Infobip, a global cloud communication company for businesses and a leader in omnichannel customer engagement, recently implemented its Answers chatbot solution at Africell, one of the leading mobile telco operator groups in Africa.

Africell is a fast-growing mobile network operator with a pan-African footprint, providing fast and reliable mobile network coverage and related technology services to more than 15 million subscribers. The company operates in four African countries: Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone and The Gambia. 

According to Nadia Moati, Group Operations Director at Africell, the operator provides a mix of voice and SMS products, data services, and the Afrimoney mobile money platform. The company is committed to providing its customers with the latest technology and services.

Fast-growing customer base

“Africell’s fast-growing data customer base has created a need to provide digital services with high quality customer care. It was this need that motivated us to implement a chatbot,” says Moati.

She explains that Infobip’s Answers solution – a chatbot-building platform that enables organisations to build, test and deploy highly-customised chatbots of different types has presented itself as a mature and proven system for automating and improving interaction with subscribers.

“By deploying the Answers chatbot solution, we will be able to advance our customer engagement strategy and provide contextual support via automated communication. The solution will result in time saving related to addressing basic queries and FAQs from customers, without the need to escalate these to the call centre,” says Moati.

Consistent support

In addition, the Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven chatbot solution is available 24/7 and ensures consistency in terms of the information provided to customers, as well as allowing the mobile operator to measure its customer support centre performance.

“After the successful launch in our key markets, we are now analyzing customer interaction and their comments about the solution to make adjustments as necessary and provide an optimised customer experience”, explains Moati.

“The integration process between the Answers chatbot solution and Africell’s different network nodes was smooth and professional. Judging from the ease of the onboarding process, the interface appears to be really user-friendly.”

Seamless customer journey

Mirza Bukva, Head of Telecom Partnerships Africa at Infobip, says that with the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating digital transformation and impacting the industry heavily, the key

to stand out is to identify the market’s needs and develop a solution that will make customer service a seamless journey.

“Through our customer engagement solutions and the launch of the WhatsApp chatbot service, we have enabled Africell to communicate more efficiently with its subscribers and implement the latest trends in customer communications. It’s an honour to partner with Africell across their four operating company footprints and I am certain this will lead to immediate improvements and increased customer satisfaction,” says Bukva.