In the rapidly evolving landscape of Middle East business, Generative AI has emerged as a transformative powerhouse, reshaping the way organisations approach customer service. As customer expectations reach new heights, businesses are turning to generative AI (gen AI) to revolutionise their service dynamics.
This technology is not only meeting the demands for quick and efficient responses but is ushering in a paradigm shift in customer interactions. In fact, the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) CEO study, revealed that 75 per cent of CEOs surveyed believe the organisation with the most advanced generative AI will have a competitive advantage.
According to Strategy&, the GCC region could witness an annual economic impact of up to $23.5 billion by 2030 through the influence of gen AI. Today, business leaders navigating the AI landscape are actively seeking trusted partners who understand the unique needs of enterprises. These leaders require hands-on experience across industries, capable of scaling AI and delivering tangible business value.
Generative AI in Customer Service: Transformative Use Cases
When it comes to customer service, gen AI has proved particularly revolutionary. Evaluating complex inquiries, it generates natural and contextually appropriate responses, handling nuanced intent and sentiment. From conversational search to personalized recommendations, it enhances productivity, provides tailored solutions, and transforms customer experiences, marking a paradigm shift in service dynamics.
- Conversational Search
Generative AI enables customers to find answers quickly with natural responses generated from finely tuned language models based on company knowledge bases. Notably, it provides relevant information in the user’s language of choice, minimising translation service efforts.
- Agent Assistance – Search and Summarization
Customer support agents leverage generative AI to improve productivity, offering automatically generated responses in the users’ channel of choice. Auto-summarisation capabilities aid in creating summaries for easy reference, categorisation, and trend tracking.
- Build Assistance
Employees creating customer service tools and chatbots utilize generative AI for content creation, receiving generated responses and suggestions based on existing company and customer data.
- Call Center Operational and Data Optimization
Generative AI performs repetitive tasks within call centers, summarizing and analysing complaints, customer journeys, and more. This optimization allows agents to dedicate more time to customers, contributing to revenue generation.
- Personalized Recommendations
Generative AI considers a customer’s interaction history across platforms and support services, providing personalised information delivered in the customer’s preferred tone and format. Recently, IBM Consulting partnered with Al-Futtaim Group to enhance their Blue Rewards App using gen AI, infused in the user experience and offers a rich context to the loyalty program.Â
However, gen AI does come with its set of challenges including potential biases, ethical considerations, and security concerns. The good news is that companies can navigate these challenges and ensure responsible AI deployment by implementing robust training datasets that minimize biases; fostering transparent and ethical AI practices; prioritising cybersecurity measures and establishing comprehensive guidelines and ongoing monitoring mechanisms. In addition, collaborating with experts, investing in employee training, and leveraging technologies for bias detection is key to fostering trust and mitigate potential risks.
To help clients succeed with their generative AI implementation, IBM Consulting Advantage, an AI services platform was launched to support consultants in delivering consistency, repeatability, and speed for clients. It includes a portfolio of proprietary methods, assets and assistants that leverage technology from IBM and strategic partners. IBM Consulting also launched a Center of Excellence (CoE) for generative AI.
It stands alongside IBM Consulting’s existing global AI and automation practice, which includes 21,000 skilled data and AI consultants who have completed over 40,000 enterprise engagements and specialize in helping organizations across every industry adopt and scale AI to detect and mitigate risks and provide education and guidance.
In conclusion, gen AI tools significantly augment our ability to meet our customers’ changing needs. Humans will always be an essential part of delivering authentic and personal experiences, and AI supercharges our ability to do so. Customer service is an approachable place to start experimenting with AI and achieving its benefits.
