Vodafone has revealed the results of its ‘Just Ask Once’ strategy after implementing it globally last year.
At London’s annual Call and Contact Centre Expo, the telecommunications company revealed how its customer-centric approach to limit consumer frustration has improved its overall loyalty.
This solution is aligned with Vodafone’s strategy to transform customer experience.
Customer experience results have been improved since the strategy launch in July 2025, with 9 out of 15 of its markets leading with this new strategy, resulting in a six percent reduction in company detraction after the first few months.
When first researching customer experience strategies, Vodafone discovered that seamless interactions were a high priority for customers, with frequent causes of company detraction relating to negative customer experiences.
These incidences included: holding for additional agents, transferring calls, repeated conversations, and a company’s failure to keep promises.
In fact, they had discovered that customers who had experienced at least one bad experience from customer service were 4 times more likely to abandon the company.
Melda Sofuoglu, Global Senior CX and Service Excellence Senior Manager at Vodafone, explained how the customer expectations have grown since the rise of AI in the CX space:
“We are operating in a rapidly changing industry – expectations have grown to 24/7 service.”
However, research revealed that as long as customer interactions remained seamless, then customers would be more likely to remain with a company that avoided friction.
And when companies failed to deliver on results, 46% of customers would research Google to find answers to their issues, driving enterprise intensity to produce better results as customers discover what sets the bar in the CX space.
Just Ask Once
Vodafone has since researched some of the leading customer services spaces online, including Google and Octopus, to take elements and utilize the most productive strategy for resolving customer complaints.
The strategy, known as ‘Just Ask Once’, began in 2024 to target pain points in the company’s Albania market, with the aim of resolving a customer issue after just one interaction.
This strategy utilized generative AI omnichannel service to avoid customers re-explaining issues and call waiting times to resolve queries, whilst also keeping customers in the loop if issues cannot be solved immediately to avoid confusion or miscommunication via text.
This is also done by deploying Vodafone’s suite of capabilities, such as Super-TOBi, a generative AI assistant that handles complex conversations and queries in comparison to the standatd TOBi chat bot.
This strategy, however, is not designed to elminate human agents from the mix, but rather to place them at the center of this strategy with chat bots as a second option during traffic spikes, with many of these queries being completed through human agents rather than bots to avoid frustration.
These bots simply allow agents to complete Vodafone’s vision for setting the new standard for customer experience centered around meaningful interactions and added loyalty, even when mistakes occur.
This has involved significant investments in human agent training to keep them adapted and involved in the consistently changing state of customer experience, rather than eliminating their positions for AI-only service.
However, Vodafone has experienced setbacks in this strategy amongst social media responses.
Aimie Jago, Global Senior CX and Service Excellence Senior Manager at Vodafone, explained how the company are managing the influx from social media:
“In some markets we see some backlash on social media – its more about previous customer experience through chat bots.”
Resolving past customer interactions remains challenging for Vodafone, arguing that to tackle this previous frustration into returned loyalty they need to experience this new transformation.
This has affected the company’s ROI after significant investments; however, they are expecting to receive this once business case justification takes place.
Furthermore, Vodafone’s continues to remain vulnerable, as this strategy depends primarily on technology, investment, and strong sponsorship, due to its small space within the CX space.
Today, this strategy is being implemented by Vodafone’s global markets, aiming to champion the voice of the customer by creating a strong customer community, available to customers through the Vodafone app.
