KT Koo Geon-mo Declares "AI for Everyone's Daily Life"... AI to Answer Calls Even at Local Hair Salons

At a bakery in Seongdong-gu, Seoul, the KT AI call assistant is taking customer requests.

[Asia Economy Reporter Seulgina Cho] "We will create a daily life where artificial intelligence (AI) responds 24 hours a day, 365 days a year."

Under the leadership of KT's Koo Hyun-mo, the company declared "AI for everyone's daily life," spearheading AI technology that converses like a human. By fully launching AI-based businesses such as AI customer centers and AI call assistants, KT aims to accelerate an era where AI handles customer service and operations not only in public institutions and large corporations but also in local beauty salons.

On the morning of the 25th, KT held an online press conference themed "AI for everyone's daily life" to unveil this AI strategy. KT CEO Koo Hyun-mo stated, "We have secured 'AI Active Composite Dialogue' technology that understands and interprets the Korean language best," adding, "Based on this technology, AI contact center (AICC) services such as AI customer centers and AI call assistants will become a turning point that changes the paradigm of the AI industry."

AI Active Composite Dialogue is a technology that applies 'dynamic modeling' to recognize the flow of conversation, enabling better understanding of customer speech. It actively analyzes customer intent, asks questions on its own to fill in missing parts, and remembers the context of the conversation to avoid missing customer requests, allowing for natural processing. Ultimately, the goal is to converse like a human.

KT first applied AI Active Composite Dialogue technology to its own customer center. In a complex environment handling over 300 tasks, the KT customer center achieved a high consultation completion rate of 70% through this technology. KT's customer center is the first in Korea to apply AI technology to all customer interactions and all operational processes.

CEO Koo emphasized, "We will expand KT's AI Active Composite Dialogue technology to corporate and public institution customer centers to create a daily life where AI responds 24/7, 365 days a year," adding, "We will also enable small and medium-sized enterprises and small business owners who find it difficult to establish separate customer centers to communicate with customers around the clock."

◆ KT AI Changes Daily Life... AI Assistants in Local Restaurants and Neighborhood Beauty Salons

On the same day, KT launched the 'AI Call Assistant,' a micro customer center service that can be used not only by large corporations but also by small business owners. The AI Call Assistant is a service where AI works on behalf of busy small business owners or answers calls from customers during their absence. When a customer calls the store's landline number, the call is forwarded to a pre-designated smartphone where AI responds.

By applying KT's AI Active Composite Dialogue technology, the service can handle complex inquiries as well as reservations and orders, making it highly useful for single-person stores or busy shops. KT expects strong interest from 3.3 million small business owners, as well as ventures, startups, and small offices.

Since the AI Call Assistant functions as a kind of customer center, it can respond to customers 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, without distinction between day and night or holidays. The company explains that AI handles reservations even during non-business hours (holidays, breaks), allowing business owners to rest assured and carefully attend to customer requests and complaints when they have time. Earlier, KT confirmed high satisfaction with the AI Call Assistant through a pilot service conducted with 100 small business owners.

KT AI Call Assistant can be subscribed to and used through the 100 Customer Center and KT dealerships. The monthly fee is 22,000 KRW (including VAT). To commemorate the launch, KT is running a promotion until the end of this year offering free service for the first three months after subscription and a 50% discount for the following year.

Koo Hyun-mo, CEO of KT

◆ KT Targets Rapidly Growing AICC Market... Enhances Corporate Value

KT views the AICC business, represented by AI customer centers, as a catalyst that will innovate both daily life and industries through AI. Above all, in line with the spread of untact (contactless) services, AICC is expected to provide additional business opportunities for small business owners and revolutionize service quality for corporations and public institutions.

According to the 2020 Contact Center Industry Overview, the domestic contact center market grew rapidly at an average annual rate of 8.25% over the past decade (2010?2020), estimated at about 11 trillion KRW annually, with AICC expected to account for approximately 3 trillion KRW. KT plans to aggressively target the AICC business, expanded to public, corporate, and SMB sectors, as a representative future business for its transformation into a digital platform company (Digico), aiming to rapidly increase corporate value.

Based on the technology and know-how of introducing AI into telecom customer centers, KT is expanding AICC applications to over 50 institutions in finance, dining, distribution, government, and local governments. KT is rapidly expanding the AICC business and growing sales by partnering with financial institutions such as Shinhan Life, Woori Bank, and NH Investment & Securities to introduce AI into their customer centers.

Franchise-type AICC products are also receiving positive responses. KT's franchise AICC is an AI voicebot service that handles reservations, cancellations, business hours, and location inquiries, then provides real-time updates on processing status to store managers and users. It has been commercialized at Mad for Garlic's Bongeunsa I-Park Tower branch, where about 70% of customer inquiries are handled by AI virtual consultants, achieving a response success rate of over 95%.

KT expects AICC utilization to expand significantly in the public sector as well. The scope of application is increasing to include care for vulnerable groups such as elderly living alone, disaster safety, and administrative guidance, with AI consultations available for various civil complaints and COVID-19 vaccination guidance. Having obtained the Cloud Security Assurance Program (CSAP) certification, KT is the only provider capable of offering cloud-based AI voicebot and chatbot services to governments, local governments, and public institutions. Currently, KT is negotiating the application of AICC technology for administrative efficiency with 34 local governments nationwide, including Gyeongsangbuk-do and Chungcheongbuk-do.

In particular, KT plans to further advance AI Active Composite Dialogue technology to ultimately realize "AI close to humans." In the first half of next year, KT will commercialize a "hyper-scale AI model" developed through research and development (R&D) in collaboration with KAIST, the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), and Hanyang University. The hyper-scale AI, known as the "dream AI," is designed to learn from large-scale data based on infrastructure capable of massive computation, enabling it to think independently like a human.

CEO Koo said, "We will upgrade AI technologies and services, including Korean-style hyper-scale AI modeling, to lead changes in customers' lives and innovations in industries."