Vodafone set to make use of AI to assist clients: How will it work?

If there is one thing most Britons can agree on, it’s that customer service has gone downhill in recent years.

While the pandemic was once the excuse for poor service, both the public and private sectors have continued to flounder in recent years.

One area that has continued to receive a slap on the wrists from the regulator has been the mobile and broadband industry.

While overall complaints are down, some well-known names, including Vodafone, have come under fire for the sheer number of customer complaints.

While challenger brands can adapt, it takes some serious brunt work to reverse legacy systems that have not kept up with customer demand and changes in technology.

It is taking more time and money for firms to pivot to technology that serves the customer well to start to make some serious change. 

Jon Shaw, Vodafone’s commercial operations director, believes he is the man for the job.

Having already improved the company’s complaints performance, he’s now turning his attention to how artificial intelligence might improve service. 

We visited its Stoke contact centre to see how he’s gotten to grips with handling complaints and where the AI future is heading.

How telco firms ‘got confident too quickly’ with tech

A recent Ofcom report revealed that customers continue to struggle to reach an agent at telecoms firms while others say they have to make lengthy and repeated requests to cancel.

Complaints handling continues to be the biggest grumble among mobile and broadband customers.

While Vodafone complaints are now broadly below the industry average, it would be remiss to dismiss the issues that remain.

Shaw says telecoms ‘got too confident too quickly’ and at Vodafone customers were pushed to use chatbots for complicated queries before they were ready.

When he came into the role two years ago, he says he wanted to make it easier to talk to Vodafone representatives. It’s a simple change but one that has been clearly influenced by Shaw’s years in retailing.

‘I wanted to create some processes to get better feedback from our frontline teams on what’s not working. I also wanted to go through every complaint.’

The approach has paid dividends for Vodafone, but wider customer services remain. The overreliance on technology that often isn’t up to scratch means customers are still left waiting for simple requests.

Shaw says it has led to ‘difficult conversations’ at Vodafone: ‘Rather than relying on technology to resolve it for the customer, actually be there for the customer… What are the things that they’re telling us don’t work? Then do something about them.’

Why chatbots haven’t worked

What Shaw seems to bring is a uniquely human side to customer service. 

Automation and bots have rendered customer service near on pointless for plenty of people… but when something goes seriously wrong, it’s clear the chatbots don’t cut it.

It has been inflicted on consumers across both the public and private sectors. In some instances it works well, but too often have consumers been left in the lurch unable to speak to a human.

‘They’re good if it’s a really simple request but I don’t think they’re quite the level of Alexa and Siri where if you try and say more than multiple sentences to them. 

‘It then becomes distorted and confused. That’s why we pared some of that back.

‘At the moment, if it’s not a really simple request it will end up with one of our trained colleagues anyway.’

Instead, Vodafone extended its call centre opening times to 10pm during the week to fit in better with people’s schedules.

‘Their children are still up, it’s too early to call… especially when I have a complicated issue. I need to speak to you, you need to be open.’

Call centre staff dealing with ‘life events’ like bereavement are trained and kept separately to other colleagues in their Stoke contact centre.

‘I know personally many years ago when I lost my mum and dad, the companies I will always speak fondly of are the ones that made the bereavement processes easier and not the ones that wanted five copies of a birth certificate, sixteen different other proofs.

‘They’re making it more difficult at a difficult time. We’ve tried to take into what we’re doing in terms of when we need to be about.’

It’s a noble pursuit but ultimately, it comes down to brand perception and how it affects Vodafone’s bottom line.

‘The world we live in now, not just social media but communication generally, everybody will tell everybody about their good and bad experiences with a brand straight away, and that’s a very good reason to try and do the right thing.’

Elsewhere, Shaw has doubled down on Vodafone’s presence on the high street at a time when other companies are scaling back.

Shaw says it’s not just the elderly – the reality is that most demographics are using it, albeit for different reasons.

The stores have become so important that there is a mock-up store in the Vodafone contact centre to show staff how it works in reality.

Could AI be the solution to improving service?

Despite bolstering their presence on the high street, technology remains at the forefront of Shaw’s approach to improving customer service.

‘In Vodafone, we’ve been working on how we make AI useful for our customers and colleagues. We don’t see AI as replacing our people we see it as enhancing our people.’

It’s a line that has been used by most companies looking to reduce headcount down the line, but Shaw is adamant that it is about helping colleagues.

‘Say you call the call centre, the AI’s almost like an assistant to our agent, helping them correctly diagnose what’s wrong.

‘Say you’re really struggling with signal, voice dropping, the AI will help them diagnose quicker – whats the solution, is there a setting on their phone they need to change, is there something in the local area. It’ll search for it and do it.

‘We don’t see it as brilliant, AI’s coming that’ll make us more efficient, could it get our costs down? We see it in opposite way – it’ll make our colleagues even better from a customer’s point of view.’

Are staff excited by the prospect? 

Speaking to staff at Vodafone’s contact centre suggests there are genuinely ways it could work.

Staff in their ‘SOS’ hub at the heart of operations, in particular, said it would make their lives significantly easier.

Shaw says: ‘How we’ve explained it to them and the prototypes they’ve seen and the systems they’re using so far, they’re less fearful now they’ve seen it more. 

‘When we first were telling them we were looking at bits and pieces they were like what does it mean for us, I can see where this is going.’

Shaw is a breath of fresh air in what has become one of the worst parts of dealing with a company in modern Britain.

However, it feels too early to tell whether AI will be a real solution to the issues, and it could lead to a further encroachment of chatbots into our lives. The exact opposite of what Britons are calling out for.