A year ago, the hurdles to implement generative AI (GenAI) may have seemed prohibitively high. The tech was in its early stages and questions of security, privacy, and a murky regulatory landscape loomed large.
That was then.
Fast forward to today, AI and GenAI tools are automating systems and streamlining processes to solve complex challenges, helping telcos reduce costs and uncover new business opportunities. This is coming at a critical time.
The telco industry is facing an inflection point as multiple challenges come to a head. A host of volatile market conditions have eroded corporate margins. Meanwhile, the costs and effects of major system upgrades - including the rollout of 5G and development of 6G and fiber - have cut into telco profits.
Downturns, however, can offer opportunities for innovation. AI and GenAI can help right the ship by radically reshaping day-to-day operations for telcos.
The impact of AI today
While GenAI dominates headlines, traditional artificial intelligence is already transforming the telecommunications industry, automating mundane processes to improve customer experiences, employee productivity, and operations.
For example, from a customer service standpoint, AI-powered chatbots enable 24/7 support, addressing customer issues quickly and intelligently. This not only improves the customer experience, but also saves agents time, allowing them to focus on high-impact tasks. At the organizational level, telcos are using AI to analyze data and identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and deviations in network operations. This gives telcos insight into how their processes are performing and where they can improve.
Across the board, telcos investing in AI are seeing the benefits: it’s improving efficiency and operations. GenAI accelerates this momentum.
Expanding with GenAI
A 2023 study found that 94% of telcos believe GenAI will have a significant impact on their business in the next five years. However, with great power comes great responsibility. Telcos also recognize the risks: privacy, governance, and security among them. We need to address the risks as we acknowledge the great opportunity ahead.
There are five key use cases I’m particularly excited about that can improve operations across the front, middle, and back office while enhancing the customer experience:
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Network Management: Network incidents can be costly, damage a telco's reputation, and hurt customer loyalty. While many telcos already use AI for network management, GenAI can take this one step further.
GenAI can help reduce incidents by enabling autonomous network management, devising action plans to improve network capacity planning and performance. This gives telcos a more comprehensive picture of their network as whole - and more tools to solve problems quickly.
For example, AI can detect issues within an operator’s network and trigger automated workflows that alert the relevant teams, recommend next steps, while also identifying which customer segments will be affected and informing them about the issue. Afterwards, it can gather data and distill the key points of the incident to improve the response and resolution of future issues. -
Contact Centers: GenAI tools in the contact center handle time-consuming, manual tasks, improving agent productivity, speeding time-to-resolution, and leading to better experiences. It’s a new paradigm that is only expected to expand. Gartner estimates that by 2026 conversational AI deployments within contact centers will reduce agent labor costs by $80 billion.
Consider, for instance, what happens after an agent resolves a customer issue: After the agent hangs up, they typically proceed to manually fill out a case summary. This process, while important and often required, is manual and time intensive. If a GenAI tool was integrated and created an automated transcript of the call, at least two potential benefits could occur:- The transcript could be made more substantive and less prone to human error, thereby improving future interactions with the customer.
- The human representative would gain as much as an extra 10 minutes of time per call. That time could be used in a variety of ways, including allowing the agent to focus on more complex customer issues.
The benefits of GenAI in the contact center are clear. Customers will experience quicker response and resolution times, leading to greater overall satisfaction, while agents’ time is freed up by the automation of tedious tasks. -
Service Support: Major network challenges often need to be addressed by on-site technicians - but a dwindling workforce and outdated tools have hamstrung field service teams at many telcos. In its State of Service 2023 Global Report, IFS found that nearly half (46%) of field service organizations are struggling to meet customer service-level agreements, leading to frustrated customers and poor service experiences. GenAI-guided assistance can improve the field service experience, providing support for troubleshooting, installation, maintenance and predictive analysis.
GenAI can also play a major role in training the next generation of technicians. GenAI-powered tools can deliver customized trainings designed for an employee’s individual learning styles and can respond to both user selections and emerging performance trends for dynamic, real-time learning. -
Service Delivery: GenAI can help telcos improve their time to market by helping them personalize offers to customers and guiding agents to drive revenue. Using data analytics and machine learning, telcos can segment customers based on their preferences, behavior, and needs, and deliver offers tailored to the products and services customers actually want and need.
For example, if a customer is interested in upgrading their plan, GenAI can analyze their usage patterns, satisfaction levels, and feedback, and then suggest the best plan for them based on their needs and budget. It can also offer them additional benefits, such as discounts, loyalty points, or free trials and support agents with scripts, recommended actions, and feedback to improve their interaction with the customer. As customer expectations remain high, personalization and seamless experiences are no longer nice-to-haves, but essential to brand loyalty and business growth. -
Enhanced Experiences: AI is already powering chatbots, but the natural language processing associated with GenAI allows telcos to deliver even stronger experiences through more personalized interactions, with chatbots that can understand customer questions, provide accurate answers, and handle complex requests. GenAI-powered chatbots can also function as real-time work assistants for network engineers that can monitor network health, detect anomalies, and provide solutions.
If a customer has a problem with their service, a chatbot powered by GenAI can diagnose the issue, offer troubleshooting steps, or escalate the case to a human agent if needed, all in natural, easy to understand way. It can also analyze images or videos sent by the customer to identify the problem and provide visual guidance or deep learning to predict potential failures or outages in the network and proactively notify the customers and the technicians. The unique ability of GenAI to both identify and address problems can help telcos avoid outages.
AI in 2024
In this new era of unparalleled speed and connectivity, unlocking the potential of AI is table stakes for both the customer experience and telcos broader longevity. Fortunately, telcos are in the enviable position of easily tapping into this step-change technology. With their vast networks, huge customer bases, and critical role in connecting people and businesses globally, they already possess many of the important building blocks required for GenAI implementation.
Before implementation can happen at scale, telcos will need to address the concerns associated with AI. Customers need to trust that AI will be implemented thoughtfully and that their business and data will be protected from bad actors. Telco leaders need to have a clear understanding of the risks associated with the use of GenAI and how forthcoming regulation could impact their workflows. Employees need to be onboarded and trained thoughtfully to build trust in AI. Otherwise, adoption will be slow.
Despite these concerns, the benefits for telcos are simply too big to ignore—the time to act is now. Expect 2024 to be the year when many companies more fully lean in.
