BT hands more of the reins to GenAI chatbots

Its mobile arm has been using an AI chatbot called Aimee to help customers solve some of their more minor issues. Launched in late 2021, BT says it now handles around 60,000 conversations a week, compared to around 30,000 two years ago, and resolves around 50% of queries without human intervention.

Now Aimee is set to take on more responsibility. As well as providing support to BT customers as well as EE customers, the telco is expanding its remit, giving it access to more data so that it can provide service agents a summary of previous customer interactions, as well as real-time support and guidance. This is so that when a customer does get to speak to a human being, it was worth all the hoop-jumping to get through to one.

BT said it also plans to integrate its AI-powered customer contact gizmo with its GenAI Gateway.

Unveiled in September, it's a platform that enables BT to choose from a selection of large language models (LLMs) and apply them to any task to which they could improve efficiency and add value. Its infrastructure arm Openreach is already using it – an AI-powered app is providing relevant staff with summaries of engineering notes on Ethernet and full fibre jobs.

The GenAI Gateway is powered by various Amazon Web Services (AWS) tools, including its Bedrock GenAI application development suite, and Sagemaker, which enables the customisation of machine learning (ML) models for any number of use cases.

Integrating the technology underpinning Aimee seems like a no-brainer.

Under the hood is Sprinklr's unified customer experience platform, which takes OpenAI's GPT large language models (LLMs) and tailors them to individual clients' needs using Google Cloud's Vertex AI platform. It also has a Bring Your Own Model (BYOM) feature that lets customers like BT use other models.

"The collaboration with Sprinklr marks a significant step forward in BT Group's commitment to using cutting-edge technology to deliver exceptional customer experiences. With our customer contact platform, we have unlocked powerful AI-enhanced capabilities for our customer service, boosting satisfaction and creating exciting new opportunities for customer experience," said Harry Singh, MD of consumer digital at BT.

"We're delighted to be working alongside the iconic brands within BT Group, at the forefront of innovative customer engagement through effective AI," added Rory Read, who was appointed CEO of Sprinklr in November, having most recently served as chief executive of Ericsson-owned Vonage. "AI has huge potential to enhance and elevate customer experiences, and it's been fantastic to help BT Group achieve such brilliant results, so quickly."

Sounds great, but still the nagging question for the GenAI sector remains – how is it going to pay for all those GPUs?

No one signs up to a telco because it has the best virtual assistant. The value is derived from the efficiency gains – telcos like BT are happy to pay for GenAI, provided it works out cheaper than employing humans.

This places an upper limit on the amount that can be charged to use an LLM. With so much money on the line, it will be interesting to see how patient some of GenAI's financial backers can afford to be.