Intelligence in our network: utilising AI to improve customer experience
Published by Colt Technology Services on November 16, 2023
When it comes to digital infrastructure, adopting ‘intelligence’ into a network can mean lots of different things. In our latest Digital Infrastructure Report, we asked 750 IT decision-makers what intelligence means to them, discovering that no one defining, ‘silver bullet’ feature results in intelligence outright.
Instead, we found that true end-to-end intelligence is made up of a mix of technology and capabilities that when pieced together produces a resilient, scalable network. Among these features are consumption-based networking, big data analysis and predictive maintenance but appearing at the top of the list of most of the decision-makers we spoke to were two things: generative artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
To show how Colt is utilising this technology in our network, we sat down with Devinder Singla, Head of Analytics & Robotic Process Automation (RPA) at Colt.
Automate and simplify
“We receive around 100,000 emails from customers in a given month, but only had the capacity to respond to 10,000 of these in an appropriate timeframe; a tiny 10% dent in a forever growing queue of queries and requests” explains Devinder. “We had to create some sort of triage to reduce response time, pass on the emails to the relevant team and protect the customer experience.”
The team came up with a solution using a mixture of RPA and AI. RPA differs slightly from AI/ML, which responds to algorithms and changes over time, mimicking human behaviour; RPA is logic-driven code designed to focus on one outcome.
“For our email ticketing solution we utilised AI to identify what the email is requesting, then used RPA to control where the ticket goes. Thanks to this, we reduced response times drastically, now comfortably reducing response time by 50%, compared to pre-solution times”, says Devinder.
RPAs run 24/7, effectively allowing physical teams to ‘keep working’ around the clock. The code churns through tasks through the night, leaving the team unburdened when they start their shifts in the morning, letting them focus on more critical jobs.
His modest team of seven engineers built the solution themselves. “Our RPA capabilities are an entirely in-house creation. Other carriers with larger budgets avoid the hassle of building their own code and hire costly third-party developers. By creating our own solution, we’re one of only a handful of digital infrastructure companies that own their solution outright, saving huge amounts of revenue over time,” Devinder proudly explains. “We may even be the only telco with such in-build capabilities!”
AI in action
Colt uses RPA technology to streamline updates from its partners, too. If one of our ‘other licensed operators’ (OLOs) has an important update that needs to be shared with customers, this was traditionally done manually and handled by manned customer service teams. Thanks to RPA technology, this eight-hour turnaround has been shortened to a mere two minutes: an effective solution when we have hundreds of partners. It even handles translations; a useful feature for a business that operates in several languages. The full suite of RPAs acts like a customer service conveyor belt, efficiently sifting, sorting and sending on time-critical updates and communications.
Colt’s Intelligent Digital Infrastructure Report
AI/ML was a feature of intelligent infrastructure that we were keen to unpack in our annual survey, discovering that 91% of businesses intend to adopt some form of AI into their network in the next two years.
We found that the pacesetters, the 34% of decision-makers who have true end-to-end intelligence across the user journey, of this group, 46% have already adopted machine learning and 45% have equipped generative AI. These figures trend upward in Japan, Singapore and the UK.
These pacesetters plan on using AI/ML to elevate staff training and enhance the customer experience (46%), much like how we use RPA to streamline our email automation solution.
There is a wealth of further insights in the full report. Download it today and discover where and how to adopt intelligence into your business.
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