Why has intelligent interaction become a very valuable AI scenario in the 5G era?

Behind the strategic choices of technology companies lies the future of intelligent interaction in the 5G era.

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5G's millisecond-level transmission latency and trillion-level connection capacity have ushered in a new era of extensive interconnection of all things and deep interaction between humans and machines.

From a global perspective, 5G has achieved phased results in technology, standards, industrial ecology and network deployment, and the last link of 5G landing - application scenarios, is gradually being realized in all walks of life. Actively exploring and practicing 5G+ application scenarios is not only a national strategic requirement, but also an inevitable choice for industrial development. On the one hand, the national level attaches great importance to the development of 5G and regards it as one of the key points for implementing the national innovation strategy. As of September this year, provinces across the country have successively issued more than 40 5G policies. On the other hand, many cloud services and intelligent applications have emerged, and machines are replacing manual labor in more and more scenarios. Especially after the epidemic, the acceptance of remote work has greatly increased among the public and enterprises. The above two development opportunities have allowed manufacturers to seize the opportunity and make layouts.

"In the future, all industries will gradually use new technologies such as 5G, AI, and big data to form tailor-made solutions for specific industries and specific companies." Xu Lixin, chairman of FarEasTone Technology, who has a stylish short hair and speaks in a gentle and confident manner, said in an interview with Tech Planet.

As of the end of June this year, Zhejiang Province has launched more than 140 5G scenario applications, ranking first in the country. FarEasTone Technology, one of the earliest national key software companies in Zhejiang Province, focuses on service + marketing, using intelligent interactive technology to provide solutions for the intelligent transformation of customer service centers, and has received multiple policy special supports such as the "National Service Industry Innovation Guidance Fund Project" and the "Zhejiang Province Key R&D Plan".

It is foreseeable that 5G will promote the application and integration of new technologies. The integration of intelligent interactive technologies with text, voice and video interaction as the main research objects and 5G technology will release the potential for enterprises to realize the comprehensive digitalization of service marketing systems.

Seize new opportunities for intelligent interaction

"During this year's epidemic, a colleague from Far EasTone's R&D center posted a short and exciting line of text on Weibo after working all night for a week on R&D and testing - 'Life is like a journey against the tide, AI is instinct'." Far EasTone Technology CTO Chen Mo told Tech Planet meaningfully.

It is understood that as a key epidemic prevention enterprise in Zhejiang Province, FarEasTone Technology provided an epidemic prevention message notification platform with functions such as initial screening of personnel, key tracking, notification and publicity to 18 provinces and cities including Hubei, Shandong, Fujian, and Shenzhen during the epidemic; it provided remote home office solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises that had difficulty resuming work, and was evaluated by the Zhejiang Artificial Intelligence Society as one of the applications with the most promotion value.

"It is this intensive R&D journey that has allowed countless intelligent interaction scenarios to quickly go through the journey of conception, modeling, improvement, trial and error, reconstruction, and iteration. It has also made us deeply aware that the customer service center has actually covered almost all interaction scenarios. If the service experience in these scenarios is upgraded to intelligent with the support of 5G technology, and then promoted to other industries that can be commercialized, it will inevitably open up a new blue ocean for the intelligent interaction industry." Chen Mo said.

At present, AI companies are applying it in two fields, image and voice, which are developing fastest and accounting for the largest proportion, accounting for 45% and 22% respectively, and the overall proportion is more than 60%. Therefore, customer service centers with massive voices are at the forefront, and intelligent customer service has become an industry that has achieved commercialization of AI technology earlier, and has become the main battlefield of AI in the field of voice.

Although the intelligent industry is booming, intelligent voice interaction technology still faces challenges. As we all know, the development of intelligent interactive products can be divided into five stages, including: intelligent supervision objectives, intelligent assistance, weak artificial intelligence, strong artificial intelligence, and unmanned intelligence.

At present, Far EasTone Technology and industry manufacturers have deployed products at the first four levels; while the fifth level of unmanned intelligence has not yet been broken through in the market, and it is also the future development direction of technology companies. The commercial use of intelligent voice will not exceed 2-3 years, which is not a long time. In the face of complex scenarios and to achieve barrier-free communication with people, more technology and application improvements are needed. In addition, there are not many manufacturers in the industry that can interact with technologies such as NLP. 90% of manufacturers only provide services based on keyword retrieval, template application, etc., and there are good and bad.

Explore and break through in practice

In response to the current status of the industry, Far EasTone Technology has proposed two paths: "Concentrate the natural language algorithm engineer team to support the underlying technology research and development and make pragmatic and medium- and long-term investments. Secondly, use the intelligent middle platform to solve problems such as duplicate construction, information islands, and duplicate data maintenance. Far EasTone Technology restructured its product system in 2016 and connected the architecture of all products to improve research and development efficiency." Chen Mo said.

In terms of the choice of technical routes, we develop general solutions in terms of technology and underlying layer. At the data level, we accumulate industry experience and develop vertical applications. Far EasTone Technology is currently cultivating large B enterprises through customized services and developing small and medium-sized enterprises through cloud services.

Chen Mo believes that when facing artificial intelligence technology, NLP and other technologies, companies need to pay attention to three points: first, to delve deeper into the field of intelligent interaction and create a higher experience; second, to take the lead in striving to achieve unmanned intelligence; and third, to move from service to marketing, connect service and marketing based on data, and deeply explore the value of interactive data.

FarEasTone Technology has accumulated more than ten years of industry experience and is able to empower vertical industry customers. FarEasTone Technology has a deeper understanding of the business of enterprises, industry expertise, and B2C service processes than large companies. "The product matrix, proprietary middle platform, core technology research and development of NLP/NLU, on-site POC capabilities, and service awareness are the advantages of FarEasTone Technology," Chen Mo believes.

For example, in the "Online State Grid" project of State Grid Corporation of China, FarEasTone Technology independently developed an online service platform for queuing communications and micro-application scenarios, and provided an intelligent online service system and customer service center that serves 480 million electricity users. Behind this is an intelligent customer service platform that integrates natural language understanding, multi-round conversations, knowledge graphs, intelligent outbound calls, etc., in which robots replace customer service staff to handle about 70% of standard repetitive business volume.

For another example, FarEasTone Technology has also built a comprehensive service platform for Jiangsu Bank's customer service center that simultaneously meets the needs of the entire bank, ordinary credit cards, Meituan credit cards, and direct banking. Through AI technology, it has achieved intelligent services, intelligent outbound marketing, and intelligent management, and Jiangsu Bank's service efficiency has increased by more than 30%.

The next step for FarEasTone

"Being customer-centric and relying on intelligent interactive technology to make services more convenient and warmer has always been the driving force for FarEasTone Technology to take the next step." Chairman Xu Lixin told Tech Planet.

When talking about why FarEasTone Technology has adopted "intelligent interaction" as its corporate strategy, Xu Lixin believes that the 16 years of FarEasTone Technology's deep cultivation in the customer service field have been 16 years of continuous deepening and innovation in its understanding and analysis of basic customer service needs; from a single field to multiple scenarios, innovating the solution capabilities of "intelligent interaction technology + products + industries", and working with customers to jointly create "warm" intelligent service scenarios and provide more convenient services are FarEasTone Technology's unchanging strategy.

The birth of FarEasTone Cloud Crowdsourcing model originated from a warm exchange. A post-90s who is still in college expressed his hope to become a home-based SOHO worker when talking about his future career choice. "Combining the industry and letting people at home do customer service is already very popular abroad. Whether it is young people in their 20s or middle-aged people with families, using their free time to create value at home may lead to new entrepreneurial and innovative business models in China." During this year's epidemic, FarEasTone Cloud Crowdsourcing promptly launched a home customer service solution, combined with the sharing of intelligent interactive technology, which effectively alleviated the gap in human resources for corporate services. This new product direction has become the focus of FarEasTone's next layout.

At the same time, the research and development and application of video interaction has also become a new topic for FarEasTone Technology in the field of intelligent interaction. 5G video interaction has new features of stronger interactivity and greater intelligence.

For example, when people are on the phone, they can communicate with virtual customer service through video. Virtual customer service can even be customized according to the needs of the enterprise. For example, the intelligent voice terminal in the service hall can handle business through voice and video when it is needed. For example, in the terminal field of home intelligent voice equipment, such as smart speakers, Far EasTone Technology is currently developing a voice intelligent system to manage home appliances intelligently.

With the continuous wide and in-depth application of intelligent interaction, customer identification and big data analysis functions will be more perfect. Providing customers with more accurate multimedia "private domain traffic" marketing services and improving the accuracy and precision of interaction is the future trend.

Looking back on the development history of FarEasTone Technology, Xu Lixin believes that the company has always been committed to improving the efficiency of serving enterprises. "More than ten years ago, FarEasTone Technology brought the 1.0 version of the intelligent service system to customers for the first time, helping customers simplify user operations, reduce labor costs, and improve management efficiency. The current stage of innovation is consistent with the past in terms of the underlying driving force," she said.

It is based on this foundation that FarEasTone is working on cloud services and 5G application innovation scenarios. 5G's technological innovation brings a huge incremental market for integrated communication services and information services. 5G is not only a basic underlying technology, but also provides opportunities for upward penetration of business.