[AI Revolution](219) Channel Talk's "Voice ALF": An AI agent that talks by voice and calls customers first

Interview with Choi Wanseop, Chief Product Officer of Channel Corporation
AI phone customer service system "Voice ALF" officially launched this month

A customer who wants to cancel a platform membership calls the customer service center. They expect to press a series of numbers through an automated response system and wait to be connected to an agent, but the call is answered immediately. When they say they want to cancel, the agent explains the relevant policies and helps resolve the issue. The agent on the call is artificial intelligence (AI). Because it is AI, it can answer phone inquiries 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This is the new customer service landscape being shaped by Voice ALF, the AI phone service from Channel Talk, an AI platform. Recently launched officially after a pilot service, Voice ALF has evolved to the point where it can proactively call customers.

On Oct. 23, Choi Wanseop, Chief Product Officer (CPO) of Channel Corporation, said, "Voice ALF is an AI agent that answers customer calls, converses by voice, and handles customer service tasks. It holds conversations and carries out tasks based on the knowledge and business rules registered by companies." The service extends the scope of ALF, Channel Talk's existing AI agent for chat-based customer service, to phone calls. This is because phone consultations remain widely used in business activities such as sales, visit reservations, and payment guidance.

Choi Wanseop, Chief Product Officer (CPO) of Channel Corporation, explains Voice Alpeu. Channel Corporation.

AI can reuse the knowledge used by Chat ALF for phone consultations as well. However, the technology needed to make this work in practice is not simple, because conversations with customers need to feel natural. "The key to making a voice agent sound natural is technology that determines whether the customer has finished speaking," Choi said. "We applied our own turn-detection model, which analyzes the customer's intonation and hesitations to determine whether they have finished speaking."

One distinctive feature of Voice ALF is that it does more than provide voice guidance: it also carries out actual tasks. "Customer inquiries can be resolved only when the agent performs the necessary tasks on the platforms and infrastructure operated by the client," Choi said. "Voice ALF handles inquiries that can be resolved during a call, sends a chat link by text message when photos or videos are needed, and connects customers to a human agent under preset conditions when human assistance is required."

Voice ALF has already demonstrated its effectiveness through more than a year of pilot service. For example, Reencle, a brand of microbial food waste processors, automated everything from product inquiries to after-sales service (A/S) requests with Voice ALF, reducing the number of calls handled by agents by 39% and total call time by 42%. Apartment i routed all customer inquiries to Voice ALF first, which handled simple requests such as reserving visitor vehicles and explaining how to pay management fees, and connected customers to human agents only when their membership information needed to be verified. "With fewer calls to handle, agents can focus on other work," Choi said. "The scope of phone support can be expanded to nights and weekends while maintaining consistent quality."

The number of channels using Voice ALF has doubled this year. The number of monthly consultations handled by Voice ALF has increased by nearly 50%. Along with the official launch, Channel Corporation also introduced "ALF Marketing," which proactively calls selected customers. "Depending on the purpose, such as satisfaction surveys, debt collection, or sales, AI can naturally guide conversations and achieve results," Choi said. "Voice ALF will expand its use from handling inbound inquiries to making outbound calls."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.