Mohamed Sami, Group CIO of Vodacom, stated that the next major shift in customer experience will be the emergence of autonomous AI agents capable of resolving customer issues without needing to escalate them to a human, and that this will happen much faster than many anticipate.
During the TechCentral Meet the CIO podcast series, sponsored by NTT DATA, Sami noted that Vodacom's chatbots and voice bots already handle a significant portion of customer calls. Furthermore, artificial intelligence tools assist staff agents in finding necessary information, eliminating the need to switch between different systems.
He emphasized that the transition to this new era will not take years but will happen very soon. The degree of autonomy of these agents will depend on the level of intelligence and orchestration behind them.
Additional topics discussed
Sami also touched upon several other subjects. He discussed the boundaries between his role and the role of the Group CTO amid network and IT mergers. The topic of using small language models to support large models in handling isiZulu, Swahili, Amharic dialects, and Egyptian Arabic dialects was also raised.
Moreover, he explained how a standardized set of AI agents throughout the software development lifecycle increases developer productivity and why this has not led to job losses for software engineers. Another issue discussed was Vodacom's attempts to control rising AI token costs, including using orchestrators to distribute tasks among expensive, cheap, and self-hosted models.
Sami also informed the board of directors that cybersecurity is one of the company's biggest risks, and about a program to restore core platforms designed before the era of generative AI. Finally, he shared advice for a young professional wishing to build a career as a modern CIO twenty years from now.