Why Is Vodacom Financial and Digital Services Investing In AI, Big Data, and Analytics?

Big data, Artificial intelligence (AI), and business intelligence capabilities are at the heart of Vodacom’s efforts to enhance customer experience.

Vodacom Financial and Digital Services are using data analytics to help spot trends and identify customer behaviour patterns.

The analytics allows the Vodacom South Africa subsidiary to better meet customers’ demands.

This also enables the company to make the right decisions underpinned by real-life data.

“We are currently investing a lot around data analytics, big data, and AI to understand different behavioural insights of our customers to ensure we are personalising our propositions,” said Mariam Cassim, the Chief Officer of Vodacom Financial and Digital Services.

To exemplify, Vodacom offers device insurance.

In the year to end-March, Vodacom Financial and Digital services saw a 8.3% rise in new insurance policies to 2.1 million.

Vodacom Financial and Digital Services are using data analytics to customise insurance policies.

For example, data analytics can be used to analyse the behaviour of two customers who just bought an iPhone 12, and both are looking to insure their devices.

Typically both will pay the same premium price for an insurance policy for an iPhone 12.

Cassim says that using big data Vodacom Financial and Digital Services can distinguish the behaviour of both customers.

“The first customer could be a journalist and is on the road the whole day meeting different clients and people,” said Cassim.

“What are the things we found? There is a correlation between the number of base stations that the journalist travels through and his propensity to lose, drop and damage his phone.”

“It is very different to the second customer, who is a stay home mom and only travels maybe one or two base stations.

“Because all she does is drop the kids off at school and meet her friends for morning coffee or go to the gym and back home again. So, her risk of losing, dropping, and breaking the phone is a lot lower.”

In that case, Cassim said the company would price the iPhone 12 insurance lower for the mom versus the journalist.

“That’s something our competitors can’t do because they don’t have access to that level of information on their customers,” she explains.

“So, that’s one example where we are using big data and machine learning AI to help us understand our customers better.

“And always take the value of that big data and give it back to the customers. So, they can see the benefit of their data.”

Data analytics, big data, and AI will be enormous once Vodacom launches its Super App in the third quarter.

Also read: What is VodaTrade, And How Can It Benefit You As A Merchant? and Why Vodacom Financial and Digital Services’ Super App Present a Huge Opportunity for Developers?