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Keynote: From POC to Profit: Deploying Customer-Facing AI Agents That Actually Work – Zhou Yu, Associate Professor, Computer Science Department, Columbia University
In today’s retail landscape, only the top 2% of customers receive white-glove, personalized, and proactive service—leaving the vast majority underserved and significant revenue untapped. But what if every customer could receive the equivalent of the Chase Private Client experience?
AI agents have the potential to transform this reality—unlocking better conversion rates, richer upsell opportunities, and stronger customer satisfaction. Yet most customer-facing agents—whether in pre-sales, onboarding, education, or support—remain stuck in endless pilots, never scaling to production. And the ones that do? They’re often nowhere near human performance.
Why is the AT&T chatbot a far cry from ChatGPT?
This talk dives into why deploying customer-facing AI agents is so hard, what the common pitfalls are, and—more importantly—how to successfully launch your first agent to boost revenue and delight customers. We’ll share best practices, practical frameworks, and lessons from the field to help you break out of the POC loop and build AI agents that deliver real business impact.
