O2 lines up robots to handle customer enquiries

O2 is seeking to cut costs in its customer service operation by encouraging people to talk to a new artificially intelligent robot rather than contact its call centres.

The mobile operator’s parent company, the Spanish telecoms giant Telefonica, unveiled the new voice recognition technology, called Aura, at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona.

The system is scheduled to be introduced in the UK in the next year and is designed to answer customers’ questions about their account, such as how much of their monthly data allowance is left or what their next bill will be.

Customers will also be able ask to add new services, such as a roaming package, or cancel them, without speaking to a person.

Mark Evans, O2’s chief executive, said Aura represented the next stage of the company’s efforts to encourage customers to serve themselves if they have a basic inquiry.

Calls to the operator have already halved as people increasingly turn to a smartphone app to manage their accounts.  It is intended that the addition of artificial intelligence and voice recognition will reduce costs further, however, and increase loyalty by making it easier to interact with O2.

Mr Evans has been trimming costs recently to get the operator ready for a potential £10bn stock market float this year, in which Telefonica would sell a minority stake. The operator’s call centres are outsourced to Capita.

A reduction in work could lead to job cuts that would be among the first in the UK directly attributable to consumer usage of artificial intelligence.