Rostelecom: Digital consultant for retail stores

The main articles are:

• Speech Recognition (Technology, Market)
• Speech technology: On the path from recognition to understanding
• Speech synthesis

2024: Presentation of the Digital Consultant service

Rostelecom has completed the development of the Digital Consultant service for the retail industry. A solution created using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies will help improve customer experience and free up the resource of store staff to perform functions in which human participation is mandatory. As of April 2024, the digital consultant is "undergoing an internship" - the company is testing it at the B2E TechLab, a technology laboratory that develops and implements digital technologies in retail. Rostelecom announced this on April 9, 2024.

source = Rostelecom

To launch the service, AI will generate an avatar - a visual image, voice and manner of communication of a digital consultant according to specified parameters based on a real person, and will also provide its animation on devices. AI will also voice a digital consultant and use a lipsink to synchronize his speech with articulation and facial expressions. Depending on the tasks, the consultant can use different scenarios of interaction with buyers.

Artificial intelligence is increasingly used in business and is becoming a real assistant for humans. The introduction of AI in retail for Rostelecom will become a very interesting and important experience - this promising industry from the point of view of digitalization still concentrates on a person and his needs and at the same time creates unique business models using technologies. We are confident that the new bright technology will attract the attention of buyers and help to find an individual approach to everyone, - said Alexey Podryabinnikov, Vice President - Director for Corporate Customer Relations at Rostelecom.

The advantage of using a digital consultant is that it is able to provide personalized service without involving employees and the cost of training them. In the future, thanks to the network loyalty system, the consultant will be able to recommend goods based on the preferences and purchase history of a particular customer. In addition, the introduction of the service will allow the retailer to use the best practices for selling goods without additional control over the execution of scripts, since AI minimizes the risks of the human factor.

The digital consultant will not only become a new service using the sensational AI technology, but will revolutionize retail - in a few years such solutions will be used in every store. We also see great potential for this service to be implemented in other industries. The development of hardware, the transformation of visual, the integration of new scripts and the improvement of the client path will make the digital consultant in demand in all industries where it is necessary to increase the efficiency of processes and free up personnel resources, "said Ekaterina Kozyr, director of the Retail industry at Rostelecom.