Vodafone invests in Open AI for AI customer service
With the help of Microsoft's artificial intelligence (AI), Vodafone's chatbot "TOBI" will handle customer issues more extensively. Simultaneously, the AI is expected to offset significant savings on employees in Germany.
Vodafone will invest approximately 140 million Euros in Microsoft and OpenAI systems this year to improve customer query handling. By employing advanced AI, the chatbot "TOBI" will respond faster than before and resolve customer issues more effectively, according to the company in Düsseldorf.
The chatbot was introduced in Vodafone's customer service five years ago and was equipped with the real voice of a Vodafone employee. Last year in Germany, the system received over eight million customer inquiries and resolved around 65% of them independently, without requiring a human employee.
By utilizing OpenAI technology in the Microsoft Azure cloud environment, these values are expected to be further improved. "TOBI" will react more quickly than before and resolve customer issues more effectively. These results were demonstrated in Portugal and Italy, where Microsoft Azure OpenAI is already in use. In Germany, the new system is expected to launch in the coming weeks and will assist customers with hardware issues and setting up fixed-line routers, among other things.
AI replaces employees
Vodafone Germany announced in March that it intended to save around 2000 jobs and relocate them. At the time, the company employed approximately 15,000 employees, about one third of whom were in the North Rhine-Westphalia state capital. Therefore, around 13% of the workforce was affected by these cost-cutting measures. In the context of these savings, it was also announced in March that there would be a greater focus on AI. Additionally, previously separate customer service systems for cable connections and mobile phones were to be merged.
The technology used by Vodafone is a Microsoft product, but it contains a lot of AI from OpenAI. As a major investor in OpenAI, Microsoft is not only able to use ChatGPT in its own products but also technologies like DALL-E, the image generator, or the speech transcription model Whisper, which can nearly error-free convert spoken language into written text.
Vodafone's investments in Microsoft and OpenAI systems aim to enhance the capabilities of their AI chatbot "TOBI," leading to faster response times and more effective issue resolution, potentially resulting in significant savings due to dismissals. This strategy aligns with Vodafone Germany's announcement of cost-cutting measures, aiming to save around 2000 jobs and increase their focus on AI technology.
