A group of South Korean researchers has decided to utilize AI technology to support customer counseling services. Through this, it will provide a significant boost to the performance and efficiency of counselors in various industries, while improving the overall quality of customer counseling services, ultimately making it easier to meet the customers’ needs and expectations while opening up the possibility for realizing new values.
Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) announced that at the end of August, they reached an agreement to cooperate with F&U Credit Information Co., Ltd., a company that specializes in customer management & consultation, to develop a new AI-based technology to support next-generation counseling.
ETRI explained that their partnership with F&U was crucial considering the rapid growth of the AICC (Artificial Intelligence Contact Center) market in Korea, and both parties felt the need to preoccupy the market. They’ve also stated that they are expecting a positive synergy by combining ETRI’s state-of-the-art AI technology and F&U Credit Information’s extensive know-how in the field of finances.
Counseling support AI technology focuses largely on four key areas: 1) Counseling Summary, 2) Counseling Evaluation, 3) Counseling Classification, and 4) Knowledge Provision based on Retrieval-Augmented Generation. Through this partnership, both organizations shall cooperate to develop an AI-based counseling support technology that can enable innovation in the current counseling environment.
For example, when a customer wants to receive finance-related counseling service, the counseling support AI technology, based on the 4 key areas mentioned above, is expected to enable a more effective and systematic counseling session. As such, the scope of customer service and counseling can be expanded into various fields other than finance.
Moreover, the research team explained that counselors will be able to explain specific cases to their customers in a shorter time with more accuracy while better suiting the customer’s purpose of consultation.
F&U Credit Information Co., Ltd. shall build and provide a database necessary for learning and evaluation based on their extensive counseling know-how in the field of finances, while ETRI will develop an advanced counseling support technology based on the provided database using their state-of-the-art AI technology.
This year, both parties are planning to conduct a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) for technology verification, then they will cooperate with each other with the common aim of internalizing and commercializing the technology in the future through technology transfer.
ETRI currently owns an AI source technology that can solve complex problems entered by users, explaining the basis of their judgment and finding out whether the information is true or not.
The ETRI research team plan to develop a next-gen counseling support technology to improve overall work efficiency and strengthen the capabilities of professional counselors through a series of core AI technologies they have accumulated over the years.
Kwon Oh-Wook, the Director of ETRI’s Language Intelligence Research Section, stated in an interview, “Through this partnership with F&U Credit Information, our AI source technology will be further advanced to efficiently help professional counselors at the field with their work, improving their overall efficiency and performance.”
Han Ki-Wook, the Head of the Management Support Division of F&U Credit Information Co., Ltd., also added, “It is our goal to provide BPO services with higher quality standards through AICC. We hope to provide our customers with a more efficient, helpful series of consultation services by creating a harmonious chain between our counselors and AICC.”
The research team expects that this cooperation between the two parties will contribute to the establishment of a super-intelligent information society that allows the co-existence between AI and human while minimizing the side effects of AI.
According to Allied Market Research, a global research firm, the market size of the Korean AICC industry was around $42.14 million in 2020, and is expected to reach a whopping $350 million (CAGR of 23.7%) by the year 2030.
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This partnership was based on the results of the ‘Development of Explainable Expert Decision Support AI Technology,’ which is a part of the ‘People-Centered AI Core Source Technology Development Project,’ supported by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Institute for Information & Communication Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP).
About Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI)
ETRI is a non-profit government-funded research institute. Since its foundation in 1976, ETRI, a global ICT research institute, has been making its immense effort to provide Korea a remarkable growth in the field of ICT industry. ETRI delivers Korea as one of the top ICT nations in the World, by unceasingly developing world’s first and best technologies.
