ChatGPT has evolved exponentially, demonstrating unprecedented growth and becoming a pivotal tool across diverse applications. Ozonetel, a pioneer in cloud communication, has embarked on a groundbreaking journey, leveraging ChatGPT to revolutionize contact centers. In an exclusive interaction with Prashanth Kancherla, Chief Product Officer, Ozonetel, Rajeev Ranjan, Editor, Digital Terminal delved into the next-gen technology and its benefits for contact center. Read this exclusive interview for more information.
Rajeev: How does Ozonetel plan to leverage ChatGPT to enhance contact center efficiency?
Prashanth: Our focus with ChatGPT—as with all our innovation— is not only to improve contact center efficiency, but also help businesses transform customer experiences (CX) at scale and drive growth. With this goal in mind, our ChatGPT solutions focus on four aspects: Automated Quality Audits for Contact Centers, Agent-facing Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Neural Search, and Voice and Chatbots.
First, ChatGPT-enabled Quality Audits help businesses accelerate insight gathering and agent training. Second, Agent-facing Conversational Intelligence provide agents instant, smart suggestions that expedite query resolutions and improve the quality of customer interactions. Third, ChatGPT-powered Voice and Chatbots make interactions more natural and human-like, allowing automation of repetitive conversations without sacrificing engagement quality. Finally, Intelligent Neural Search empowers users to conduct natural language searches, reducing information retrieval time and lowering agent workloads.
We believe these solutions improve efficiency while making it effortless for businesses to deliver better CX and drive growth. Our AI-powered unified CX platform already helps them manage multiple channels with ease. With ChatGPT in the picture, more pieces fall into place, such as higher agent self-sufficiency, reduced need for training, and faster query resolution. Most importantly, businesses can keep pace with customer sentiment in real-time and pivot faster to meet their needs.
Rajeev: How will AI-powered contact centers help businesses improve client satisfaction and personalize customer experiences?
Prashanth: Incorporating ChatGPT and customer journey orchestration into contact centers can transform how customers interact with brands. Imagine a scenario where customer experience leaders get a steady stream of insights from their customer interactions. They can keep a finger on the pulse of customer sentiment and engagement in ways that were not possible before. They can act upon every feedback or issue raised by a customer. They can easily distinguish which conversations delighted or disappointed their customers and use these insights to transform agent training and systemically improve customer experience.
Secondly, let’s consider how customers struggle to contact brands when they run into an issue today. With ChatGPT enabled voice bots, chatbots, and neural knowledge base systems, they could expect instant responses and better self-service. Wait times in call and chat queues would shrink because agent workloads have reduced. Moreover, when customers speak to agents, AI would help them from the background. By drawing on customer history and insights from similar interactions, their respnses would be more personalized and accurate.
Finally, with AI, we can look beyond a siloed contact center approach. Whether a customer interacts through phone, chat, or any other channel, they will receive consistent and high-quality service. Organizations will be able better serve, understand, and win over customers by personalizing interactions at scale across the entire customer journey.
Rajeev: What sets Ozonetel apart as a pioneer in the CCaaS industry, and what is the scale of your operations today?
Prashanth: Firstly, what really sets us apart is our early start and continuous innovation. We began offering our CCaaS solutions way back in 2010, when this concept was still new in many parts of the world, including India. Since then, we've stayed ahead of the curve, adapting to new technologies like omnichannel integrations and AI to keep our services efficient and effective. AI has been a big part of our story before the advent of ChatGPT. For example, we use AI to analyze customer interactions, which helps us and our clients understand customer needs better. This year, integrating ChatGPT has added another layer of improvement.
As for the scale of our operations, we've grown quite a bit since we started. Today, we're proud to say that over 200,000 call center agents use our platform across 2,500 enterprises, managing around 10 million calls daily. Our reach extends beyond India, with significant presence in the U.S., South East Asia, and the Middle East.
Rajeev: What are the key challenges associated with implementing AI in contact centers?
Prashanth: There are some precautions businesses must consider while implementing AI within their contact center. For instance, current AI models can sometimes provide inaccurate responses, and there are genuine concerns around data privacy and security. We believe the way forward is a human-AI partnership. Agents are still irreplaceable, especially in situations that require empathy, complex problem-solving, or nuanced judgment.
In India, the regulatory landscape may also add another set of challenges. With large foundation models primarily hosted in the U.S., there are restrictions on data transfer that impact how we can leverage these AI models. At Ozonetel, we are working on building foundational models within India to ensure data compliance and security while innovating in AI.
Rajeev: Please tell about your growth in India in recent years. How do you plan to accelerate your growth in 2024?
Prashanth: In recent years, our growth in India has been significant, and we're planning to continue this momentum. For 2024, our strategy includes raising another round of funding by the end of the year to support our expansion plans. We're looking at broadening our reach, especially in the U.S. market where we already have established partnerships. Alongside this, we're also focusing on expanding our team to support our growing operations.
