In The Future of Voice AI series of interviews, I ask three questions to my guests:
- What problems do you currently see in Enterprise Voice AI?
- How does your company solve these problems?
- What solutions do you envision in the next 5 years?This episode’s guest is Natalie Beckerman, Global Head of Customer Support Operations at IHG Hotels and Resorts.
Natalie is currently the Global Head of Customer Support Operations at IHG Hotels & Resorts. Prior to her role with IHG, Natalie was the Senior Vice President of Global Contact Center Operations at Leaf Home. Prior to that, Natalie was the Vice President of Operational Strategy for Rocket Mortgage, responsible for client/customer experience and transformation and strategy execution. Natalie has held other senior operational roles in the Home Services and Telecommunications spaces.
Natalie has run top-tier, large-scale customer support operations and has created organizations dedicated to conquering the customer experience and driving customer service, sales and operational excellence across the USA, UK and EMEA. She is known to build new business, increase revenue and turn around performance, while re-energizing and invigorating businesses and leaders.
IHG Hotels & Resorts is a global hospitality company, with a purpose to provide True Hospitality for Good. With a family of 19 hotel brands and IHG One Rewards, one of the world's largest hotel loyalty programs, IHG has over 6,300 open hotels in more than 100 countries, and a development pipeline of over 2,000 properties.
Recap Video
Takeaways
IHG operates over 6,000 hotels in more than 100 countries under various brands.
IHG operates 19 global brands, hence the need to support multiple languages. This is quite costly.
Multiple language support at scale is top-of-mind for Natalie.
For companies that need to scale and grow internationally, the traditional contact center model will not work anymore.
Natalie is a big believer in AI Voice Translation and is looking to try such technology at IHG.
The goal is to support, not replace, frontline agents with technology.
Expanding into new geographic areas is expensive and not always sustainable.
There are AI Voice Translation use cases for both large and small languages
Agent Assist, depending on what you are using it for, can be amazing or it can be very distracting for the agents.
More experienced agents are more skeptical of Agent Assist and usually don’t use it
The future of AI in customer service includes both Agent Assist and AI agents.
Implementing AI in large enterprises involves significant challenges and costs.
Training and preparation are crucial for successful AI integration. Businesses need to be clear about their objectives when adopting AI.
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