Sharlie is among the first native, speech-to-speech natural conversational assistants being deployed in a customer-facing environment by Orange, a major European consumer telecoms provider. It is initially rolling out the new GenAI-based tool for validation and refinement at scale for the customer community of its French online, fixed and mobile secondary brand Sosh. The move is expected to enable the carrier to nurture the AI assistant’s evolution within a digital-first customer base that is more likely to adopt self-service tools and to provide interactive and iterative feedback, according to GlobalData, a leading intelligence and productivity platform.
Natasha Rybak, Principal Analyst – Telecoms Practice, Technology at GlobalData, says: “Telecoms operators have tried to move quickly from GenAI experimentation to applied deployment, and customer sales and support is one of the most immediate areas where the technology can deliver measurable impact. Orange’s debut of GenAI-based Sharlie through Sosh constitutes a practical testbed for improvements to variables like automation rates, first-contact resolution, and overall customer satisfaction.”
Unlike many conversational assistants that rely on an intermediate step of converting speech to text and then back again, Sharlie is designed to understand spoken language and respond orally, supporting faster, more flexible interactions. Designed in collaboration with Microsoft, Orange Business, and AI solution providers ILLUIN Technology and TP, the tool is available via the web and the MySosh app, and has real-time access to customer information, including transaction history and current products, enabling it to resolve a broad set of queries.
Sharlie can already handle several hundred customer support use cases, with additional scenarios in development. It supports tasks such as billing questions, product sales, and service cancellations, and can also exercise a degree of commercial autonomy – for example, granting refunds. Orange expects Sharlie to manage more than 3 million conversations per year once operating at full intended volume.
Rybak concludes: “If Orange can translate the Sosh learnings into broader implementation, Sharlie has the potential to become a scalable front line for service and sales, supporting cost optimization while also contributing to churn prevention and ARPU uplift through better experiences and more targeted commercial interactions.”
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„To be honest I think that Sinaia, your conference, is much better then Davos.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
