“On top of AI, there’s clearly decisions that would need to be taken by humans,” he told The Guardian.
“AI can help bring a lot of data analytics quickly to humans so they can make better decisions.
“For example, you’ll always need technicians in the field. You always need people building, you’ll always need people making decisions around creativity, people making decisions in call centres for customers, so AI can actually supplement that.”
Meanwhile, Rue, who joined the telecoms giant in November last year, after heading up the National Broadband Network (NBN) for six years, also said the technology will play a key role in improving services.
“One of the things we need to do in terms of IT and data and, indeed, process redesign is to look at how we incorporate AI into that,” he stated.
“It will help us with customer experience. It will help us with identifying faults, for example, by identifying customers’ issues so that they [can be] dealt with, enabling them to simply solve their own problems, enabling us to look at customer segmentation in a more granular way, so that we can actually deliver offers, deliver products to customers.”
However, Rue revealed his main goals so far have been improving governance, managing risks and rebuilding trust.
This follows his arrival during a period where the company experienced a major data-breach and 14-hour mobile outage, resulting in the departure of previous CEO, Kelly Bayer.
Since then, Optus has started to recover, adding 238,000 new mobile users.
“The other focus I’ve had is clearly in looking at our longer-term plans in terms of network, with not just a focus on resilience, which you’d expect, but also a focus on [the] company longer-term,” he said.
“It’s simplifying the organisation, managing our costs and ensuring that we can continue to have a range of products that are competitive in the marketplace,” he concluded.
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