Vodafone's TOBi Chatbot seems to be stuck in 2007

I really did feel for Cherie Landman as I read through the transcript of her chatbot experience with Vodafone's TOBi. She's posted 10 screenshots on her LinkedIn Post setting out the whole process of her trying to get a simple answer about her upcoming roaming plans.

It looks like TOBi needs a bit of an upgrade.

This section of her write-up had me smiling:

THEN! And this is what really got me… it was my responsibility to keep the conversation alive!!! I was asked to send random words every 2 minutes or the chat would time out. I’m multi tasking and chat 💬 should give me that flexibility!!

Oh dear.

Now then, two points:

Point 1 – Cherie knows a thing or two about Conversational AI on account of her being Head of UK Sales for conversational AI leader, boost.ai. (I would imagine that Vodafone is not a current customer of boost.ai)

Point 2 – Look at the money Vodafone and others are spending to answer elementary questions from customers. Take Cherie's example and multiply it by... what... 25,000 conversations like this, every day? The total inefficiency of it all is just breathtaking.

Cherie, my trick: I'm a Revolut Ultra customer which includes 3GB of global roaming (apart from Oman!) and then for anywhere I need a bit more, I then use Airalo.

And a final option which I'm sure a boost.ai supplied Chatbot would have highlighted immediately to you, is this one:

Vodafone Travel offers a global data eSIM. And by the way, Morocco costs $13.50 for 3GB...