Thursday 05 September, 2019
Vodafone Fiji has achieved yet another milestone today by introducing Fiji’s first Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven contact center chatbot. Undoubtedly, the biggest digital launch of the month, “Joe” is Vodafone Fiji’s 24/7 digital assistant, designed to improve customer experience, allowing a seamless conversation for several queries.
Vodafone’s Chief Commercial Officer, Ronald Prasad revealed that ‘’Joe” is highly skilled to provide responses to simple inquiries such as balance checks, phone prices, checking sim status, APN settings, information on plans, roaming and current promotions.
“Joe” is integrated into several backend systems using a series of API’s, which powers it to provide both static FAQs based responses and dynamic information. The aim is to understand the customer’s question and respond accordingly. The chatbot learns and improves as it interacts with customers and over time, the responses will become much more streamlined. There are more dynamic use cases planned to be rolled out for “Joe” in the next few weeks and these include live agent hand over, opt-in/out of plans and dynamic recharge.
“Joe” has a local persona to provide Vodafone customers with similar warmth that our customers are used to when engaging with our contact center. “Bula” can be used to start a conversation and “Moce” to end.
Prasad said, “Vodafone Fiji has always been one step ahead in terms of introducing cutting edge technology, so Fijians can experience and enjoy the latest in technology. These are exciting times as we start interacting with AI and Machine Learning (ML) technology to help automate routine tasks and in the process better customer experience. There are many use cases that are applicable to our market and we will be engaging with our customers to use this technology to improve business productivity”.
What exactly is a Chatbot (Digital Assistant)?
Chatbots are some of the industry’s newest tools designed to simplify the interaction between humans and computers and have been very popular in service, banking, airline, and retail verticals. A chatbot is a software that uses AI and ML technologies to simulate a conversation (or a chat) with a user in natural language through messaging applications, websites, and mobile apps.
“Joe” is powered by some of the world’s best AI, ML and cloud technology. This is a great platform to start utilizing AI technology, which has a lot of use cases for many other industries (both internal for employees and external
for customers) right here in Fiji”, says Prasad. “Vodafone can help you boost operational efficiency, drive cost savings and enable you to offer value, convenience and improve customer satisfaction”.
What inspired Vodafone to invest in this technology?
There are many use cases for AI that have resulted in huge business benefits. AI technologies are great at driving or even replacing the lower-level, repetitive tasks, but businesses often achieve the greatest performance improvements when humans and machines work together. To make the most of this technology, we look at AI as a means of augmenting and complementing, rather than replacing human capabilities. We are open-minded and employ a willingness to embrace new opportunities wherever and whenever possible.
Our insights show that 10% of calls into our contact center are for repetitive and easy to find information such as account balance, phone prices, APN settings, etc. A chatbot employing AI and ML can easily perform these tasks, freeing up agents to focus on value-adding tasks such as up-selling, cross-selling and handling complex issues. We will benefit in terms of delivering better customer experience, faster handling times, automated response 24/7 and best of all, save time and improve cost management.
Needless to say, technological innovation in the past few years has had a huge impact on our lives, and this will continue. It is changing how people connect, interact, live, work and play. New services and technologies such as Autonomous, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Internet of Things (IoT), Tap n Go, QR Code payments are already here and changing the way we do business. Prasad says, “The next big thing will be a lot of small things and we need to be well ahead of the game if we are to survive in this ever-changing environment”.
Below are some of the areas in which Vodafone’s chatbot solution can help your business.
Download the My Vodafone App and experience “Joe”, Vodafone’s chatbot that is built on the next-generation technology.
