Since 2013, the use of digital communications has risen and got a further boost in the aftermath of the outbreak of COVID-19. Companies started to take note, and the first ones began to offer customer service via opt-in messaging apps in roughly 2015.

This convenience – the ability to stay connected while also controlling your own personal inflow of messages – is not to be underestimated. For many people, the ability to unplug when desired represents quality of life.

For telecommunications companies in particular, implementing messaging-based customer service can help increase customer loyalty at a time when their business models are undergoing massive change, and it is still unclear how things will shake out in the industry.

One scenario for the future is operators finding new ways to grow by combining different technology elements in their ecosystems for competitive advantage and becoming orchestrators of the network.

Vodafone Germany developed a customer service solution with WhatsApp, the world’s most popular chat app. Customers can exchange messages with the company via audio, text or video. They can also receive and send documents.

Currently, more than 200,000 Vodafone customers are serviced each month via the WhatsApp channel, and 52 percent of them get their problems solved there without having to go to a live chat or a hotline.

As part of its ongoing collaboration with Vodafone, Accenture helped Vodafone set up agile teams and define use cases to enable messaging services. On this journey with Vodafone, Accenture supported Vodafone with best practices learned from similar projects.

Soon after Vodafone began using WhatsApp, TOBi— Vodafone’s artificial intelligence (AI) bot that supports the service —was already solving half of the standard requests that came in.

TOBi is the starting point of any chat initiated by the customer. It is self-learning — it can now recognize more than 250 intents— and only switches over to a human employee when there are questions it cannot answer itself. TOBi is self-learning and only hands over to an employee when there are questions he cannot answer himself. This happens asynchronously.

In an increasingly mobile world, it is no longer enough to master technology; businesses must master the art of the seamless customer experience.