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Giant language fashions (LLMs) and generative AI are nothing new to the contact heart enterprise, which generates $2 trillion globally and employs half one million folks within the US alone. However following the explosive launch of ChatGPT, the contact heart enterprise finds itself within the midst of an enormous technological transformation that can basically change how work is completed.
“GPT is one thing that almost all conversational AI firms have been tapping into for a number of years,” says Pete Erickson, the founding father of VOICE & AI, a convention for contact heart operators and expertise suppliers scheduled to happen in Washington, D.C. subsequent month. “We knew about generative AI earlier than it was a time period that was actually used as one thing that’s now a complete class of expertise. It was at all times part of our business.”
Along with tapping into APIs from OpenAI, massive contact heart operators and their expertise suppliers had been adopting applied sciences like AWS Alexa and Google Assistant to construct conversational AI programs to enhance or substitute human name heart staff. At its peak in 2019, Erickson’s convention, which was beforehand referred to as simply VOICE, attracted 5,000 folks.
However the preliminary momentum behind that earlier period of generative expertise was stalling out by then because it entered into the Trough of Disillusionment (with props to Gartner and its Hype Cycle), Erickson mentioned. “You weren’t getting builders flooding into that market and making an attempt to construct purposes,” he advised Datanami.
Then COVID hit, which cleared out the decision facilities and compelled firms to get extra inventive in how they handled buyer calls. They leaned on conversational AI to assist with the movement of calls, emails, and textual content inquiries coming in from clients and enhancing the shopper expertise (CX).
“What occurred within the wake of that Hype Cycle passing, or the Trough of Disillusionment, if you’ll, is the belief was that enterprises had been recognizing that conversational AI and CX automation had been going to result in large ROIs,” Erickson mentioned. “When you can alleviate simply 5% of your contact heart site visitors, that’s an enormous ROI.”
When OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late November 2022, it opened the floodgates on conversational and generative AI growth. An enormous quantity of momentum surged into the expertise, and shortly there have been dozens of basis fashions to construct on from acquainted faces like Google and OpenAI but in addition Fb, Hugging Face, and Anthropic, amongst others.
Out of the blue, contact heart operators and their technological companions had the means to really obtain their desires of reinventing their enterprise fashions round conversational AI and delivering the large returns that had been out of attain with the earlier era of AI tech. Giant firms like Walmart, Walgreens, Capital One, and Cathay Pacific will on the VOICE & AI convention to share how they’re navigating this new period of generative AI and studying from others.
“It is a very distinctive yr,” Erickson mentioned. “This yr is the yr that’s particular as a result of all people’s making an attempt to get their palms round what’s taking place now…Everyone at this level this yr is like, What’s doable now? How ought to I be evaluating this?”
A lot has modified technologically in such a brief time frame that it’s inflicting a ripple impact within the bigger enterprises which might be making an attempt to determine to regulate their roadmaps to account for the brand new tech.
“What’s occurred is, in the event you’re an enterprise and also you had been beginning to scope out an answer in 2022, now immediately it’s a must to kind of rethink that strategy,” Erickson mentioned. “You don’t wish to construct an answer on older applied sciences or not take note of possibly some expertise that may actually assist you to get the place you’re making an attempt to get to.”

You possibly can be taught extra in regards to the VOICE & AI convention right here
VOICE & AI attendees will run the gamut from builders and dialog designers to product leaders and entrepreneurs, Erickson mentioned. They’re all making an attempt to determine what the most effective strategy for using the brand new generative AI applied sciences to improve their ageing tech stacks.
For instance, ought to an enterprise construct and practice its personal LLM or is it sufficient to only faucet into the APIs of a supplier that’s already constructed and educated one? These are the questions that almost all enterprises are asking proper now, mentioned Erickson, who has a hunch that there will likely be a small military of cloud firms offering LLM customization providers.
However past the muse fashions, there may be extra foundational work to be performed with the decision heart stacks, he mentioned.
“The massive prize for many of the conversational cloud distributors which might be out there may be the contact facilities,” he mentioned. “It’s a $2-trillion market globally and it must be modernized. It’s all primarily based on previous IVR [interactive voice response] applied sciences and previous telephony stacks. All that must be upgraded and the brand new wave is plugging in AI programs into contact facilities and assuaging the strain on the decision heart. That’s an enormous market and it’s an enormous a part of our convention.”
Enterprises are nonetheless determining how generative AI can match into their companies. Relying on in the event you’re a retailer or a financial institution or an airline, the purposes will likely be completely different, and so the VOICE & AI convention will give attendees a spot to share concepts.
“What are the advantages? What are the dangers? I feel individuals are asking themselves loads of questions. How is that this truly going to influence my group? How can I make use of it?” Erickson mentioned. “It’s nonetheless tremendous difficult for a significant enterprise to really incorporate an LLM and generative AI and that’s what they’re all studying. It’s quick and gradual. The expertise may be very quick, however actually making use of it’s going to take time.”
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