China Mobile's Path to Digital-Intelligent Customer Service Transformation: Co-Creation and Co-Prosperity with Customers through AI
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Recently, China Mobile launched its new '86 NEXT' digital-intelligent service portal. This marks a significant advancement in the intelligent transformation of China Mobile's customer service and industry applications, powered by cutting-edge technologies like AI large models. As a pioneering application of large model technology in the industry, '86 NEXT' embodies the pinnacle of digital-intelligent integration in customer service.
After decades of development, the customer service industry has entered the 5.0 era, with the core transformation being the deep integration of digitalization and intelligence. As traditional 'call centers' gradually fade into history, artificial intelligence—especially large language models—is revolutionizing customer experience and marketing services. Correspondingly, China Mobile's digital-intelligent upgrades in customer service over the past two decades have been a process of continuous accumulation, evolving from incremental improvements to qualitative leaps. The essence of digital-intelligent integration in customer service today lies in leveraging AI to deliver near-human service standards. 'Multimedia intelligent interaction,' as a key technological application, significantly raises the bar for the entire customer service industry. The comprehensive application of multiple AI technologies will become a critical factor in future competition.
Dual Focus on R&D and Application: Enabling Customers to Co-Create and Optimize Industry Models
China Mobile has demonstrated profound insight and seized opportunities by not only launching its own AI large model system, 'Jiutian,' but also delving into specific scenarios. The company prioritizes developing industry-specific models tailored to diverse customer service scenarios, focusing on technological breakthroughs and resource allocation.
From a customer value perspective, models that deeply understand and adapt to real-world scenarios will win market favor. Among the three key elements—data, computing power, and AI models—scenario-specific data for model optimization plays the decisive role. Moreover, applications in sectors like government, finance, large enterprises, and SMEs vary significantly, necessitating customized models for different industries.
The universal principle of AI application is the iterative cycle between models and scenario data, fostering mutual growth. China Mobile adheres to this principle in its large model applications. From the outset, the company emphasizes the continuous feedback of scenario data into the system, while adjusting supporting business processes, system functionalities, and even incentive mechanisms to achieve optimal alignment.
As the application of these models expands across industries, ample data enables the training of algorithms capable of addressing low-probability issues, creating a virtuous cycle until the model covers over 98% of scenarios and problems.
Through this practice, China Mobile collaborates with industry clients to co-create solutions in real-world scenarios. Application and R&D alternate in a cyclical process, with scenario data and model training growing symbiotically. Challenges emerge with large-scale applications and are resolved through large-scale training. This approach not only provides pioneering clients with service advantages and efficiency gains in their niches but also offers reliable references and training foundations for model applications in related industries.
Synergy of Technology and Operations: Building a Prosperous 'Intelligent' Ecosystem on the Shoulders of Giants
Currently, China Mobile's 10086 service platform serves over 1 billion individual customers, 200 million household clients, and more than 19 million businesses. It employs 40,000 customer service representatives and 45,000 account managers, handling over 150 million video service interactions and 160 million intelligent voice and internet-based interactions monthly.
Reflecting on years of project experience, the refinement and upgrade of customer service systems are complex and specialized technological evolutions. Practice shows that an effective customer service system is not merely a combination of IT and CT with added AI functionalities. At its core, it is a systematic accumulation of customer service understanding and operational expertise, integrating innovative technologies like AI to meet the demands for more efficient, convenient, and professional scenario-based applications.
Taking China Mobile's newly launched 'Cloud Intelligence Service' system as an example, it encapsulates nearly 20 years of operational experience and technological accumulation from the 10086 service. By having technical personnel engage in frontline experiences—'getting their feet on the ground and hands dirty'—they truly 'fight side by side' with customer service representatives, deeply integrating business operations with technological applications to refine a customer service system that 'understands you better.' At the same time, the system embodies the principle of 'technology making applications more human,' actively building a healthy ecosystem of mutual benefit with top-tier industry partners. Through four key aspects—interaction, expression, operations, and service—it significantly improves the operational efficiency and service quality of the intelligent customer service platform, addressing the traditional issue of 'unintelligent intelligent customer service.'
In terms of interaction, leveraging large-scale natural language understanding technology, China Mobile's new-generation intelligent customer service can more accurately 'understand' user queries and needs, greatly improving response coverage and issue resolution rates, while enhancing the interception rate of manual transfers in self-service scenarios.
In expression, China Mobile's large model applications, based on deep learning methods, can learn and master the richness of language expression from vast datasets, significantly improving the fluency and naturalness of machine-human conversations. It also detects and responds to user emotions in real-time, providing anthropomorphic emotional care, thereby greatly enhancing the quality of human-machine interaction and user satisfaction.
In operations, powered by China Mobile's large model technology, the system can automatically extract corporate documents, organize enterprise knowledge bases, and expand similar queries, generating a standardized Q&A knowledge base in just minutes. This effectively reduces operational costs for industry clients and enables smarter business operations.
In service, based on large language model technology, the system can function as an AI assistant, intelligently supporting human agents throughout the process with features like smart knowledge recommendations, conversation summaries, form filling, and automatic task assignment. This achieves optimal AI-human collaboration, significantly boosting customer service efficiency and quality.
Looking ahead, with the interplay and deep application of digital human technology, 5G video customer service, large model applications, and new call interaction technologies, innovative solutions for various industry scenarios will continue to emerge. The customer service industry is likely to further break service boundaries, transforming traditional voice interactions into multi-modal formats like touchscreens, video, and voice. The widespread adoption of human+AI collaboration will drastically reduce the need for manual intervention. Meanwhile, digital intelligence technologies and AI applications will continue to improve the interactive experience and operational efficiency of customer service functions, transforming the role of customer service into a gateway for businesses to engage with clients—a portal for communication and an interface for products and services. To this end, China Mobile will actively embrace these transformative trends, leveraging technological innovation and service expertise to collaborate with industry partners and deliver richer, smarter, and more comfortable professional service experiences to customers.