BELLSYSTEM24 Inc. (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; President and CEO: Shunsuke Noda), a nationwide leading provider of contact center outsourcing services, has completed a set of demonstration tests on contact center operations in cooperation with various companies utilizing generative AI provided by Google Cloud and Microsoft Japan Co., Ltd. for the transformation of its business field. Based on the results of its tests, we are moving further towards the goal of formulating an "almost automated" call center operation by introducing a hybrid collaboration of "human" and "AI". The goal of this endeavor is to realize a new model using generative AI to improve business efficiency, which would help solve social issues expecting future needs in the implementation of outsourcing business in response to real problems such as a declining workforce.
For this demonstration experiment, we used generative AI such as "GPT-3.5" and "GPT-4" on "Azure OpenAI Service" provided by Microsoft Japan, and "PaLM2" on "Vertex AI" provided by Google Cloud. We aim to realize contact center automation by building a circular scheme that utilizes the dialog data summarization function in the contact center, which proved to be particularly accurate in the demonstration experiment and incorporates the dialog data into the AI in a formatted form.
It has been estimated* that Japan will have a labor shortage of approximately 3.5 million workers by 2030, and companies are expected to face the challenge of securing more workers in the future, which will lead to an expansion of outsourcing needs by allocating human resources to core operations and reducing working hours through reforms in work styles. In addition, recent technological advancements, such as the emergence of generative AI, are expected to rapidly advance the hybridization and automation of contact centers. In light of this background, we conducted a demonstration test of generative AI in the operation of the contact center.
Source of * : Recruit Works Institute, "Vision of Works 179 Labor Shortage Social vol.3 Re-skilling Developed Countries and Future Estimation of the Current Local Labor Market 2030."
To date, we have established the Innovation & Communication Science Laboratories (ICSL) with Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc. to advance the sophistication of contact centers through the use of AI.ICSL has developed its own AI search engine "Mopas®" to reduce e-mail operations and "Knowledge Creator®" to enable on-site knowledge maintenance of FAQs, etc. ICSL has been jointly researching and developing an AI engine for the construction of next-generation contact centers by combining its long-standing operational expertise in the field of contact centers with new technological domains such as AI, natural language processing, analytics, and big data. In addition, we have been promoting the use of AI in contact centers, including the use of ekubot®, an AI chatterbot and AI voice bot for contact center automation, in our business operations. We have established a cross-functional project in the area of generative AI and are conducting various studies to develop new services that ensure efficiency and security, with the goal of contact center automation using generative AI to create a new contact center business.
In this verification experiment, the strengths of generative AI, such as dialog data summarization, FAQ creation, and customer feedback mining, were used to verify the system based on dialog data from actual, anonymized calls. As a result, we were able to verify the effectiveness of the system in reducing operator workload by summarizing dialogue data with a high degree of accuracy and significantly reducing the time required to process each call.
For future commercialization, based on this knowledge and expertise, we will aggregate dialog data ranging from general inquiries to industry-specific inquiries and accumulate basic knowledge while tuning the AI. On the basis of this knowledge, we will promote the automation of contact centers through the development of AI that is specialized for each industry. Furthermore, we aim to develop "AI application development", which will be responsible for the customized AI response for each company, and an "AI knowledge base", which will enable the AI to learn continuously With the support of Microsoft Japan and Google Cloud, we plan to advance this initiative through a certain process of requirements gathering and business design, selection of appropriate technologies, and development and operation of prototypes.
In the course of such commercialization, in order to accumulate know-how and expertise in "data management" for data collection and utilization, and to strive for business beyond, we will promote the development of human resources with both management skills in business operation and IT skills to handle data appropriately.
As a company that plays a role in social infrastructure, we will continue to pursue solutions to social issues through services that utilize AI and other new innovations, while maintaining a proper understanding of technology, security, ethics, and respect for personal information.
Azure OpenAI Service is one of Microsoft Japan's well-known generative AI services for enterprise use, based on technology developed by Open AI, Inc. It enables the use of large-scale language models such as GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 on Microsoft Azure, Microsoft's cloud platform, in compliance with its security and compliance standards, and provides data encryption, access control, audit logs, and other security features.
Powered by Google Cloud's Vertex AI machine-learning platform, PaLM2 is a sophisticated large-scale language model with advanced multilingual, inference, and coding capabilities that delivers high performance in natural language processing tasks, along with the ability to understand the meaning and context of language. In addition, its fast inference processing enables efficient analysis of large amounts of data, leading to superior performance in text data analysis and semantic understanding.
Corporate URL: https://www.bell24.co.jp/en/
In 1982, BELLSYSTEM24 launched its first full-fledged call center service in Japan. Since then, we have developed a wide range of outsourcing businesses centered on contact centers that serve as points of contact between businesses and consumers, creating an industry-standard model. Based on the operational expertise we have cultivated by combining the strengths of "people" and "technology," we will realize our "supporting the enrichment of society through innovation and communication," which is our mission, by developing and providing various solutions.
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