LIVE FROM MWL UNWRAPPED: Veon Group and Microsoft executives agreed the short-term revenue opportunity for operators deploying AI centres on boosting customer engagement, addressing a key question around use of the technology.

In keynotes opening day two of Mobile World Live’s Unwrapped event, Veon CIO Inanc Cakiroglu (pictured) and Montgomery Hong, telco business strategy lead with Microsoft, explained improvements to customer engagement including greater personalisation offered the clearest path for operators seeking to make money from AI, for now at least.

Cakiroglu said Veon’s current goal is on “enriching customers lives with a digital offering”. As such, he argued the term should be augmented rather than artificial intelligence, because Veon is using it to improve current services spanning fintech, healthcare and education.

“AI is the most powerful tool we have ever had,” he said, referring to the technology as the “most disruptive force in human history”, one with the potential to influence entire economies.

Despite the stature Cakiroglu assigns to AI, he noted the revenue opportunities it presents are largely not new. Instead, the technology offers the potential to improve aspects of operators’ current procedures, with customer service an obvious target along with network management and optimisation.

Cakiroglu noted language models are opening the door for more personalised customer care, enabling companies to employ artificial agents which mimic human behaviour.

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Hong (pictured, below) concurred, explaining consumer AI is a big influence on the iterations operators are employing and tipping customer experience as a key driver of top-line revenue growth.

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The Microsoft executive quantified the potential for improvement, stating an unnamed operator in Asia-Pacific cut daily customer care calls from 8,000 to 1,000 by using AI to enable a self-service set-up.

Hong said AI would ultimately also open opportunities for cross- and up-selling of services to customers, but only if operators are more aggressive in terms of providing self-service options.

“It’s still early days, we’re not at that peak”, Hong said, referring to the crossover between consumer and corporate AI, though he added operators are now at a tipping point of what their customers expect.

Hong noted the tenet of engaged customers offering more revenue opportunity is one element not changed by AI, explaining if the user spends more time on your service the greater the opportunity to sell.

The Microsoft executive does not expect a digital-style AI divide to emerge, arguing the technology should be viewed instead as the new user interface (UI) rather than a whole new field, meaning there is less chance of people missing out because it will become ubiquitous.

Operators will also have a role to play, Hong said, explaining their ability to fully harness the potential of consumer AI would help to flatten any divide.