Action Week 2018: Can CSPs move AI from 'sci-fi' to deployment? - TM Forum Inform

When customer experience or operations teams within communications service providers (CSPs) want to adopt artificial intelligence (AI), they first must find a way to'sell' it to finance executives, and perhaps more importantly to the employees who could be displaced by the technology. Neither is an easy job, according to a panel of experts gathered here at Action Week in Dallas. Jerrid Hamann, Digital Customer Experience Strategist, Verizon, who has worked for the company for about a year, spoke about his experience at another telco where he was trying to implement AI for customer service. "I was trying to convince finance that we needed the new tools to improve customer experience," he said. "Either they were very skeptical and suspicious saying it sounds like science fiction and is not something we want to invest our money in…or at the other end of the spectrum they say, 'Oh wow, we can save that much money? Let's lay off the entire contact center'. When you get that kind of reaction you have to dial it back and explain that it's something that has to be phased in."