Experts say besides customer care, network security is another big area of application of AI and machine learning (ML) for telcos, especially in light of 5G roll out, which requires closer scrutiny as network architecture evolves. Other areas where telcos are deploying AI include marketing, enterprise offerings and increasing business efficiency. While market leader Jio has done away with call centres and now addresses all customer queries through its AI-enabled chatbot, Airtel has deployed a speech recognition software that helps detect emotion and reactions on a call using speech patterns, tone, modulation, etc.Vodafone also has a chatbot that not only enables customer query addressal but also helps with payments and recharge.
ET BureauOn Airtel’s part, the use of AI/ML came from a need to improve customer interactions. This included not only the overall quality of experience over a customer service call but also reducing the hold time, and speeding up the resolution time. “We have around 8,000 agents handling 100 million calls a year. We wanted to understand how we can help the agents serve the customers on these calls better, and artificial intelligence was the answer,” said Adarsh Nair, chief executive, Airtel Digital.The telco has tied up with Nvidia, an AI-led computing provider, to develop a software to better understand the interactions between agents and customers, and based on the analysis, train the agents for a better performance.”Our mandate was to use technology to understand the calls in a short window of time, help the agents be more productive and bring in cost efficiencies along the way,” said Vishal Dhupar, managing director-South Asia at Nvidia.
