Connecting customers and the wider community with care and purpose is at the heart of Vodafone Ireland’s offering. It’s something Ciaran Barrett, the company’s commercial operations director, has seen at first hand for more than 20 years.
“I’ve worked across many different areas in Vodafone, which has provided me with a real understanding of all the moving parts both in the business and in the industry. What has been constant throughout is the cycle of innovation,” he says.
That includes everything from the advent of pay-as-you-go prepaid mobile phones to becoming a complete business solutions provider for some of the biggest public and private sector organisations in the country, to the provision of fibre in the home.
Barrett took up his current role four years ago, with responsibility for looking after some 2.4 million customers. “It’s about making sure they have the best possible experience across all our customer frontline and digital touch points,” he says.
“A huge part of that is down to the customer care Vodafone offers. When you think of the old traditional contact centre set up, it was based on handling vast volumes of contacts with enormous availability and we were keen to change that to reflect our customer needs around 24/7 support and the ability to self serve.”
Today, customer care is available around the clock and accessible via a variety of channels, both online and by phone. “We now have many different routes for our customers to either self-serve or talk to our advisers,” says Barrett.
That has reduced call volumes and improved call centre performance enormously. Typically, the vast majority of queries are routine. “It’s often portrayed as if every contact is a problem but that is far from the truth,” says Barrett. “A lot of the time it’s just that people want clarifications and assurance about things, such as balances and billing details.”
The company has invested heavily in its care proposition, which has made it a differentiator in the market. “We are a market-leading premium provider, and that’s what our customers expect,” says Barrett. The results are clearly measurable, with a third fewer customer contacts today than four years ago. “We’re giving customers less reason to contact us, and when they do, they’re getting a better experience.”
The company uses data to drive a deeper understanding of its customer care proposition, viewing each contact as an opportunity to improve resolution rates, agent quality and customer satisfaction levels. “Because of advances in data and AI, we are getting a much more complete picture and a deeper understanding of the customer experience. That has enabled us to really target those areas there was an opportunity to improve.”
The introduction of TOBi, a virtual assistance service available on the Vodafone support portal, helps customers to manage their account, check bills and solve problems. “It means our customers can access us 24/7 and get an instant answer,” says Barrett. TOBi answers up to 70 per cent of contact queries covering everything from billing queries, roaming information and advice on getting the most of our products and solutions.
The system is learning all the time and resolving increasingly sophisticated queries, freeing up agents for more complex considerations. AI also allows the company better oversight of every interaction rather than relying on samples. “We’re now assessing every customer contact,” Barrett says, of what has become a virtuous circle of continuous improvement. “AI is allowing us to feed coaching interventions and prompts to agents as to how they could do things better. So it’s helping to make our agents’ lives easier, as well as giving customers a better experience.”
What is coming next is earlier interventions and greater personalisation of service. “The data-rich insights we have now give us a greater capability to map processes and identify gaps. My hope is we will continue to be proactive, giving customers less reasons to contact us, with agentic AI providing deeper understanding and resolution.”
As a recent example of these improvements, Vodafone launched its ‘Just Ask Once’ customer committment. “This is where we commit to a customer only having to ask once for their query to be resolved,” Barrett explains.
Wider impact
As head of the charity Vodafone Foundation and head of sustainable business at Vodafone Ireland, Liz Roche ensures that care and purpose are at the heart of the company’s wider impact too. She also leads a digital skills project across Europe on behalf of Vodafone Group, called Hi Digital. The free programme is designed to empower older people with the confidence and competence to make the most of the internet and their devices.
Vodafone partners with organisations such as Friends of the Elderly, as well as libraries nationwide. Not alone does it provide information about staying safe online, avoiding scams and fraud, but the programme also ensures over-65s can pop in for dedicated one-to-one support for their devices on Friday mornings at Vodafone stores across the country. No purchase is required and users of the service don’t even have to be Vodafone customers. “It’s really well used,” says Roche.
The Vodafone Foundation is also behind Tozi, a mobile app developed in collaboration with DCU’s Anti-Bullying Centre and Childline, which provides 11- to 14-year-olds with round-the-clock support to help them explore the digital world safely. It covers everything from cyberbullying to how to make sure their password isn’t hacked, to evolving subjects such as AI.
The foundation also runs Vodafone’s Instant Network Emergency Response, enabling trained Vodafone volunteers to restore vital connectivity in the event of emergencies around the world: to survivors, refugees, search-and-rescue teams and aid agencies.
“We believe everybody should be included as technology advances,” says Roche. “The foundation exists to help people feel more connected, more confident and able to participate in society, and not for technology to be a barrier and have people excluded. That’s what we are all about.”
