Oracle expands generative AI across its CX applications

Field service ripe for GenAI

Field service is one area in which Oracle and competitors, including Salesforce, are investing in GenAI. That is because field service technicians' time is costly, and any tool to help make the job more efficient can save field service-intensive companies in verticals such as manufacturing or telecommunications a great deal.

While tech vendors have used machine learning and rules-based algorithms to optimize technicians' schedules and to map their routes for years, generative AI can add efficiency, said Liz Miller, an analyst at Constellation Research. Generative AI can summarize repair content, search more data in customer records and connect technicians with teammates who can help them solve thorny problems.

But GenAI alone isn't doing all the heavy lifting. It's the combination of new technologies and previous workflow tools that layer on new efficiencies, Miller said.

"It's not just AI, it's not just generative AI or AI processes -- it's automation and machine learning, too," Miller said. "We're now connecting dispatch, operations, research [and] technician resources. We're connecting all these dots so that the field service rep is given more control than they've ever been given."

GenAI's data access make old ideas new

Salespeople and marketers might look at some of Oracle's GenAI tools and see the same old lead scoring and audience segmenting features that machine learning or rule-based algorithms that companies such as Oracle and Salesforce have offered for years.

Not so, said Gosek: Generative AI's ability to ingest unstructured data opens up deeper searches of enterprise data to bring back better, more precise and accurate results. That, in turn, can create efficiencies and more success for marketers and salespeople.

Miller said she's observed that that's how it works among users of GenAI for CX. Many companies use front-office data from CRM and web traffic to make personalized engagements with customers as well as back-office data such as contracts and orders.

"Generative AI allows people to ask different questions without breaking the model underneath -- it's about the capacity to interrogate data differently," Miller said. "But it's also about the capacity to pull in some of the service data that was based on [customer comments] that you really couldn't before. You can put structured and unstructured data side-by-side and not have to re-create a whole database or engage in a massive MDM project."

Oracle released these new features in conjunction with the CloudWorld Mexico City user conference on Thursday.

Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? Email him.