The Future Of Less Work
00:08:47 · Laurent Aufils
[00:08:47] S1: So that... That's that's actually the the top... The number one question that we are asking ourselves. And when we review the work processes, we actually identify the pain points, we identify the time spent on each of these activities, and we also look at what is the value that we're expecting from this. If it's like a sales process or a customer care type of job, what is expected from us? How do we differentiate ourselves from our competitors? And also what is expected? Because sometimes the tool can do great things, but it doesn't really serve the needs of the customers and serve the needs of the company. It looks like you are gaining productivity, you are doing things faster, but at the same time, we discovered that, you know, for our clients, having a real person, for some of our clients at least, not all of them, but having a real person on the phone taking your call, being able to, you know, help you because the person knows where you are and you know, what can be specific to your offer or to your context is so much more important than having a very fast answer, which might not be, you know, the best answer that the person is actually expecting. So that's something that we are really working on with this value based approach.
00:10:21 · Nirit Cohen
[00:10:21] S0: So so let me ask two questions on that. That's a really interesting example. So how do you differentiate between... As a customer, I'm used to having a person, you know, I'm used to being being... Maybe the tools are also not good enough yet, and they don't understand Nuance. Right? And so there's a transition management here as well. Right? And then you're obviously for productivity. Right? I mean, if I, as a customer, can get a lot done through talking to tools Mhmm. Then you you you would want to push me there.
00:10:56 · Laurent Aufils
[00:10:56] S1: Yes. That's... But that... That's again where we need to balance based on the needs of the customers because we know that some of our customers are actually looking for a fast answer, a quick, you know, response and a quick fix to their problem. So they are very familiar and they are very much, you know, able to deal with, let's say, a bot, you know, to to... As a customer care agent, but some others are actually perhaps sometimes not able to express their needs or their problems. They just say, okay, I've been disconnected, full stop. Okay. They then they need to have some kind of guidance on, you know, is their actual problem and they cannot do that with just a bot. They need to have a human interaction and where actually AI and agentic AI can bring value is to have the the agent, the the person, the the employee of Orange taking this call, having the right level of information that will help him or her respond to the client. So that's where AI will actually deliver value, not as a customer facing, not always as a customer facing tool, but sometimes as a tool that will enable to have the right level of information at the right time and to actually save also some time and have productivity gains for the company. But we need to have this differentiated approach as well that's, you know, some of our clients are just not comfortable with having a bot and and and not having a human and social interaction.
00:12:38 · Nirit Cohen
[00:12:38] S0: Yep. Okay. So from a customer perspective, that's clear. I'm actually interested for a second look at the organization. Right? When the work that takes weeks suddenly can be down in hours. Right? Where does that productivity dividend go? What do you do with all that new time?
00:12:56 · Laurent Aufils
[00:12:56] S1: First of all, we have to differentiate what the marketing promise is from what the reality actually delivers. Because sometimes we see that some tools, and even when we develop tools internally, we say, okay, know, we are able to gain, you know, x number of hours or it will save us x number of times or tasks to be done. But then when you actually implement it in real life, that's when you start identifying the fact that, okay, you need to have actually new tasks to supervise, to actually better program the tool or, you know, adjust what the agent's authentic AI is delivering. So again, I think we need to be careful because there's a difference between the theoretical productivity gain and the actual productivity gain. And then where it's very, very important is that when we look at AI, everybody says that, okay, it helps productivity and it helps to save time. But if you drive the transformation of the company through AI, you are actually, the company is actually in a position to decide what this new time or what this time saved is gonna be dedicated to. And that's very, very important because otherwise people tend to do more or to have all the tasks coming in that are perhaps not value added tasks, you know, that will actually fill up their time, but are not really delivering value for the company. So we are working on it with a very simple principle that we need to make sure that the time that is saved is having dividends that are balanced when it comes to the company, the employees, and potentially the, you know, the the the surrounding and the clients of of, you know, this... The task.
00:14:59 · Nirit Cohen, Laurent Aufils
[00:14:59] S0: Yeah. Tell me give me an example of what that means. [00:15:02] S1: So... Because you know, we... Exactly. So... [00:15:04] S0: Yeah. Please. Yeah. [00:15:05] S1: When you when you look at, you know, let's say, someone doing troubleshooting, you know, analyzing tickets because we have problems and, you know, there is a network cut, there is a failure somewhere and so on and so on. AdjuncticaI and AI enables to have a much faster treatment of these tickets, okay, of these problems, And it saves, let's let's put it that way, let's save like 40% of the time, okay, because, you know, that's that's very important. So you could tell the the employee, okay, then you can treat or you can deal with 40% more tickets. [00:15:44] S0: Yes. [00:15:46] S1: However, first, you know, the the customers, when we look at the customers, they are not only asking for faster treatment, they are also asking for more information and sometimes the tickets that are coming to the employee are actually the more complicated tickets. So that's where, you know, the one to one game is not always true in reality. [00:16:12] S0: So you're I could suddenly... I can ask my people to do more... Not not more of the same, but things that they never got around to doing, maybe increases satisfaction, maybe assess the kinds of tickets and go fix processes from them.