Can AI Make Cable Smarter? Light Reading

We've all heard about them and many of us have made them: complaints about cable customer service. Stung by years of criticism for poor service, the cable industry now is shifting its focus to a more modern definition, recasting the notion of customer care in the form of customer experience. The key to enabling this new model is through artificial intelligence (AI), according to a new Heavy Reading report, "I Cable Robot: Can Artificial Intelligence Make Cable Smarter?. The report discusses cable's growing use of AI to improve service, including network management, daily operations and customer experience. Rather than just focusing on better service appointment times and customer service calls, U.S. cable providers are evolving to automated operations that enable technicians to proactively manage network functions and give customers greater ability to self-manage their services, the report says. Cable operations are awash in data that serves as the oil to lubricate the machine. "I think AI is going to change the customer experience profoundly," said Dave Watson, president and CEO, Comcast, during the 2017 SCTE Cable-Tec Expo, where AI was a primary topic. Comcast is culling through its big data to enhance network performance, customer care operations and its X1 platform that increasingly is relying on AI-supported voice commands. A comprehensive AI system will collect and aggregate data, detect patterns and responses, anticipate trends and behaviors and automatically take appropriate actions. "AI is an overarching term that encapsulates all attempts to instrumentalize technology with the ability to think and act independently, much like humans do.