Airtel, Nvidia to launch speech analytics solution for call centre operations

Telecom company Bharti Airtel has announced an artificial intelligence-based solution to improve the customer experience for all inbound calls to its contact centre. Built in collaboration with Nvidia, the speech analytics solution is expected to better serve call center agents and customers at a lower computing cost.

As per Airtel, its call center handles 100 million calls annually, providing support to over 360 million customers. The telecom company currently uses automated speech recognition algorithm on 84% of the calls coming to the contact centers, helping them identify areas where customers can be served better. The challenge, however, is that delivering these insights at a scale Airtel operates at is very expensive due to heavy compute requirements.

Airtel leveraged Nvidia’s conversational AI toolkit NvidiaNeMo and a multi-framework inference serving software Triton Inference Server to develop this specialised speech application. Airtel will combine its deep learning-based automatic speech recognition (ASR) models with Nvidia’s advanced software to accurately interpret language and make practical changes to its operations. This solution will deliver output at 30% of the typical computing cost. As per the company statement, the speech analytics solution runs on a lower carbon footprint and has lesser Green House Gas (GHG) emissions.

“AI-powered speech analytics is helping human agents improve customer service and satisfaction. With Nvidia AI software, Airtel is boosting call centre operations while growing efficiency and saving costs,” said Vishal Dhupar, managing director of South Asia at Nvidia.

“We are thrilled to be working with Nvidia to build cutting-edge solutions that allow us to serve our customers better. AI has the potential to revolutionise the way we do business, and we are confident that this shall help us push the boundaries of innovation in the industry,” said Adarsh Nair, chief executive officer of Airtel Digital.

Airtel is actively deploying new-age technology solutions across operations. For instance, Airtel’s music streaming platform uses machine learning to drive personalisation.