Tchibo MOBIL's success story with NFON's botario

AI-powered support for one million customers: personal, even at scale.

By combining its focus on customer experience with botario’s automation platform, Tchibo MOBIL delivers fast, reliable support across chat and phone. The result is scalable service for nearly one million customers, with personal assistance available whenever needed.

Telecommunications: Customer service at scale

Combining automation with personal customer support.

Handling customer inquiries in telecommunications requires speed, clarity and reliability. Customers contact service teams about tariffs, hardware, billing questions or processes such as number portability and roaming.

At the same time, many requests are recurring. Customers frequently want to check their balance, view their remaining data volume or change their tariff.

For service organizations, this creates a balancing act: efficiently handling large volumes of requests while ensuring customers can still reach a human service representative when needed.

To meet these expectations, Tchibo MOBIL introduced an AI-powered service platform that connects automation and human support across chat and phone channels.

Meet Tchibo MOBIL.

Tchibo MOBIL serves nearly one million customers in Germany. The company sees excellent customer service as a central differentiator in a highly competitive telecommunications market.

At Tchibo MOBIL, the customer service team is responsible for ensuring that customers receive the best possible service experience.

The goal is clear: combine modern automation capabilities with a service experience that remains personal and accessible for customers.

The business challenges

Scaling customer service without losing the human touch.

As Tchibo MOBIL continued to grow, the company faced increasing service volumes across multiple channels. Many customer inquiries were repetitive, but still required fast responses. In addition, seasonal promotions such as limited-time tariffs create strong spikes in service requests several times per year.

The existing service infrastructure also presented limitations. Tchibo MOBIL used a traditional voice response system with keypad navigation alongside a chatbot from another provider. Managing two separate systems increased operational complexity and maintenance effort.

Tchibo MOBIL therefore needed a solution that could bring chat and telephony together, automate recurring inquiries and still allow customers to easily reach a human agent when necessary.

The solution

One AI platform connecting chat and voice.

Tchibo MOBIL partnered with botario to create a unified platform for AI-powered customer interactions. Existing chatbot knowledge and data were migrated into the new system, allowing the team to build on previous work and expand automation.

Integrated with Tchibo MOBIL’s CRM, the platform combines chatbot and phonebot functionality, automating many service requests while enabling seamless handover to human support when needed.

The solution's capabilities include:

Automated responses

Automated responses to common customer inquiries about tariffs, hardware, billing and roaming

CRM integration for personalized support

CRM integration for personalized support, enabling customers to check balances, remaining data volume or change tariffs automatically

Seamless AI-human collaboration

Seamless collaboration between automation and service teams, including escalation to agents when needed and phonebot functionality built on the chatbot logic

The impact

Faster service and fewer repetitive requests for agents.

The introduction of AI-supported automation has significantly improved how Tchibo MOBIL manages customer inquiries. By combining automated interactions with the expertise of the customer service team, the company can respond faster, handle seasonal demand spikes more efficiently, and deliver a smoother experience for customers.

More efficient conversations with customers. By combining AI automation with human service expertise, Tchibo MOBIL reduced average call duration by 20%. Routine requests are resolved automatically or pre-qualified by the system, allowing service teams to focus on more complex customer issues.

Better handling of seasonal demand peaks. Tchibo MOBIL launches promotional tariffs two to three times a year, which traditionally creates strong spikes in customer inquiries. Automation helps absorb these peaks by handling recurring requests automatically and keeping response times stable.

Strong adoption of self-service. Customers actively use automated services for common requests such as checking their balance, reviewing remaining data volume, or changing tariffs. This self-service capability improves accessibility while ensuring that human agents remain available for more complex cases.

Partnering with botario

A close collaboration built on trust.

Beyond the technology itself, the partnership between Tchibo MOBIL and botario plays a central role in the success of the project. From the beginning, both teams worked closely together to develop a solution tailored to Tchibo MOBIL’s customer service processes and IT landscape.

Over more than three years of collaboration, this partnership has evolved into a trusted working relationship. Dedicated contacts at botario have developed a deep understanding of Tchibo MOBIL’s business and service requirements, enabling quick alignment and efficient implementation of new ideas.

This close collaboration ensures that improvements and new features can be introduced quickly and reliably. Whether integrating new service processes or adapting automation to changing customer needs, both teams continue to work side by side to refine and expand the solution.

The result is not just a technology deployment, but a long-term partnership focused on continuously improving the customer service experience.

Looking ahead

Expanding automation for the next stage of customer service.

After several years of successful collaboration, Tchibo MOBIL and botario continue to develop the platform further. The focus now lies on scaling automation and extending the solution to additional use cases.

Both teams are working together on new ideas to further improve how customer service is delivered while maintaining the personal support customers expect.

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