Kuljesh Puri is the Senior Vice President and Normal Supervisor of Communications, Media & Expertise at Persistent Techniques. He brings over 26 years of expertise throughout the software program, telecom, and semiconductor industries, together with in depth worldwide publicity and a ardour for transformation.
Earlier than becoming a member of Persistent, Kuljesh headed the Telecom Product Engineering portfolio at Tech Mahindra. Earlier than that he labored at Harman Worldwide, a Samsung firm, as Vice President and International Normal Supervisor for the Telecom and Industrial verticals, mandated with defining a progress trajectory for the enterprise. Earlier, Kuljesh spent 15 years in senior enterprise and engineering roles at Aricent in each the B2B and B2C companies.
Persistent Techniques is a world digital engineering and enterprise modernization firm that companions with companies to drive innovation and speed up digital transformation. With deep experience in software program, cloud, and knowledge, Persistent delivers end-to-end options throughout industries, together with healthcare, monetary companies, communications, and know-how.
What are probably the most transformative methods you see AI impacting name middle operations in telecom and media in the present day?
Historically, contact facilities have been price facilities designed to deal with buyer queries. Through the years, from phone-based name facilities, shopper service has developed into multi-channel service facilities by chat, emails, and cell apps. Key improvements like seamless omnichannel experiences, AI-driven multilingual self-service, sentiment evaluation, and predictive churn administration are now not non-obligatory—they’re important. On the similar time, Agentic AI is remodeling contact facilities into shopper expertise facilities by totally dealing with end-to-end duties like billing corrections, plan upgrades, or technical troubleshooting with out human intervention, going past scripted chatbots. General, AI is enabling companies to anticipate shopper wants relatively than merely reacting to them by switching from reactive help to predictive, personalised and self-improving. The result’s enhanced operational effectivity and the power to drive deeper shopper satisfaction and loyalty. By decreasing prices and enhancing service, AI is remodeling name facilities from conventional price facilities into high-value, client-centric hubs that straight impression income.
How are predictive analytics, automation, and NLP enhancing real-time buyer interactions?
The mixing of predictive analytics, automation, and Pure Language Processing (NLP) is revolutionizing how we interact with shoppers in actual time. Predictive analytics permits organizations to anticipate shopper habits and provide proactive options. Automation hastens processes, guaranteeing fast responses to shopper queries whereas minimizing human error. Then again, NLP empowers chatbots and digital assistants to have interaction in additional pure, human-like conversations, enhancing each the standard and velocity of service. When mixed, these applied sciences create an atmosphere the place shopper interactions are quicker and extra personalised—finally enhancing the shopper expertise and fostering loyalty.
How does AI contribute to making a extra seamless, omnichannel buyer expertise?
AI is the important thing part of a seamless, omnichannel shopper expertise. It permits corporations to combine interactions throughout numerous channels—whether or not it’s a chatbot on a web site, a dialog on social media, or a cellphone name to a contact middle. By consolidating knowledge from these touchpoints, AI ensures the messaging is constant and tailor-made to every shopper. The actual energy of AI lies in its means to personalize these interactions, guaranteeing that shoppers obtain related, context-aware help throughout channels. This creates a frictionless expertise, the place shoppers can transfer from one touchpoint to a different with out shedding continuity.
With in depth expertise working with telecom and media corporations, we’ve got helped organizations leverage AI to streamline buyer journeys, enhance workflows, and supply a unified expertise. This allows shoppers to create a extra seamless, personalised service that enhances satisfaction and drives lasting loyalty.
What are the most typical ache factors organizations face when deploying AI into their name facilities?
One of many greatest challenges organizations face when deploying AI of their name facilities is integrating it with legacy methods. Many conventional contact facilities, significantly these counting on on-premises options, lack the infrastructure to help AI’s superior capabilities. Migrating to the cloud is important to unlocking AI’s full potential, however this transition could be advanced and dear. Moreover, AI fashions require high-quality, well-organized knowledge, which legacy methods usually wrestle to supply. Guaranteeing a easy transition with out disrupting the shopper expertise is one other important hurdle. Privateness and safety considerations relating to knowledge utilization additionally should be addressed comprehensively.
Organizations want an skilled accomplice to navigate these challenges—one with a deep understanding of each AI and industry-specific wants. We’ve helped many telecom and media corporations modernize their contact facilities, overcoming these ache factors and guaranteeing seamless transitions that enhance operational effectivity and improve the general buyer expertise.
For instance, Persistent collaborated with a number one U.S. telecommunications know-how supplier to reinforce their contact middle operations. The shopper needed to investigate buyer interactions by their conversational AI platform to achieve insights into buyer satisfaction and agent efficiency. We developed a GCP-backed knowledge analytics layer that processed knowledge from over 30 real-time streaming pipelines, dealing with over one billion messages every day. This answer supplied close to real-time insights, serving to the shopper monitor key metrics like caller sentiment and repair satisfaction, finally enhancing buyer expertise and operational effectivity.
By partnering with specialists who perceive each AI and the telecom {industry}, organizations can overcome frequent deployment challenges, modernize their contact facilities, and unlock useful data-driven insights to reinforce buyer interactions and drive operational enhancements.
What are a few of the greatest variations in how telecom vs. media corporations are adopting AI for shopper service?
The telecommunications sector has lengthy been a pioneer in establishing large-scale contact facilities, pushed by the necessity to handle important companies reminiscent of billing inquiries, new connections, and troubleshooting connectivity points. These features stay central to the {industry}, and AI is more and more leveraged to optimize operations in these areas, as they characterize a good portion of shopper help ticket volumes. Given the aggressive panorama, many telecom operators additionally use predictive analytics to anticipate shopper churn, enabling focused advertising and marketing campaigns and retention methods.
In distinction, media corporations concentrate on AI for various functions, reminiscent of detecting account sharing, managing subscriptions, analyzing viewing patterns, curating content material, and enhancing shopper engagement by automated self-service choices.
At Persistent, we’ve got labored with each telecom and media corporations to tailor AI options that meet their distinct challenges. For telecom, we concentrate on enhancing operational efficiencies and leveraging predictive analytics to drive proactive customer support. For media corporations, we goal to reinforce buyer engagement by AI-driven suggestions, content material personalization, and self-service automation.
In your expertise, what cultural or organizational shifts are needed to completely embrace AI in these sectors?
To totally embrace AI, telecom and media corporations should bear a cultural shift towards turning into data-driven organizations. This requires fostering a mindset of steady studying and innovation throughout all departments. AI adoption is not only an IT initiative, it requires cross-department collaboration, significantly between IT, shopper service, and operations. Corporations should spend money on AI expertise and concentrate on reskilling their present workforce to make sure they’ve the abilities to handle and work alongside AI methods. Moreover, adopting agile methodologies might be essential to permitting organizations to rapidly iterate and optimize their AI options. Sturdy management is critical to drive these modifications and make sure that AI initiatives align with general enterprise aims, significantly enhancing shopper expertise whereas driving enterprise outcomes.
How does the acquisition of Starfish Associates strengthen Persistent’s AI-powered contact middle and unified communications capabilities?
The acquisition of Starfish Associates considerably enhances Persistent’s place within the AI-powered contact middle and unified communications house. This strategic acquisition builds on our present engineering capabilities within the Contact Heart and Unified Communications area, increasing our AI-driven enterprise transformation experience and reinforcing our concentrate on operational excellence. Starfish Associates is thought for its cutting-edge Enterprise Communications automation platform, which serves a few of the world’s largest enterprises, together with many Fortune 500 corporations. When mixed with Persistent’s strengths in AI-driven automation, this acquisition permits us to supply much more highly effective, built-in options that streamline workflows, improve shopper engagement, and enhance operational effectivity.
Knowledge safety and privateness are high considerations for organizations in telecom—how is Persistent addressing these in AI-enabled customer support options?
Knowledge safety and privateness are crucial considerations, particularly within the telecom {industry}, the place shopper knowledge is delicate and extremely regulated. At Persistent, we assist telecom corporations navigate these challenges by implementing AI options that guarantee knowledge safety at each step. We help our shoppers in attaining compliance with world laws reminiscent of GDPR, CCPA, and different knowledge safety legal guidelines, embedding privateness safeguards inside their AI-powered customer support operations.
We help shoppers in integrating sturdy security measures, together with encryption, anonymization, and entry controls, to safe knowledge all through its lifecycle. Moreover, we guarantee transparency by serving to shoppers preserve full management over their knowledge, providing clear visibility into the way it’s used and managed. By offering ongoing AI mannequin audits and threat assessments, we make sure that our options stay safe, compliant, and adaptable as laws evolve, giving our shoppers the boldness to leverage AI applied sciences responsibly whereas sustaining buyer belief.
Lastly, what does success seem like to you in relation to AI-powered shopper expertise for telecom gamers over the following 5 years?
Over the following 5 years, AI will redefine the position of contact facilities within the telecom {industry}. Success might be measured by the power of telecom corporations to remodel conventional name facilities into proactive shopper engagement hubs. Agentic AI will rework telecom buyer expertise by proactively resolving points, providing personalised help, and enabling autonomous service actions throughout channels. Studying from interactions to adapt in actual time ensures quicker, smarter, and extra human-like engagement, which is vital for buyer expertise transformation.
By offloading 50%-60% of routine shopper service duties to Agentic AI, telecom operators can enhance effectivity whereas permitting human brokers to concentrate on extra advanced points. Predictive analytics will play a pivotal position in anticipating shopper wants, whereas omnichannel integration will guarantee a seamless expertise throughout all touchpoints.
At Persistent, we assist telecom and media corporations implement Agentic AI options that drive innovation and enhance buyer interactions. Our experience in AI and telecom permits the creation of smarter, extra agile contact facilities, leveraging knowledge to align with enterprise targets. Wanting forward, our purpose is to assist these organizations securely infuse AI throughout their operations, deepening their reference to clients and positioning them for achievement in a quickly evolving digital panorama.
Thanks for the nice interview, readers who want to be taught extra ought to go to Persistent Techniques.