Singtel and conversational AI company Sierra will jointly enhance Singtel’s customer engagement capabilities using artificial intelligence, the company said in a press release on Wednesday.

The collaboration began in late January with a pilot program within Singtel Singapore’s customer care ecosystem, focusing on its virtual assistant, “Shirley.” The upgraded AI assistant now features more natural conversational abilities and faster response times, enabling customers to resolve common issues and complete transactions independently. “Shirley” has also been designed to understand local expressions and colloquial language, including Singlish, making interactions more intuitive for customers in Singapore. Singtel is also exploring the addition of more languages to further improve accessibility.

Sierra, a Silicon Valley–based startup co-founded by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, provides the agentic AI technology powering the system. The platform allows companies to deploy AI agents capable of handling customer service requests while maintaining accuracy, security, and human oversight.

Deploying AI across chat and voice channels will help improve service while allowing customer care teams to focus on more complex cases, said Ng Tian Chong, CEO of Singtel Singapore.

Within six weeks of the launch, early results showed that “Shirley” handled more than 70,000 customer cases related to mobile issues and roaming services. Singtel reported that 73 percent of mobile and home troubleshooting requests and 76 percent of roaming sign-up requests were resolved without human assistance. The company plans to expand the initiative by deploying voice-based AI agents to support outbound customer interactions under defined compliance and governance standards. Singtel is also considering extending the technology to other departments and enterprise clients.

The move is part of Singtel’s broader strategy to expand the use of artificial intelligence across its operations and digital services.

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