Altice USA, through its Optimum brand, and Google Cloud today announced a multi-year agreement to use generative artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the service provider’s customer service.
The press release says that Google Cloud’s tools are already handling more than half of customer inquiries. Going forward, the service provider will use Google’s Customer Engagement Suite, Vertex AI platform, and Gemini models to enhance its AVA virtual AI agent.
Optimum defines its goals specifically as providing helpful and personalized support; making interactions more understanding; creating seamless experiences across all channels and driving insights to enhance service quality and gain deeper customer understanding.
“By leveraging Google Cloud’s AI technology, we are not only improving efficiency but also fostering deeper, more meaningful customer relationships, while simplifying how our teammates serve our customers,” Keith Bowen, Optimum President of Business Services, News & Advertising, said in the announcement of the Google partnership.
As the name implies, generative AI outputs content, which is based on learning from large data sets. The goal of the partnership is to create and improve relationships with customers across web interactions, mobile apps, call centers, and in-person kiosks.
The expanded use of AI will be accompanied by upgraded infrastructure. In February, Nate Edwards, Optimum’s executive vice president for network services, told Telecompetitor that it would use fiber broadband and DOCSIS to upgrade its network. Edwards said the upgrade plans include DOCSIS 3.1, not the more recent DOCSIS 4.0 iteration of the technology.
Optimum serves approximately 4.6 million residential and business customers across 21 states.
The deepening relationship with Altice’s Optimum is not the only news concerning Google this week. Yesterday, GFiber announced it will deploy multi-gig services to Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, and Texas. This expands the availability of their “lifestyle-based” services, which were made available to Utah and Idaho in April and to Alabama, Arizona, North Carolina, and Tennessee in January.
