South KoreaTechnology and telecom2021 – ongoingKT
AI call assistant for small shops
KT's AI phone assistant for restaurants and salons signed up 20,000 small businesses in six months
Problem
Owners of small restaurants and beauty salons often miss calls while cooking or serving, and each missed call can be a lost reservation or order. Few can afford a receptionist; KT counted about 2.8 million small business owners on its landlines.
Approach
In October 2021 KT launched a service that forwards a shop's landline to the owner's smartphone and lets a voice AI answer when the owner cannot, around the clock. The AI gives location, parking and opening hours, takes reservations and orders and, when slots are full, suggests another date. KT sold it as an add-on to its landlines and later partnered with the reservation startup TableManager, in which it invested KRW 2 billion in 2022.
Results
Takeaway
KT reached small merchants through shop landlines they already paid for, without requiring a separate system. It estimated the product did about half a part-time call handler's work; published shop-level results are KT's own examples.
Categories
- Size
- Large enterprise
- Industry
- Technology and telecom
- Business function
- Customer serviceMarketing and sales
- Innovation type
- Product and service innovation
- AI technology
- Conversational and voice AI
- Adoption
- Built in-house
- Evidence
- Company's own claim
Sources
Source summaries
Describes how the service, launched in October 2021, answers forwarded shop calls with AI around the clock and reports that more than 20,000 businesses used it after six months. It gives KT's merchant examples, including a Guro-gu restaurant that took 144 extra reservations in two weeks and a Gwangju salon that gained 26 bookings in nine days as a second channel next to Naver Reservation.
Reports that KT targets the 2.8 million small business owners on its landlines, had about 30,000 users in early 2022 and aimed for 200,000 subscribers the following year. It cites KT's estimate that the AI does about half the work of a part-time call handler, worth roughly KRW 150,000 a month, and notes KT's KRW 2 billion investment in TableManager.
Full details are in the original sources.
