Econet says its Shona AI now understands 80% of customer queries

Econet Ai has launched Shona 2.0, the latest version of the AI model behind Yamurai, Econet’s customer support chatbot. Econet says it can now understand and answer 80% of customer queries in Shona.

Yamurai isn’t new. Econet launched it in 2020 during the COVID lockdown to handle routine issues like PIN resets, airtime and bundle problems, passing anything harder to a human. Econet Ai, a wholly owned subsidiary, was set up this year to lead the group’s AI work. Since then it has been building an Ndebele version and has launched ecoAI Token, an AI aggregator enabling its subscribers to use AI like like they do data bundles.

The 80% sounds like a leap, but a few weeks ago Econet said Yamurai could already handle more than 70% of Shona enquiries. So this is about 10 points of progress.

It’s also unclear what the 80% measures. Understanding a question isn’t the same as solving your problem. Does Yamurai fix your missing bundle, or understand you and then hand you to a person? Is it 80% of all calls, Shona calls only, or a test set? Econet didn’t say.

Econet has also said this is the first African AI language model to reach this level. There’s no shared African benchmark to be first against, so this one is hard to verify. Other MNOs on the continent are in this space too. Six big operators including MTN and Airtel are building African language models through the GSMA. Still, having Shona working on a live helpline is impressive.

We haven’t tested it yet, but the most promising part, from what Econet is saying, is that Shona 2.0 now understands people who mix Shona and English, which is how most of us actually talk. Econet says it’s also training it on six Shona dialects and that when it’s done, Yamurai will reply in your dialect when you talk to her.

In past releases, Econet has said the AI bots also work alongside about 600 contact centre staff. What happens to those jobs at 80%?

Econet Ai CEO Navdeep Kapur admitted in this latest release that early Yamurai felt like talking to a robot. I used it once, and I’m hoping it has improved a lot since then. So we’re going to test it in straight Shona, in mixed Shona and English, hopefully in a few dialects as well, and with a real problem like a failed EcoCash transaction. We’ll share what we find. In the meantime, if you have spoken to Yamurai in Shona or Ndebele recently, please tell us how it went.

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