Vodafone Empresas implements artificial intelligence agents in over 100,000 SMEs in Spain, with pay-per-use and no initial investment. The operator aims to automate tasks such as phone support and appointment management.
Vodafone Empresas has begun deploying artificial intelligence agents among its more than 100,000 SME clients in Spain, according to ecosistemastartup.com. The operator offers this technology under a pay-per-use model, without the need for large initial investments, and with support during implementation.
The plan is based on three pillars: automated customer service, multichannel coordination, and internal productivity. The agents manage calls and bookings outside of business hours, respond in natural language, and relay information to the company's management system. They also generate reports, classify documents, and handle recurring queries and issues.
The operator summarises its approach with the metaphor of “the nearest apple”: starting with the everyday process that consumes the most time or loses the most sales. Only after measuring the return is the technology extended to other areas. For a workshop, a dental clinic, or a restaurant, a missed call outside of hours no longer means a lost customer.
“For an SME, the issue is not to incorporate artificial intelligence because it is trendy, but to determine what business problem it can solve and what return it will generate”
This statement comes from Carlos Ortiz, director of SMEs at Vodafone Empresas, included in the company's announcement.
The announcement follows Vodafone Empresas recording double-digit growth in its digital businesses between April and August 2026. In cybersecurity, the growth was 42%, with over 7,000 SMEs connected to managed and secure network solutions. Secured SD-WAN grew by 56%, the highest rate in the B2B division. Collaboration, cloud, and AI increased by 25%, while data centres grew by 20%, supported by a network of over 100 edge centres. In IoT, overall growth was 4%, with 30% in public administrations and 17 million active lines.
At the same time, the report “Landing AI”, presented by Vodafone the same week, indicates that sectors most exposed to this technology record productivity growth up to four times higher than those with lower adoption. The document also states that 78% of organisations worldwide already use AI in at least one critical business process, according to the operator's data.
Vodafone's proposal differs from generic SaaS in three aspects: pay-per-use without initial investment, human support during the identification of the use case, training, implementation, and results measurement, and a prior cybersecurity layer that includes audits, mobile device protection, and services from its security operations centres (SOC).
The deployment of AI agents in companies also faces the challenge of the ability to act without control, a blind spot that the operator tries to avoid through that security layer and results tracking.
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