“It wasn’t a multi-month project costing a small fortune,” added Knoop. “You just need to plug APIs together. It was done in a matter of days. Similarly, we used open APIs to create a smart workaround, which allows us to extract an audio file, run it through a voice recognition engine and ingest the text so TOBi can handle such conversations. That innovation took less than two weeks — from design to production.”
All set for digital growth
Now, TOBi fields 100% of all messaging conversations and understands more than 230 customer intents. First-contact success rates increased from 16% on launch to 44%.
Users of the digital service aren’t stereotypical. “You might expect to deal mostly with younger customers, but that isn’t the case, probably because everyone messages friends and families every day,” said Knoop.
“Also, inquiries can actually be quite complex. So, messaging is often the customer’s go-to channel because they can carry around a complete record of the conversation on their smartphone that enables them to retrieve order numbers, installation codes and so on.”
With 1,500 agents already dedicated to messaging, Vodafone is strongly positioned at the forefront of digital customer experience. “In Germany, 95% of all smartphones have WhatsApp installed and it comprises around 80% of messages, followed by Apple Business Chat at 15% and SMS text at 5%,” Knoop concluded. “Within the next two years, we expect messaging to account for half of all contacts. Customers especially like the fact they can send a photo or screenshot of a bill or red flickering router, for example, and TOBi will instantly recognise it.”
