NTT Communications improves AI Technology for call centers

In the sector of customer support service, communication with the customer is most important, and many companies are diversifying the way to enable customers to reach them.

In addition to traditional correspondence method using voice by the telephone companies are wide spreading to personal computers, smart-phones and the use of SNS.

"NTT Communications introduced support service incorporating Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. This new service is called "COTOHA" and Customers can use it on "LINE" chat application.

"COTOHA's merit is that it is an IT system, this means that when a customer calls and makes an inquiry the AI will analyze what he said and understands its meaning, and AI will reply to him with the correct answer," said Yasuhiro Mitake of NTT Communications.

Another merit is that AI does not have a limit for working hours like human being, so it can work for 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year replacing the human operator to give correct answer to the customer.

When the AI cannot handle the customer's inquiry, it will connect the customer to the operator. In this way, it is working as connection bridge between the operator and the customer.

"AI enables to increase the effectiveness of call center, at the same time even if the company wants to increase working hours of call center there will be no extra cost to use AI system," said Yauhiro Mitake of NTT Communications.

"From customer's point of view, AI can answer questions that the customer may be reluctant to ask the human operator. Also, the customer will get correct answers whenever he calls in midnight or early morning," he added.

"For AI technology, understanding the language is the biggest challenge. The technology is still far from being perfect but its capability to understand is rising as it enhances the accuracy every day through communication with the customer," he continued.

"Now, we have to let AI learn through collecting answers from human knowledge, but in the future, AI will develop autonomously by self-learning and memorizing the existing texts, manuals, and websites automatically," Mitake added.

The progress of AI technology solves the challenge of the customer support service industry, and bring more benefits for social life.