GenAI Trends in Telecommunications with Sameer Tikoo

Transforming Telco: 5 GenAI Trends Reshaping Experiences & Driving New Revenue

In the fast-paced realm of telecommunications, where constantly connected customers demand increasingly personalized and seamless experiences, innovation is a necessity. Enter GenAI – the catalyst for a profound shift in how telcos interact with their customers and manage their networks. From the bustling discussions at industry events to the boardrooms of leading companies, the buzz surrounding GenAI use cases is palpable.

Join us in exploring the transformative potential of GenAI within the telecommunications landscape. From redefining customer experiences to revolutionizing network operations, GenAI offers a myriad of opportunities for telcos to thrive in an increasingly competitive market.

1. Reimaging Customer Experiences in Telco

We’ve been having many interesting and productive conversations with clients and at the recent Mobile World Congress about GenAI use cases in telecommunications. One area of focus that’s getting a lot of attention and mindshare is GenAI’s impact on customer experience.

As telcos attempt to reimagine customers' experiences across the telecom journey, it’s become clear that intelligent GenAI applications add a lot of value. Imagine you’re a consumer wanting to buy a new service – what’s that experience like today, and how can we make that seamless and engaging? Well, we can start with intelligent chatbots. 

Chatbots aren’t new; they’ve been around for a while now. But they haven’t lent well to seamless customer experiences. In fact, many found them quite frustrating until machine learning and GenAI made them more intuitive and accurate. All the way from discovery and search through order processing to completion, these technologies are making customer interactions with chatbots seamless and frictionless.

2. Autonomous Networks Powered by 5G Advanced & 6G

As 5G has increasingly been deployed, networks have gained momentum. Now, we see an increasing development of self-organizing networks. For telecommunications in particular, GenAI plays a pivotal role in these autonomous networks. 

The combination of machine learning and AI can help us predict network outages and detect anomalies in the network. We can also leverage AI to help us with cell network interference patterns, providing seamless coverage and reducing operational costs. 

3. Activating & Monetizing the Full Spectrum of Telco Data

GenAI adds a lot of value to service operations, too. For example, addressing Wi-Fi network glitches and outages presents significant challenges. Imagine being at home, confronting a network outage, and urgently seeking assistance by contacting a customer service call center or engaging with a chatbot. The frustration often lies in the prolonged wait for a customer agent to assist. 

Enter AI—a transformative force in this scenario. Envision a future where customer agents comprehensively understand each customer’s data, history, and concerns. With their vast data reservoirs, telcos hold immense potential for leveraging AI to enhance customer service. With AI's capabilities, this wealth of data translates into actionable insights. It enables customer agents to navigate service operations efficiently, guiding customers through technical challenges precisely and efficiently.

This vision represents the future of customer service—a harmonious integration of AI and data, where every interaction leads to greater satisfaction. The key lies not only in troubleshooting but also in the synergy of technology and empathy, paving the way for a more connected and fulfilling tomorrow.

4. Bridging Technical Gaps in the Telco Ecosystem

As we attempt to connect the dots, making sense of and monetizing our data wherever possible, we’ll see more use cases for using GenAI for new revenue-generating services. There are many technical gaps between where we believe these innovations can take us and what we need to wade through to get there. 

For instance, telcos can access location information and other data to indicate when consumers are traveling or planning a trip. They can use that to power data roaming sales or even offer travel insurance. How will they connect those dots and integrate with ad tech or insurance platforms for offerings like these? 

Here’s another example: what are the technical gaps between education platforms and telcos? Consider that a North American telco might have 100 million customers. There's a huge potential upside if you start offering new revenue-generating services in the education sector, but that requires both strategic partnership and technological integration. 

There are countless opportunities for new revenue-generating services in this market with machine learning and GenAI helping us uncover relevant data. Those revenue streams can be realized as we develop new ways to bridge the technology gaps.

5. Evolving from Prototypes to Proof of Value & MVPs

In the context of the AI loop, we are still probably in the early phases of this journey. There's a lot of hype, and the last year was all about working on prototypes, experimenting, failing fast, and discovering what could be relevant and contextual

This year, we will see increasing MVPs, real products, and proof of value. As we mature in this journey, as with any other technological disruption we’ve seen before (whether it was the mobile revolution or the desktop revolution before that), there will be an inflection point. It may be a few years down the line, but it’s coming. Then we will see more AI-first products being developed.

From a telecommunications perspective, this will mean a shift from digital telco journeys to fully native AI telco journeys.

GlobalLogic is already putting two accelerators and our collaborative model for co-creating innovative use cases to work for our customers. With our GenAI "platform of platforms" integrating numerous publicly available LLMs we're crafting GenAI solutions that precisely align with our customers' objectives and requirements.

Want to learn more? Explore our GenAI Strategy & Solutions and get in touch with GlobalLogic’s GenAI experts today.

Special thanks to Allyson Klein at TechArena for the conversation that inspired this article. You can listen to ‘The Future of AI and the Network with GlobalLogic SVP Sameer Tikoo’ with Allyson here.