Case Study: Vodafone Ireland improves conversational assistant performance with IBM watsonx Assistant

Redesigning conversational assistant to improve performance

Vodafone Ireland, the telecommunications company behind the virtual assistant TOBi, wanted to modernize its digital customer service experience and improve a resolution rate that had stalled at 35%. Working with IBM Technology Expert Labs, Vodafone also needed to take advantage of newer capabilities in IBM watsonx Assistant after running on an earlier version of the platform.

IBM redeployed TOBi on the latest IBM watsonx Assistant, adding generative AI, RAG-based responses, a stronger NLU engine, and self-learning features. The update helped Vodafone achieve a 3x faster turnaround for creating new conversational journeys, up to a 20% increase in containment rates in some areas, and an 80% reduction in misunderstood customer utterances despite less NLU training data.

Vodafone