Kuljesh Puri is the Senior Vice President and Basic 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 World Basic Supervisor for the Telecom and Industrial verticals, mandated with defining a development 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 Systems is a worldwide 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 information, Persistent delivers end-to-end options throughout industries, together with healthcare, monetary providers, communications, and know-how.
What are essentially the most transformative methods you see AI impacting name middle operations in telecom and media at this time?
Historically, contact facilities have been price facilities designed to deal with buyer queries. Through the years, from phone-based name facilities, consumer service has developed into multi-channel service facilities by means of chat, emails, and cell apps. Key improvements like seamless omnichannel experiences, AI-driven multilingual self-service, sentiment evaluation, and predictive churn administration are not non-obligatory—they’re important. On the identical time, Agentic AI is reworking contact facilities into consumer expertise facilities by absolutely 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 consumer wants slightly 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 consumer satisfaction and loyalty. By lowering prices and bettering service, AI is reworking name facilities from conventional price facilities into high-value, client-centric hubs that immediately impression income.
How are predictive analytics, automation, and NLP bettering real-time buyer interactions?
The combination of predictive analytics, automation, and Pure Language Processing (NLP) is revolutionizing how we have interaction with purchasers in actual time. Predictive analytics permits organizations to anticipate consumer conduct and supply proactive options. Automation quickens processes, guaranteeing fast responses to consumer queries whereas minimizing human error. However, NLP empowers chatbots and digital assistants to have interaction in additional pure, human-like conversations, bettering each the standard and pace of service. When mixed, these applied sciences create an surroundings the place consumer interactions are quicker and extra personalised—in the end enhancing the consumer 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 consumer expertise. It permits firms to combine interactions throughout varied channels—whether or not it’s a chatbot on an internet site, a dialog on social media, or a cellphone name to a contact middle. By consolidating information from these touchpoints, AI ensures the messaging is constant and tailor-made to every consumer. The true energy of AI lies in its skill to personalize these interactions, guaranteeing that purchasers obtain related, context-aware help throughout channels. This creates a frictionless expertise, the place purchasers can transfer from one touchpoint to a different with out shedding continuity.
With in depth expertise working with telecom and media firms, we now have helped organizations leverage AI to streamline buyer journeys, enhance workflows, and supply a unified expertise. This permits purchasers to create a extra seamless, personalised service that enhances satisfaction and drives lasting loyalty.
What are the commonest ache factors organizations face when deploying AI into their name facilities?
One of many largest 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 may be complicated and dear. Moreover, AI fashions require high-quality, well-organized information, which legacy methods typically wrestle to supply. Making certain a clean transition with out disrupting the shopper expertise is one other vital hurdle. Privateness and safety considerations relating to information utilization additionally have to be addressed comprehensively.
Organizations want an skilled companion to navigate these challenges—one with a deep understanding of each AI and industry-specific wants. We’ve helped many telecom and media firms 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 leading U.S. telecommunications technology provider to boost their contact middle operations. The consumer wished to research buyer interactions by means of their conversational AI platform to realize insights into buyer satisfaction and agent efficiency. We developed a GCP-backed information analytics layer that processed information 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 consumer monitor key metrics like caller sentiment and repair satisfaction, in the end bettering buyer expertise and operational effectivity.
By partnering with consultants who perceive each AI and the telecom {industry}, organizations can overcome frequent deployment challenges, modernize their contact facilities, and unlock worthwhile data-driven insights to boost buyer interactions and drive operational enhancements.
What are among the largest variations in how telecom vs. media firms are adopting AI for consumer service?
The telecommunications sector has lengthy been a pioneer in establishing large-scale contact facilities, pushed by the necessity to handle important providers similar to billing inquiries, new connections, and troubleshooting connectivity points. These capabilities 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 consumer help ticket volumes. Given the aggressive panorama, many telecom operators additionally use predictive analytics to anticipate consumer churn, enabling focused advertising and marketing campaigns and retention methods.
In distinction, media firms give attention to AI for various functions, similar to detecting account sharing, managing subscriptions, analyzing viewing patterns, curating content material, and enhancing consumer engagement by means of automated self-service choices.
At Persistent, we now have labored with each telecom and media firms to tailor AI options that meet their distinct challenges. For telecom, we give attention to bettering operational efficiencies and leveraging predictive analytics to drive proactive customer support. For media firms, we purpose to boost buyer engagement by means of AI-driven suggestions, content material personalization, and self-service automation.
In your expertise, what cultural or organizational shifts are vital to completely embrace AI in these sectors?
To completely embrace AI, telecom and media firms 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 isn’t just an IT initiative, it requires cross-department collaboration, significantly between IT, consumer service, and operations. Corporations should spend money on AI expertise and give attention to reskilling their current workforce to make sure they’ve the talents to handle and work alongside AI methods. Moreover, adopting agile methodologies will likely be essential to permitting organizations to shortly iterate and optimize their AI options. Sturdy management is important to drive these adjustments and make sure that AI initiatives align with general enterprise goals, significantly bettering consumer 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 area. This strategic acquisition builds on our current engineering capabilities within the Contact Heart and Unified Communications area, increasing our AI-driven enterprise transformation experience and reinforcing our give attention to operational excellence. Starfish Associates is understood for its cutting-edge Enterprise Communications automation platform, which serves among the world’s largest enterprises, together with many Fortune 500 firms. 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 consumer engagement, and enhance operational effectivity.
Information safety and privateness are high considerations for organizations in telecom—how is Persistent addressing these in AI-enabled customer support options?
Information safety and privateness are essential considerations, particularly within the telecom {industry}, the place consumer information is delicate and extremely regulated. At Persistent, we assist telecom firms navigate these challenges by implementing AI options that guarantee information safety at each step. We help our purchasers in attaining compliance with international laws similar to GDPR, CCPA, and different information safety legal guidelines, embedding privateness safeguards inside their AI-powered customer support operations.
We help purchasers in integrating strong security measures, together with encryption, anonymization, and entry controls, to safe information all through its lifecycle. Moreover, we guarantee transparency by serving to purchasers preserve full management over their information, 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 purchasers the arrogance to leverage AI applied sciences responsibly whereas sustaining buyer belief.
Lastly, what does success appear like to you on the subject of AI-powered consumer expertise for telecom gamers over the subsequent 5 years?
Over the subsequent 5 years, AI will redefine the function of contact facilities within the telecom {industry}. Success will likely be measured by the power of telecom firms to rework conventional name facilities into proactive consumer 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 consumer service duties to Agentic AI, telecom operators can enhance effectivity whereas permitting human brokers to give attention to extra complicated points. Predictive analytics will play a pivotal function in anticipating consumer wants, whereas omnichannel integration will guarantee a seamless expertise throughout all touchpoints.
At Persistent, we assist telecom and media firms 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 information to align with enterprise objectives. Wanting forward, our objective 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 good interview, readers who want to study extra ought to go to Persistent Systems.