Ciena’s Asif Rehman delves into AI's transformative impact on customer support and network operations and how Ciena is using AI to deliver an exceptional customer experience.

Harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become paramount for network operators. But have you thought about how it can revolutionize your experience as a customer? The potential of AI to help deliver exceptional customer support and services is immense, offering a myriad of benefits that extend beyond what meets the eye. Let’s take a look at how AI can enhance your experience when it comes to technical support, network planning, and operations.

Technical support

When something goes wrong with your network, one of the most important resources is time. The more time it takes to fix, the bigger the problem becomes. For example, what if there was a better way to find solutions when you encounter network issues and seek troubleshooting assistance instead of having to search the knowledge base for the right articles?

Leveraging AI, Ciena’s customer portal can quickly analyze your queries and provide the most relevant knowledge-base article for the specific problem described. This not only saves time but also frequently leads to immediate problem resolution.

But that isn’t the only way AI is changing technical support and creating more time-efficient solutions. Generative conversation assistants are another powerful tool in our arsenal. When customers interact with our support team via chat and we deem a case is needed, the conversation assistants summarize chat interactions. The summary highlights important information and context before creating and routing the case. This smooth transition ensures support engineers quickly understand the customer's issue, leading to expedited problem resolution.

AI also plays a crucial role in improving the quality of customer case generation. By analyzing historical data and customer inputs, Generative AI (GenAI) will help our global customers create problem descriptions and prompt them for relevant information to optimize the description for quicker resolution. This valuable guidance provides support engineers with the right information to understand and troubleshoot issues promptly, resulting in more accurate and timely resolutions.

Network planning and operations

Moving beyond customer support, AI is also reshaping network planning and operations. Imagine being able to ask an AI agent, “When will my route between Sydney and Melbourne run out of capacity?”. With Ciena’s Network Transformation Suite, we are leveraging AI to accumulate historical and real-time network performance indicators (Ciena and third party) to gain actionable insights.

These insights can be connected seamlessly to customer orders, inventory, and third-party management systems/equipment, and with the help of GenAI, natural language queries can be used to plan and manage network expansion. This proactive approach allows for better resource allocation and preempts network congestion issues.

The applications of GenAI will continue to expand

AI algorithms will analyze historical customer data examining trends from past problems to optimize the allocation of staff and equipment for field issue resolution. This data-driven approach ensures that engineers and spare equipment will be allocated efficiently to address customer issues.

Self-service network deployment and troubleshooting are also being advanced through AI. Customers will have access to AI-powered tools that provide natural language guidance for independent issue resolution. Through an interactive self-service platform that asks questions, processes customers’ responses, and provides step-by-step troubleshooting processes, customers will be able to resolve problems without needing static, linear installation or troubleshooting guides.

In field operations, AI will be able to facilitate object recognition for installation audits. For example, Field technicians will be able to use mobile devices or 3D glasses connected to AI algorithms to identify and address installation issues like kinked fiber or improper grounding. The AI-powered system would be able to analyze images and provide instant feedback on whether the installation meets the required standards, allowing each technician to leverage the collective experience of the best technicians in the company.

Finally, a natural language interface will be able to provide customers the ability to define and create custom training packages tailored to their specific needs. Whether for specific staff roles, specific products, or a combination thereof, an AI-powered system will be able to generate customized courseware and videos, complete with narration, based on standard training materials. This level of customization will ensure that technical teams are well-equipped to install, troubleshoot, and support the equipment in their network.

As technology evolves, Ciena remains committed to leveraging AI to enhance the customer experience. By embracing these transformative technologies, Ciena is at the forefront of innovation in the networking industry, delivering superior service and solutions to network operators of all kinds. With a powerful innovation engine, we are paving the way for a future where the customer experience is seamless, network planning and builds are optimized, and customers thrive in a fast-changing competitive marketplace.