Four Highlights from Our GPT Innovation Day

With the unveiling of ChatGPT, the power of AI can no longer be ignored.

Some of the biggest enterprises, including Wal-Mart and Bloomberg are scrambling to leverage this new technology that has the potential to disrupt entire industries and change the competitive landscape for generations to come.

For contact centers, this is an exciting time of opportunity.

This week, we hosted an intimate discussion with Observe.AI customers at our offices about GPT and Generative AI and its applications in the contact center world.

We will be sharing insights from the conversations over the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

For now, we’re excited to share this high-level summary with four main highlights:

Interested in learning more about Generative AI for Contact Centers? Join us for our upcoming webinar.

Highlight #1: Insightful and Inspiring Customer Conversations

We love working with our customers every day to help them improve contact center performance, but bringing such an experienced and diverse group of leaders together in person was special.

With backgrounds across multiple industries and a variety of roles from Ops to CX to digital transformation, the discussion was incredibly insightful.

Here are some key themes from the day:

GPT Cannot Be Ignored

Though the group was diverse, they all had this one thing in common: an eagerness to learn about this game-changing technology. Attendees took the time to travel from around the country because the potential opportunity Generative AI brings to contact centers is palpable. But there was also an acknowledgement that there is much to be learned about the field and how it will impact day to day business operations.

ChatGPT Is Helpful, But Not Perfect

During our interactive sessions, attendees explored the potential of ChatGPT from Open.AI. By using simple prompts we provided, such as “Act as an agent conversing with a customer calling to complain about a billing error. Generate a script for the agent.” they could experience Generative AI firsthand.

However, the sentiment from the room was clear: While the generated content was impressive, it wasn’t perfect. The best agents are adept at creating personalized experiences for customers in order to build trust, rapport, and brand affinity.

These canned responses built from generic language models aren’t useful enough for complex and complicated conversations many agents are faced with everyday.

‍Calibration and Context Is Critical

If Generative AI built on models using generic information won’t cut it, then what will? It was clear attendees wanted the ability for more calibration and specificity. For Generative AI to be actually useful, it must be generated using models specific to the industry, business, and customer—and it must have the ability to calibrate responses to improve accuracy and compliance.

The Opportunities Are Endless

During breakouts, the groups discussed the potential use cases for Generative AI. Often the discussion came back to how Generative AI can help improve efficiency and productivity within the contact center for agents, supervisors, and trainers, before, during, and after interactions. But the discussion also included use cases for teams outside of the contact center, like product and marketing.

In fact, according to our most recent report, customer conversation insights are critical to making strategic decisions across the business. Our survey of 300+ respondents showed 99% of contact center leaders leverage customer conversations for insights—and use those insights across multiple teams, including marketing, product, supply chain, and to report at the executive level.

Highlight #2: Santa Clara University Distinguished Professor Kirthi Kalyanam

Kirthi Kalyanam, the L.J. Skaggs Distinguished Professor and Executive Director of the Retail Management Institute at Santa Clara University, joined us for a fireside chat with Observe.AI CEO Swapnil Jain.

Professor Kalyanam has extensive experience in retailing, technology, and multi-channel marketing, and he shared his thoughts on how Generative AI will impact the contact center.

We share three key quotes from Professor Kalyanam here:

“When content creation is this easy, it’s going to be apparent when it’s not real.”

Because Generative AI makes producing content so easy, quick, and efficient, AI-generated content is going to proliferate. The result: Customers are going to gravitate towards companies that provide an authentic touch. “Companies need to ask: What is my strategy to have a continuous emotional connection with the customer,” said Professor Kalyanam.

“Technology commoditizes, but it also differentiates.”

The underlying Generative AI technology is indeed exciting, but at the end of the day, how companies and business leaders use it is what matters. According to Professor Kalyanam, companies need to figure out where they want to use that technology to become more efficient, and where they can use the technology to differentiate what they offer. “The larger question is, businesses are going to have to double down in figuring out what their point of differentiation is,” he said. “That’s the first box you need to check.”

“Build an entry point and start looking at a high value case study.”

Unlike some large enterprise investments that may require multiple layers of scrutiny, Professor Kalyanam encouraged the attendees to move fast, especially in areas where you can test the technology and reverse it if the experiment doesn’t pan out. “This technology is highly trialable,” he said. “You don’t have to make a big focused investment. It’s a race to see who’s going to figure something out first.”
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Highlight #3: Observe.AI CEO Swapnil Jain Shared His Perspective on Generative AI for Contact Centers

This is an inflection point on par with cloud and mobile. That is how big it is, says Observe.AI CEO Swapnil Jain.

“Every board, every investor, every CEO is questioning what are the implications of this on my business,” said Jain. “Am I going to get disrupted? Do I have an opportunity to disrupt?”

The world is going to be different.

“We’ve seen these transitions before and companies that cannot keep up struggle,” said Jain, giving the example of Salesforce, now the largest SaaS company in the world thanks to cloud technology, vs. Seibel, which used to be the largest software company but could not make the transition.

“Observe wants to help you with this transition,” he said. “We want to empower you and help you understand what this technology is, how it could apply to your enterprise, and how it will change contact centers moving forward.”

Interested in hearing more? Join Swapnil and Observe’s Chief Scientist Jithendra Vepa for a webinar on Generative AI.

Highlight #4: A Sneak Peek at Generative AI with Observe.AI

Like many other companies, Observe.AI is continuing to innovate fast with Generative AI in order to bring more value to contact centers everywhere. In fact, Observe.AI has been building proprietary large language models specifically for contact center use cases since our inception in 2017.

Now, we’re using them to help companies like Accolade, Public Storage, Bill.com and Cox Automotive understand and analyze customer conversations for more insights and better visibility into what’s actually happening on the front line.

We were excited to showcase some Generative AI capabilities in a live demo in front of our customers. We’ll be sharing more broadly with all of you shortly. Stay tuned for more!