Vodafone Empresas announces AI agents for more than 100,000 small businesses

Vodafone Empresas, the business division of Vodafone Spain, is accelerating the rollout of artificial intelligence agents across more than 100,000 small and medium-sized business customers. It announced the move on October 5 in its press room.

The agents are used to automate call handling, appointment and booking management, incident resolution and some administrative tasks. Vodafone gives the example of a car repair shop, a clinic or a restaurant: when staff are busy with other customers or the premises are closed, the agent answers right away, holds a conversation in natural language, books the appointment and passes the information to the company's management system.

Customers pay for actual use, with no large upfront investment, and can add users according to the needs of each business. Vodafone says it supports companies throughout the process, from choosing the use cases and training their staff to deploying the solutions and measuring the results. It is also specializing its sales force of around 1,000 professionals to move from selling connectivity to technology advice, and it complements the offer with cybersecurity services for small businesses.

"The goal is to free employees from low-value tasks so they can spend their time on what really improves the relationship with the customer and moves the business forward," says Carlos Ortiz, head of SMEs at Vodafone Empresas.

The announcement does not give prices or name the technology partners behind the agents.