Brief
Vodacom CIO Mohamed Sami says autonomous AI agents will soon reshape customer service
The group CIO says AI agents will handle more customer problems and boost developer productivity.
By Felo News Desk · Published
Vodacom Group Chief Information Officer Mohamed Sami told TechCentral’s Meet the CIO podcast that autonomous AI agents capable of solving customer issues without human intervention represent the next major shift in customer experience and are "very soon" rather than years away.
Sami said Vodacom’s existing chatbots and voice bots already manage a large share of calls, while AI tools assist human agents by retrieving information across systems. He added that the degree of autonomy depends on the intelligence and orchestration behind the agents.
The CIO also noted that small language models are being used to help larger models handle isiZulu, Swahili, Amharic and Egyptian Arabic dialects, and that a standard set of AI agents across the software development lifecycle is improving developer productivity without cutting jobs.
Key facts
- Vodacom CIO Mohamed Sami says autonomous AI agents will soon handle customer problems without human hand‑off. (techcentral.co.za)
- Vodacom’s chatbots and voice bots already manage a considerable share of customer calls. (techcentral.co.za)
- Small language models are used to support larger models for isiZulu, Swahili, Amharic and Egyptian Arabic dialects. (techcentral.co.za)
Sources
- [1] techcentral.co.za — originally reported as “Meet the CIO | Vodacom's Mohamed Sami on the agentic future”
