Telstra CEO says ChatGPT style technology could be powerful in customer service

Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona is a huge show that is primarily dedicated to B2B or Business to Business conversations, networking and transactions. This is where big telcos meet their network suppliers and see what new innovations can be brought to customers.

When I caught up with Telstra’s new CEO Vicki Brady in Barcelona, the last thing I expected to be discussing was AI software ChatGPT but when I asked her what were the hot topics here at MWC – she was quick to include it, telling EFTM “everyone’s talking about chatGPT, you can’t look anywhere without it being talked about”

And I for one find that fascinating. We’re now at a point where harnessing the power of connectivity means we can get this level of immediacy and real-life like “conversations” with a computer.

Turns out, Vicki Brady is excited about what AI technology could offer their business – saying “I’m super excited about things like ChatGPT, this whole generative AI area. I think about one, how customers interact with us in a digital environment, but even for our teams that are in stores or in our contact centres that are interacting with customers, there’s a lot of knowledge to get across and being able to apply something like ChatGPT in that environment to help our frontline teams really deliver for customers. I’m super excited by that”

Interestingly, Brady doesn’t see AI like this as being a way to further sharpen the pencil on staffing costs and resources, instead it’s about bringing tools to their stuff – telling EFTM “It’s not about replacing people, it’s about supercharging them. So taking away some of that stuff that’s clunky and time consuming, actually, it puts it at their fingertips and they can spend the time interacting with our customers.”

It seems clear this will be a topic at the Telstra executive table for some time with Brady saying “so that’s the bit I’m so focused on, how do we really leverage those amazing teams we’ve got right across Telstra? And that’s where something like ChatGPT could be a real game changer to help really, um, empower them further”