Online Reporter
Business Reporter
Econet Wireless is implementing more than 20 major artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives aimed at improving its customer experience and overall business operations.
The company recently recruited more than 100 university graduate engineers to work on its AI projects. Most of the initiatives are being developed for Econet’s internal use and cover virtually every aspect of its operations.
AI is already helping the company identify and resolve customer-service problems, even at the individual subscriber level.
“This technology is remarkable, and every day we are discovering new ways to identify and solve problems that were extremely difficult to address in the past,” said Econet Wireless CEO Dr Douglas Mboweni.
“Take network faults, for example: we can now trace a fault within minutes, whereas previously it could take us hours or even days.”
In another breakthrough, Dr Mboweni said the company can now instantly diagnose problems affecting customers’ mobile phones – even when customers are unaware that a problem exists.
“We recently discovered that more than a million handsets had been configured at the wrong speed, preventing customers from properly accessing services such as TikTok and YouTube, or watching short videos without buffering,” Dr Mboweni said.
“With AI, we can now identify the affected handsets. We will, in fact, soon advise customers on how to change their settings or invite them to visit our shops for assistance.”
Econet is intensifying its investment in AI as it seeks to improve the quality of its services and introduce new revenue-generating products.
Dr Mboweni said the company was still at the beginning of its AI journey, but the early results were highly encouraging.
“We are learning quickly and investing in both people and infrastructure,” he said. “We now have access to AI capabilities at a scale unmatched in Africa, supported by our own cloud infrastructure, which is being deployed right now, as we speak.”
