The realities of deploying generative AI in customer support with Alia Azim, Citation Group

Generative AI is changing how customer support chatbots are built, deployed and measured.

In this episode, we sit down with Alia Azim, Product Lead for Chatbots at Citation Group, to discuss the company’s shift from traditional NLU chatbots to generative AI conversational agents.

Alia brings a wealth of experience in conversational AI, including time spent at Lloyds Banking Group, and she gives us an honest account of what it actually looks like to move from NLU-based chatbots to generative AI in a real business environment. 

Citation Group provides HR, compliance and business services for thousands of small and medium businesses. Supporting those customers means handling everything from platform troubleshooting to account access issues. Alia explains how their team rebuilt the chatbot strategy around generative AI, focusing on specific use cases, improved knowledge management, and outcomes that actually resolve customer problems.

We explore the limitations of traditional intent-based bots, why generative AI dramatically changes how conversational systems are designed and why success metrics like containment are being replaced by resolution rate.

We also get into the debate around whether conversation design is dead. Designers and engineers still play a critical role, but the work now focuses less on building rigid flows and more on shaping AI behaviour through guidance, knowledge design and customer journey thinking.

Show notes

Follow Alia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliaazim/

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