Press Releases

Budapest, December 11, 2018 11:00

• This summer Telekom’s customer service replaced its traditional push-button manual system with a virtual assistant solution.
• The artificial intelligence based Hungarian speaking solution, called VANDA, takes incoming calls, understands the needs of customers and directs callers to a competent expert for the problem as swiftly as possible. The application is easy to automate and is able to fully perform recurring routine tasks.
• Telekom and T-Systems Hungary jointly examine further development options of the system, such as using Vanda as a chatbot in Telekom’s online customer service channels.
• Besides customer service tasks T-Systems’ business assistant solution may also be used for the simplification of IT administration and services, banking
  services or even to perform surveys in the future.

Magyar Telekom presented VANDA, the virtual business assistant, this spring to its customers. Since summer all calls made to the customer service are taken by the artificial intelligence based Hungarian speaking VANDA thus replacing the traditional push-button menu system, the IVR (Interactive Voice Response). VANDA is able to understand the customer's intention and may direct the call to the most competent expert as quickly as possible. Besides, it is easy to automate and is able to complete recurring routine tasks from the beginning to the end. Such automated tasks are e.g. the sale of supplementary mobile fee packages, provision of information on the customers’ mobile balance, taking error reports on the fixed line service and supplying status information on orders in progress. Telekom continuously enriches VANDA’s skills and the number of tasks that it is able to perform.

“In this busy world of ours customer needs change rapidly and operators are expected to solve issues almost immediately, with a very short response time. As a result we embark upon new, innovative solutions besides classical customer service channels to be able to respond to customer needs as swiftly as possible and to excel in customer satisfaction. Thanks to VANDA the time of directing customer calls to the relevant expert is now reduced to its fraction. Besides, the number of customer requests that can be fully performed by VANDA, is increasing. This helps our customers to solve their problems much quicker as well as our customer service staff to devote more time to give custom-tailored advice and to solve complex issues in the highest possible quality” - said Katalin Méry, Magyar Telekom’s customer service director, about the key benefits of the new system.  Customers started to use VANDA with genuine interest. The positive feedback from customers is mainly focused on quick solutions and the new approach. This year VANDA was given Develor Consulting Plc.’s “Best Customer Experience Project” award. The votes of the senior experts in the decision making panel were cast for Telekom’s virtual assistant because the service ensures an absolutely new approach and provides a measurable positive impact on customer experience.

With the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning VANDA’s skills develop with each phone call. Telekom and T-Systems Hungary jointly examine further development options of using Vanda as a chatbot in Telekom’s online customer service channels.  As a further development of the artificial intelligence-based system Telekom is about to enter into the development of several further innovative solutions. One of them is to equip VANDA with emotional intelligence whereby the solution will be able to adjust its communication to the actual emotion of customers, identified on the basis of the tone of their voice.

“VANDA’s service perfectly aligns into T-Systems Hungary’s digital developments: as an artificial intelligence platform VANDA helps us and our customers to jointly create an artificial intelligence supported, custom-tailored business solution to automate communication-based processes. As a virtual assistant VANDA is unique in the region not just because the voice and chat function are operated from the same platform but also because it is the only solution that may provide support in most Eastern European languages” - said Tamás Tápai T-Systems Hungary’s Chief Officer responsible for info-communication solutions.

The successful operation of the solution at Magyar Telekom’s customer service - and the relevant joint experience - enable T-Systems to upgrade the application with the use of the experience gathered so far and to immediately offer a voice and chat based business and customer service assistant to its customers.
 Among the most important areas of use Tamás Tápai highlighted the customer service functions of banks and insurance companies or cases where VANDA is used for the support of the ServiceNow program recommended for IT infrastructure operation. Thanks to the latter area of use the company’s employees can discuss their IT problems while chatting with VANDA.