Vodafone is hoping for more resolved concerns and better answers to questions from the new SUPER TOBi.
Ralf Liebhold – shutterstock.com
After seven years of service, Vodafone has given its in-house helper TOBi an upgrade. Until now, the chatbot, which was active on the website, via WhatsApp and in the “My Vodafone app”, operated according to rigid decision trees and sometimes responded stoically.
However, since he mainly handled simple navigation questions and customer concerns, which were based on a fixed decision-making process, the track record was also limited. Because the chatbot lacked the necessary skills, it forwarded almost every second customer concern to customer advisors, reports the Düsseldorf-based telecommunications provider.
Back in 2024, Vodafone announced that it would improve its chatbot using GenAI. The AI upgrade for TOBi should be based on Microsoft’s GenAI platform Azure OpenAI. At the beginning of 2024, the Düsseldorf-based company entered into a ten-year strategic partnership in the areas of IoT, AI and cloud services. The aim was to use the investment of 120 million euros to give the aging assistant, which was based on IBM’s Watson platform and used software from LivePerson, a significant performance boost.
