As a leading provider of intelligent visual engagement, TechSee is at the forefront of the digital CX transformation. Our goal is to partner with innovative Tier-1 companies, by providing them with digital solutions that enable them to exceed their customers’ expectations.
Vodafone Group plc is a multinational telecommunications conglomerate committed to customer service excellence. With over 400 million customers, Vodafone is the 4th largest global mobile operator, and the 9th largest telecom by total revenue: US $64.5 billion.
To maintain their leadership position in the industry, Vodafone has placed a strong focus oninnovation, partnering with best-in-class technological solutions that accelerate Vodafone’s digital transformation and improve the Customer Experience by providing quicker, simpler and more effective service.
TechSee-Vodafone partnership
TechSee, a leader in intelligent visual engagement, was initially contracted by VodafoneZiggo, Vodafone’s Dutch operator, to pilot the remote customer assistance technology powered by AI and AR. The company looked to TechSee to provide a customer support solution that would drive down its dispatch rate and its associated costs while boosting customer satisfaction.
With TechSee’s platform, Vodafone Ziggo’s agents were able to see the customer’s environment and more easily troubleshoot technical issues, as well as reconcile billing inquiries in real time. With Vodafone’s innovation, many of the activities that previously required a technician dispatch could now be performed by the agents, acting as virtual technicians — effectively lowering the dispatch rate by as much as 26%.
Offering a simple and interactive remote visual support is expected to save the operator an estimated €1,872,000 in technician dispatches per year. By empowering its customer service representatives to resolve issues on first contact, the operator expects its call center to save a total of €3.1 M annually.
Following this Vodafone innovation proof of concept, two additional rollouts were carried out by Vodafone UK and Vodafone Portugal. Both highly successful, with Vodafone UK reporting that the TechSee implementation resulted in a 12% improvement in FCR and a 68% improvement in customer satisfaction.
VodafoneZiggo, UK and Portugal then expanded TechSee’s service within their operations and additional OpCos launched Vodafone Visual Support, including Vodafone NZ, Spain, Turkey, South Africa, Ireland and Greece.
Vodafone Greece even chose to highlight the competitive advantage created by TechSee’s service by featuring the technology in its TV commercial campaigns. As TechSee’s technology was proven to deliver ROI over and over again, a global partnership with Vodafone Group was established by signing a group agreement with VPC (Vodafone Procurement Company).
The Results
Vodafone employees have been enthusiastic about the TechSee implementation. They report feeling empowered to help customers, especially in situations where the issue is complicated to describe or when there is a language barrier. One agent explained, “TechSee visualizes for us what customers see so we can see the problem, and it makes it easier for me to assess the whole situation.”
Management also appreciates the efficiencies of the technology and its impact on key KPIs. “With TechSee, we are able to resolve a significant number of customer issues remotely, together with the customer, without having to send technicians. Besides the cost savings, our customer satisfaction has increased because we provide more effective service, saving time and solving the issue on the spot,“ said George de Visser, Director Customer Care, Vodafone-Ziggo.
Aside from the wins in technical support, visual guidance empowered agents to handle a wide range of administrative requests in real time — requests that would otherwise require much back-and-forth or even a store visit — such as resolving billing inquiries, obtaining proof of address or eligibility for military discounts, understanding errors in customers’ contracts, and resolving upgrade and trade-in disputes. In one case, it even acted as a fraud prevention mechanism, visually detecting a suspicious charge on a customer’s bill and referring the case to the fraud department.
The Future
Vodafone’s leadership has identified the important role AI and AR play in improving the customer experience and offering more self-service opportunities. In collaboration with TechSee, Vodafone recently launched Agent Assistance capabilities powered by AR and AI Computer Vision. AI helps agents identify devices faster and with greater accuracy. It then offers recommendations for possible issues and solutions.
Simultaneously, Vodafone is in the process of expanding its self-service capabilities — such as unboxing and troubleshooting — by incorporating advanced interactive features that are driven by AI and AR computer vision. .
Vodafone has also begun exploring the process of introducing TechSee’s AR and AI capabilities into the buying experience. Additional visual digital tools — such as co-browsing, screen sharing and more, — are being deployed to streamline the customer experience and boost operational efficiency. Some of these capabilities have already been integrated into the MyVF app, making Vodafone’s innovation more easily accessible to customers.
Summary
Vodafone is strongly committed to innovation as made evident at a recent Future Ready expo, where the company demonstrated the use of holograms in creating a virtual interaction in a virtual space. The goal of the demonstration was to showcase the potential of its high speed networks (5G, FTTX, etc.) along with AR and AI capabilities. At TechSee, we take pride in collaborating with forward-thinking companies, providing them with the innovation required to achieve a better connected tomorrow.
This post was initially published on the TechSee Blog
