While much of the focus for traditional forms of AI and machine learning sits within network and network operations, most of the excitement about generative AI is in its transformative potential in customer and market-facing functions.
TM Forum has identified seven families of use cases spanning the entire breadth of the CSP organization, two of which sit within a larger category spanning customer experience, sales and marketing. In its research with CSPs, TM Forum has identified this as the biggest overarching category where operators will focus much of their early investments over the next one to two years.
Delivering an enhanced chatbot experience is a priority for many CSPs. Using GenAI, CSPs can transform the chatbot experience by evolving from a traditional AI and rules-based system to one that provides answers to a much wider range of queries and requests, by training millions of customer interactions on a large language model (LLM). GenAI chatbots use unstructured rather than structured data to understand what customers want and how it can help.
Even when generating results that are not yet accurate enough to be fully relied upon, LLMs and GenAI can be a time-saving and performance-enhancing tool for customer service agents. With faster and better access to information about customers — their demographics, spending and usage habits and previous interactions — customer service agents can resolve issues more quickly, build better customer relationships and take a more proactive role.
Moving from customer service functions to sales and marketing, GenAI can now help bring customer data together to create strong customer insights and then leverage those insights for personalized marketing campaigns. Using GenAI in combination with digital twin technologies can deliver even greater value, enabling CSPs to predict outcomes and optimize processes. GenAI also gives account managers the ability to send personalized messages to customers and prospects.
While 2023 was the year of aggressive experimentation with GenAI, 2024 and 2025 will see operators take the first use cases into production, bringing their customers closer and bridging the customer experience gap with firms that were born digitally native.
