For years, few would have believed that Vietnam would host a call center capable of competing with leading firms in India or the Philippines. Today, Viettel Customer Service is redefining the call center with new AI-driven competitiveness, and the journey to go global has begun with a bright outlook. The call center behind Viettel faced a turning point as OTT services, voices, and texts from operators declined, and call-center volumes plummeted by more than 80%. Traditional ‘listening to complaints’ work also declined. Many companies in the sector faced choices to pivot, shrink, or disappear, especially with AI’s arrival. Rather than facing this fork alone, Viettel Telecom turned the Call Center into a large “lab.” They framed the problem and, with the Viettel Customer Service Center—predecessor of VCX—implemented the business case. AI was tested on millions of real customer interactions daily, creating a new capability for a future-ready company (VCX). Training chatbots, data classification, designing customer journeys, managing experience on an AI platform, and operating large-scale digital processes… The headcount previously reached over 7,000, but now stands around 1,000, with far greater impact on customer experience governance. Step by step, the unit that would become VCX evolved from the traditional “call-center” to possessing end-to-end governance of operations, data, and customer experience. This is the capability Viettel’s leadership identified early on. In parallel, external customers did not come from telecom alone. VCX’s customer-experience management capability gradually broadened to logistics (Viettel Post, Express247, and FedEx); banking; electricity; e-commerce; and many other services. Digital-government is emerging as a new growth direction, applying the customer-experience governance mindset to citizen services. Among these, iHanoi is the project where VCX can participate most comprehensively, from building interactive content and designing journeys to operating services with experience-governance thinking. Within iHanoi, VCX not only runs the call center but also supports the platform’s entire operation, from intake and tracking of feedback to user support and experience optimization. With more than 6 million users and about 1.5 million monthly active users, iHanoi is a notable case to test VCX’s citizen-experience governance capabilities. Today, iHanoi handles hundreds of thousands of interactions daily, acting as a major digital-city touchpoint between Hanoi’s government and its citizens. Only after a year of independent operation did Viettel Group assign VCX markedly different objectives. If in 2025 revenue from non-Viettel ecosystem customers was around 2%, by 2026 this rose to 20%, and by 2030 VCX aims for a 50-50 revenue split between internal and external customers. This target is not merely a business metric; it signals VCX’s transformation from an internal service unit to a technology-driven enterprise competing globally. The markets VCX targets extend beyond Vietnam. If, in the past, the Call Center could only compete on low-cost labor, today AI, data, and digital platforms are central to the customer experience, changing the game. VCX does not intend to export thousands of call-center agents abroad. It aims to export operating know-how, AI-powered customer-service platforms, and experience-governance solutions refined within Viettel’s ecosystem. Under this roadmap, Viettel’s markets will be the first destinations, followed by financial services, e-commerce, and real estate—industries facing the same challenge: how to serve millions of customers with a human-AI blend. The first order came from a bank in Myanmar, led by Viettel Customer Service’s pioneer captain—Mr. Nguyen Tien Dung (former CEO of Mytel—Viettel Myanmar). This may mark the start of VCX’s most significant transformation. VCX today continues to advance its operations in Viettel’s markets such as Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar, while expanding partnerships with local BPOs, contact-center providers, and AI solutions for customer service. Two decades ago, they were known as Vietnam’s largest and most powerful Call Center. Today, they seek to be recognized as a technology company specializing in customer-experience governance. If the first chapter was written with millions of calls daily, the next chapter will be written with an even larger ambition: to turn the capabilities honed within Viettel into a product capable of competing on the global market. Authored by: Khanh Linh - Hoang Ly; Design: Huong Xuan; Nhịp Sống Thị Trường Original article link: https://markettimes.vn/nghe-nghe-mang-o-viet-nam-go-global-giac-mo-hoang-duong-da-tro-thanh-hien-thuc-nho-dau-124723.html
