Vodafone UK, in an unusual move, has announced a new way to offer customer support. It has launched TOBi, an artificial intelligence-based chatbot to provide much faster customer support via the web chat service.
Vodafone claims that the chatbot can handle a wide range of user queries that includes order tracking, device troubleshooting queries, and your account usage queries, and many other questions.
In a recent report, it was revealed that 55 percent of the people in the UK are looking for an instant reply from customer support people and some of them are okay to wait for the support people to respond.
Vodafone UK says that 75 percent of the consumers aged 18-25 are using instant messenger every day and TOBi is the operator’s solution for the fastest customer support via web chat. The new AI-based chatbot service will be made available to all regions of the UK in coming days. However, the service is already available to some customers through Vodafone’s web portal.
The telecom operator also promises that TOBi will be available to access from MyVodafone app later this month, which will be a lot easier for users to get advice from support team on the go.
Speaking about the new AI assistant TOBi, it is built by two cutting-edge technologies- IBM Watson and LivePerson. The TOBi will try to answer the basic queries of a consumer and if the question is intensive for a support person to deal, the chat will be transferred to advisors if needed. Vodafone will also be improving the chatbot by taking the feedback directly from the consumers.
“If customers have a question or want to raise an issue, we know they don’t want to wait. So introducing TOBi is an exciting step forward in giving our customers the quick and seamless service they want. Our ambition is to give our customers the best experience possible: TOBi is another important step in our journey to achieving that ambition,” said Neil Blagden, Vodafone UK CS&O director.
Also, Vodafone started recruiting customer support people across Midlands, the North of England, and Scotland. The company creates a total of 2100 customer service roles for the same. There’s no relevant information on when the company will bring the service to India, though.
