximize opportunities to upsell when customers do reach out. These self-healing solutions involve various processes.
- Smart Scheduling and Forecasting: AI applications optimize service operations journeys, such as the in-store customer experience, call center use, and deployment of employees in stores, call centers, and the field.
- Generative AI: Generative AI can help telecom companies reimagine the omnichannel customer journey, enhancing the contact center experience for both customers and employees. It offers self-service functionality that lets customers discover new service options and quickly resolve invoice, technical, and service queries.
- AI Coaching Solutions: AI coaching solutions can enhance frontline workers’ and their supervisors’ performance and service quality, benefiting both customers and employees.
AI is playing a crucial role in the telecom industry by improving customer service, personalizing experiences, optimizing network performance, and providing predictive analytics. However, the adoption of AI also comes with challenges, such as the need for integration with legacy systems and the requirement for training to ensure associates can work with newly deployed systems and tools.