Meet SuperTOBI – Vodafone’s new generative AI virtual assistant now serving customers in multiple countries

Vodafone today announced that SuperTOBi, its new customer-centric virtual assistant powered by Generative AI (GenAI), is now rolling out across Europe.

SuperTOBi, powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI, can understand and respond to complex customer requests faster than traditional chatbots. It has been introduced in Italy and Portugal and will begin serving customers in Germany and Turkey starting this month. Other markets will follow later this year.

The online chat service is the next generation of Vodafone’s TOBi chatbot, which already supports customers in 13 countries across Europe and Africa and understands 11 different languages. SuperTOBi is a key initiative in Vodafone’s customer experience transformation, which is supported by a reallocated investment of €140 million this financial year.

SuperTOBi can interpret entire sentences and phrases, overcoming the limitations of existing chatbot technologies that can typically only answer simple questions based on a few keywords. It also engages in more natural conversation with customers for a more personalized experience, rather than one- or two-word answers, and it automatically forwards a question it can’t answer to someone who can.

Vodafone Portugal customers already benefit from SuperTOBi when booking appointments. As a result, first-time resolution rates have increased from 15% to 60% and Vodafone’s online recommendation scores (where respondents are asked to rate their experience) have improved from 14 points to 64 points – anything above 50 points is considered a good result. Other customer journeys such as billing are also being added.

SuperTOBi is complemented by an enhanced bot assistant used by Vodafone customer service employees, called SuperAgent, as well as an enhanced search function on Vodafone customer-facing websites, called SuperSearch.

Built on Microsoft Azure OpenAI’s Agent Copilot solution, SuperAgent helps human agents quickly search and locate answers to complex queries or multiple questions. In Ireland, SuperAgent supports agents by sending them a summary of their online customer conversation, so customers don’t have to repeat themselves. It also only uses information from Vodafone’s private, enterprise-wide knowledge base, ensuring the information is more reliable than public sources.