Indian telecom operator Airtel has partnered with Google to improve its customer service — by integrating its customer care with the Artificial Intelligence-powered Google Assistant.
Google Assistant will help Airtel smartphone customers to get instant resolution to their frequent account related queries. Airtel smartphone customers will receive these features in English in the first phase.
Airtel will roll out Google Assistant features in multiple regional languages to deliver more personalized experience to Indian smartphone customers.
Airtel will track what questions mobile phone customers are asking and enable responses to them via Google Assistant, thus improving the flexibility and robustness of the Airtel voice Action.
How can Airtel customers use the Google Assistant?
# Android users need to press the Home Button to launch Assistant. iOS users need to download Google Assistant on your Apple iPhone.
# You can speak into Assistant by saying Talk to Airtel, Ask Airtel or Get Airtel. Airtel assistant will open within Google Assistant.
# Airtel assistant will ask to link your Airtel account with Google to get your account details, for the first time.
# If you click yes, you will be asked to enter your mobile number, accept the Terms of Service. Once you accept the terms of service, you will receive an OTP. Enter the OTP to complete linking your account.
# You can ask your Airtel account related questions
The initiative is a part of Project Next – Airtel’s digital innovation program, which is aimed at transforming customer experience across all of its services and touch points. Airtel plans to launch several digital innovations to change the simplicity and interactivity of its customer experience.
“This will make self-care much more interactive and step up the customer experience,” said Sarang Kanade, director, Customer Experience & Retail, Bharti Airtel.
Voice Assistant market
The adoption of voice assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant will drive smart home market, Juniper Research said.
There will be 275 million voice assistant devices to control smart homes by 2023 against an estimated 25 million in 2018.
Google will be in the second space, with Nest brand incurring a $621 million loss in 2017.
“AI capabilities coupled with routines means that Google’s greater AI investment will not displace Amazon’s lead,” Research Author Nick Maynard said.
Connected appliances will have greater integration with voice assistants. This will be crucial to manufacturers being able to position connected appliances as a central hub for the smart home.
These voice assistant integrations will allow shipments of connected appliances to increase by 80 percent per annum on average until 2023. This growth will be helped by 52 percent drop in the cost of connected appliances to $280 between 2018 and 2023.
