Vodafone Turkey has accelerated its technology exports.

We asked Vodafone Turkey Executive Committee Vice President Ayşegül Arıcan Şeker about the details of Vodafone Happy.

• Vodafone plays an important role in the development of digital technologies. Can you talk about the work you are doing in the technology field? How did you spend 2024?

We use developing technology to create value for our customers and our company. We position ourselves as a next-generation connectivity and digital services company. We do not only provide communication services, but we are also a digital marketplace, a payment company, and a provider of finance, tourism, and insurance services. 2024 was a productive year in which we took significant steps towards our goal of being Turkey's fastest-growing next-generation connectivity and digital services company.

According to the IT4C (IT for Customers) 2024 benchmarking results, which are evaluated by an independent research company every year in collaboration with Vodafone Group, Vodafone Turkey ranked first both in the local market and among all Vodafone countries. In IT4C, which offers a global scale and capability list, operators were evaluated based on criteria such as consistency, ease of use, privacy and reliability, real-time performance, personalized service, and smart technology usage across all channels where we interact with customers, including websites, mobile applications, dealers, and call centers. We are proud to be number one by effectively using next-generation technologies such as end-to-end digital e-SIM sales, our mobile application that offers e-commerce opportunities and personalized benefits to our customers, self-service systems used in stores, the digital customer assistant TOBi, artificial intelligence, and various payment methods, providing a multi-channel experience to our customers.

• Do you have projects developed in Turkey that you share with other countries?

We have started to offer our loyalty platform in Turkey, which we have made more comprehensive, to international markets under the "Vodafone Happy" brand. Vodafone Happy is a loyalty platform that offers discounts from both global and local brands to our customers, connecting them with personalized opportunities. This platform increases customer satisfaction in every market we operate in while creating new business opportunities for the brands and partners we collaborate with.

This platform, developed by our Turkish engineers, stands out in terms of flexibility, alignment with technology trends, and digital efficiency compared to third-party solution alternatives in Europe. Therefore, we have started to promote the Vodafone Happy platform as a "best practice" in other Vodafone countries as well. The number of digital users on the platform has exceeded 25 million. Vodafone Happy, which started with the implementation in Portugal in May 2022, has since become active in Germany, Romania, Turkey, Spain, Italy, and Ireland, and continues its efforts to provide services in the Czech Republic by the end of the year.

Additionally, we are completely modernizing our "Revenue Management" systems with a new architecture, developing the central software from scratch with our own engineers. Similarly, we have developed the CRM solution platform we use for our customers to whom we provide fixed communication services in-house, and discussions for exporting it abroad are ongoing. These major transformations are significant steps taken not only as a technical innovation but also to provide our customers with faster, more reliable, and flexible services.

• How did Vodafone Happy come about? Will you have different projects regarding technology export?

As Vodafone Group, we operate with the understanding of a Single Technology Team, where technology teams from around the world work together. This gives us the opportunity to be part of a large technology team with greater international impact. We bring global experience to Turkey while exporting our successful applications in Turkey abroad. We aim to position Turkey as one of Vodafone's centers of excellence in technology.

Vodafone's innovative software development approaches and agile working culture greatly contribute to our company's technology vision. Solutions developed for the rapid realization of new ideas are based on reusability, ensuring effective resource utilization and digital efficiency. Thanks to our participatory and inclusive work environment, we are in constant communication with our stakeholders. We develop ideas with their contributions at every stage and incorporate them into projects. Many products and projects, such as Vodafone Happy, lead from Turkey through similar processes.

We also have the Vodafone Customer Interactions Center solution, developed by our teams in Turkey, which aims to improve our customers' channel experiences by integrating with customer communication channels. This solution is used to increase customer satisfaction and produce effective solutions by utilizing interactions at the points where our customers reach Vodafone. Our solution, which is entirely designed and developed locally, puts the customer at the center. By taking the experience a step further, it ensures that suggestions that will make our customers' lives easier are presented even before their requests arise. This product has made an impact abroad due to its superiority in flexibility, cost, and adaptability to technological innovations. Following this, we have started working to provide services with this product in European countries, initially in Portugal and Romania.

Vodafone Yanımda is one of Turkey's most popular applications, visited over 300 million times by more than 16 million people each month. We provide services in many areas, from telecommunications to e-commerce, finance to insurance, travel to entertainment. Thanks to our smart algorithm and personalization technology, our users encounter personalized content and offers that are most suitable for them from the moment they log into the application, starting from the homepage, and can easily access the products and services they need. This year, we developed new innovative services such as Yanımda Premium, Puanlar Yanımda, Vodafone Kazancım, and Eğlence Yanımda. Yanımda Premium offers various benefits to users with a subscription model while also representing a new revenue model for us. With Puanlar Yanımda, users can earn points by making transactions and store them in our wallet application, which can be used for purchases and payments made through Yanımda. With Vodafone Kazancım, users can view all the advantages, discounts, and promotions they have earned from Vodafone in detail from a single place and access tips on how to earn more.

With Vodafone Yanımda, you can manage your subscriptions to platforms like YouTube Premium, Amazon Prime, and BluTV from a single page, and track your payments through your Vodafone bill.

The Opportunities World, Market Yanımda, Everything Yanımda, and Vodafone Insurance services we offer through Vodafone Yanımda have become a first within the Vodafone Group for our payment services. We are exporting our experience here to other countries. Our personal digital assistant TOBi is also a leader within the Vodafone Group in terms of both user numbers and chat volume, as well as sales figures. We are contributing to the development of this technology in other countries by utilizing our experience here.

• How do you approach artificial intelligence technology? What innovations do you prioritize in this area?

We view artificial intelligence not only as an important technology but also as a significant transformative power for our customers, employees, and shareholders. Our goal is to maximize the benefits of the opportunities offered by artificial intelligence across all our business areas.

We use traditional artificial intelligence to meet customer needs at the right time, in the most personal and appropriate way. This allows us to offer our customers device and tariff proposals that suit their needs; optimize our network investments, and save energy. Additionally, we minimize disruptions by predicting potential failures at base stations.

Generative artificial intelligence entered our lives at the end of 2022. We took an important step in this area with our personal digital assistant TOBi. Very soon, as a first in Vodafone countries, all our developers will start receiving support from generative AI coding assistants. We have also developed various assistants for our other teams. We are working intensively on many projects, from developing our AI-supported assistants offered to our dealers to enhancing Vodafone Turkey GPT.