Telecom combines operational experience and AI technology to sharpen competitiveness

Verified B2B solutions and specialist staff drive tailored AICC deployments

A customer service agent uses the in-sourced AICC system at an LG Uplus contact center. [LG Uplus]
A customer service agent uses the in-sourced AICC system at an LG Uplus contact center. [LG Uplus]

A customer asks whether there is an affordable phone plan for older users. On the agent's screen, product details for senior rate plans and a response guide appear in real time. As follow-up questions come in — "Is an additional discount available?" "How much data and texting does it include?" — AI suggests answers on the fly. Freed from unnecessary searches and administrative tasks, agents handle calls faster, cutting wait times and lifting customer satisfaction in a self-reinforcing cycle.

At a press briefing held Wednesday at LG Gasan Digital Center in Geumcheon-gu, Seoul, LG Uplus declared its goal of achieving zero customer wait times by 2030 through the deployment of AI contact centers, or AICC.

The company plans to lead its AI transformation, known as AX, through an "in-sourced AICC" model that combines operational know-how from its own contact centers with AI technology, while also targeting average annual AICC revenue growth of more than 50 percent.

LG Uplus is building its AICC business model around three pillars: AI call bots and chatbots, an AI counseling advisor, and automated quality assessment technology called AI Auto QA.

To that end, the company is using its 17 contact centers nationwide as testing grounds to verify and refine AI technology. It measures AICC quality against real counseling data and customer responses, offering only features that have passed performance and stability checks as B2B solutions. Specialist staff are also deployed on-site to provide tailored consulting, and requirements and improvement suggestions gathered in the field feed back into further solution development.

AI underpins the entire process. Exaone, the AI model developed by LG AI Research, along with models from global technology companies, automatically generates counseling scenarios, workflows and counseling agents. Simulations that closely replicate real operating conditions then pre-validate counseling quality. The AI filters issues and derives improvements using accumulated real-world counseling data.

In more detail, the AI call bot grasps customer intent by synthesizing the full context of a conversation, not just individual words. For example, if a customer says vaguely, "I'm heading to Zhangjiajie in China — um, leaving on Sept. 22 …," the AI reads the full context and recommends an appropriate roaming plan.

The AI counseling advisor converts conversations to text in real time using speech-to-text technology, then analyzes the content to recommend relevant information and responses. From the customer's perspective, this means hearing "please hold" far less often. AI Auto QA analyzes counseling sessions to identify each agent's strengths and areas for improvement.

LG Uplus plans to build what it calls an "AI-native contact center" by 2030, building on progress that has already cut average agent connection wait times from 47 seconds to five seconds.

The goal is to achieve zero wait times by having AI anticipate customer needs — drawing on counseling history and subscription information — and surface relevant information before the customer even asks. The company also plans to create a system that analyzes and improves all counseling data in real time, allowing the AICC to develop on its own.

Progress so far has been encouraging. After applying the in-sourced AICC across all stages of its own contact center operations, LG Uplus said the average wait time to connect with an agent fell roughly 90 percent — from 47 seconds in 2024, before the system was introduced, to five seconds this year. Overall counseling time dropped 16 percent over the same period.

LG Uplus is reinvesting the time saved through AI into improving service quality. Customers aged 65 and older are given priority access to human agents, while those with hearing impairments are connected to sign-language interpreters. The company also maintains a policy of letting customers choose how they want to be served — whether by AI or a human agent.

"AICC competitiveness depends less on the technology itself than on how quickly customer feedback can be turned into service improvements," said Ahn Hyung-kyun, head of LG Uplus's Enterprise AI Business Group. "We will leverage the experience and strengths gained from running our own contact centers to support corporate customers' AI transformation, and grow the AICC business into a core engine of our enterprise AX operations by 2030."


ko@heraldcorp.com