Building the next generation of customer service with super agents

Generative AI is a relatively new phenomenon – the first AI chatbot was only introduced in 2022. But in that short timeframe, it’s completely transformed our lives and business – including how we care for our customers.

AI doesn’t signal the end of human-led customer interactions, though. It can be another tool for agents to deal with customer queries – from simple requests to complicated issues.

At Vodafone, we believe AI should be used alongside people, to help them deliver excellent customer service. This has always been our goal – blending digital innovation with human interaction to provide greater customer experiences.

AI is simply the next step in that journey.

The role of chatbots

As society becomes increasingly digital, the pressure to resolve issues quickly is mounting. Connectivity now rivals other utilities in importance, making reliable support essential.

While chatbots emerged to meet this need, they can often fall short, leaving customers frustrated by their limited responses.

Large language model (LLM) AI now changes the game, delivering more accurate, context-sensitive answers. Leveraging Vodafone’s service data, our LLM chatbots like TOBi respond to around 1 million interactions monthly, resolving 70% of them on the first try. Similarly, our VOXI AI chatbot streamlines support, quickly addressing customer needs and passing on summarised interactions when human assistance is required – keeping service fast and efficient.

Quality interactions

It’s not just about how many customers AI can help but also the quality of each interaction. We’re exploring how AI and linguistics techniques can assess the success of our customer calls, helping agents understand effective service behaviours and guiding future training.

But AI can’t do everything – some interactions need human touch.

For example, all our complaints are reviewed by a human weekly, as they require detailed knowledge of our systems, products and customers for timely, accurate responses. Our staff still provide essential care for vulnerable customers – whether that’s due to age, mental health, physical wellbeing or personal circumstances.

To ensure human interaction remains at the core of our customer care, this year we invested £2 million in behavioural training for all 12,500 of our customer care colleagues in the UK and beyond.

This is part of our TRUST framework training, which supports our employees when responding to difficult enquiries whilst ensuring customers receive the empathy they need. Our teams have truly embraced this – 85% completed the training, resulting in call resolution rates rising to 77%.

Artificial intelligence meets real interactions

Therefore, AI and humans should collaborate to enhance customer experience.

Our 10-year strategic partnership with Microsoft brought Microsoft 365 Copilot AI software to around 68,000 employees globally – boosting productivity and creating ‘super agents’ in customer care.

With AI integrated into their workflow, agents now benefit from real-time call recoding, transcription, knowledge base searches and prompt suggestions – streamlining a process that was previously manual and time-consuming.

In the future, AI could also serve as a simulated customer for training purposes – informed by real customer interaction data.

Putting the customer first

Ultimately, customer experience is the most important thing to Vodafone. We are nothing without our customers, which is why are committed to understanding why they contact us.

Our expert and experienced customer care agents do an amazing job of talking to our customers, understanding their needs, and helping them reach the best possible outcome.

We believe technology, including AI, is there to equip and empower them to do their jobs better – and ultimately, improve our customers’ experience.

It’s up to us – as an industry – to ensure we are using it effectively, efficiently and ethically, in support of a more beneficial customer journey.

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19 Nov 2024

Building the next generation of customer service with super agents

Jon Shaw, Commercial Operations Director at Vodafone UK, explores why Artificial intelligence (AI) isn’t about replacing jobs, but about helping people do those jobs better.

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