By Kenrick Cai
SAN FRANCISCO – According to Verizon, their customer service team has seen reduced call durations and increased opportunities for selling due to an artificial intelligence assistant developed with Google’s models. This led to a significant boost in sales figures.
A virtual helper displayed on their screens assists customer support representatives in determining accurate responses to customers' inquiries.
In July 2024, Verizon began implementing the latest AI capabilities, scaling them to full capacity by January. Since then, sales facilitated by their workforce of 28,000 customer service representatives have surged by approximately 40%, as reported by Sampath Sowmyanarayan, who leads Verizon’s consumer division.
He mentioned that they are currently retraining their customer service representatives to become sales agents.
Verizon’s move towards AI, which was revealed during Google Cloud’s yearly gathering, could act as a contrast to worries expressed by certain public-market investors who believe that major technology corporations might be investing excessively in AI with uncertain returns.
A number of potential business clients are currently weighing their options about expanding the use of popular generative artificial intelligence technologies from small trials to broader implementation.
"Relative to what others are undertaking, this represents an enormous scale," said Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian to Massima.
Kurian's division is a major contributor to Alphabet’s growth, responsible for $43 billion out of the company’s total revenue of $350 billion in 2024.
Sowmyanarayan mentioned that Verizon developed their latest internal software by inputting approximately 15,000 company documents into an iteration of Google’s primary Gemini large language model.
Its initiatives stand apart from certain firms, such as the Swedish payment company Klarna, which has chosen to utilize AI for replacing customer support employees. Sowmyanarayan mentioned that there are "simpler methods" available to cut expenses.
Verizon mainly collaborates with two cloud service providers: Amazon for deploying applications and setting up computational infrastructure, and Google Cloud for data analysis and artificial intelligence capabilities. According to Sowmyanarayan, they chose Google over rival companies due to their capability to roll out AI services to tens of thousands of individuals.
(Kenrick Cai reports from San Francisco; Edited by Edwina Gibbs)