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Company reportedLive since Jul 2024Added Oct 2026

Vodafone

Vodafone rolls out SuperTOBi, a generative AI customer assistant, across Europe

Vodafone upgraded its TOBi chatbot into SuperTOBi using Microsoft Azure OpenAI, starting in Italy and Portugal in 2024. Vodafone reports that first-time resolution for appointment booking in Portugal rose from 15% to 60%.

Improve customer experience

Key figures

Copied exactly from the sources. Copy any figure with its citation.

15%

to 60%

First-time resolution for appointment booking in Portugal1

Up 14 points to 64

Portugal online Net Promoter Score change1

50%

Improvement in first-time resolution of critical journeys in initial tests2

At least one minute

Average reduction in customer call time in initial tests2

What it took

CostNot disclosed
TeamNot disclosed
TimelineNot disclosed

Cost, team size and timeline were not disclosed in the sources.

The problem

Vodafone's existing TOBi assistant answered about 45 million customer questions a month, according to the company, but struggled with complex queries. Vodafone wanted a more natural assistant for harder journeys such as billing.

What they built

SuperTOBi, an upgrade of TOBi that interprets full sentences and holds more natural conversations, handing off to a human agent when it cannot answer. Alongside it Vodafone built SuperAgent, an internal tool that helps customer care staff find answers, and SuperSearch, an improved search tool for its customer-facing sites.

How they did it

Both assistants run on Microsoft Azure OpenAI, under a 10-year strategic partnership Vodafone announced with Microsoft in January 2024. SuperAgent finds answers in Vodafone's company-wide knowledge database. The tools were first tested at one call centre. SuperTOBi went live in Italy and Portugal in July 2024, with Germany and Turkey following and other markets later in the year.

Results

In Portugal, Vodafone reports first-time resolution for appointment booking rose from 15% to 60% and online Net Promoter Score rose 14 points to 64. In earlier tests it reported a 50% improvement in first-time resolution of critical journeys, and calls shorter by at least one minute on average.

Lessons for your project

  1. Upgrade an existing assistant in place rather than starting over, and keep handoff to human agents with a conversation summary.

  2. Pair the customer-facing assistant with a tool for agents (SuperAgent) so human escalations are faster too.

  3. Launch in a few markets first and report results for specific journeys, such as appointment booking, rather than broad claims.

Caveats

  • All figures come from Vodafone's own articles; no independent verification was found.
  • The Portugal result covers a single use case (appointment booking) in one market.
  • The 50% figure is from initial tests at one call centre, described in a May 2024 article, and measures critical journeys such as complex billing queries.

Sources

  2. Vodafone supercharging customer experience with Microsoft's GenAI tools

    Vodafone · 2024-05-23 · Company blog · vodafone.com

Summarized in our own words from the sources above. Spotted an error? See corrections.

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