For the month of August, 2degrees unleashed its 1500 employees on AI tools with a simple brief: experiment with everything.
Chief Executive Mark Callander describes it as “the buzziest I’ve seen the office”, and the results suggest this burst of energy could set up lasting change across the business.
Unleashing curiosity and creativity
During the month, the telco orchestrated over 50 events, ranging from live demos and external guest speakers to panel discussions and in-person hackathons.
“Usage of tools and experimentation went through the roof,” Callander says. “We had over 1500 attendees across all the events.” Tools like Microsoft Copilot were central to the push, with usage spiking 400% because of staff curiosity and structured experimentation.
A big part of the plan was to create an environment for 2degrees to be curious, says Callander, empowering people to find value in AI for themselves, regardless of their team or technical background.
Building skills, with guardrails
“We had sessions regarding safe and secure use of AI, what to do, what not to do,” says Callander. “It was a good chance to make sure that our policies were front and centre for staff to learn.”
One of the most popular workshops was the “prompt-a-thon”, which focused on effective prompting and building custom AI agents.
“AI is only as good as the data you’ve got sitting in your internal documentation,” Callander notes.
Buy-in from the top
2degrees’ leadership fully supported AI month from the outset. That was critical to giving teams permission to step away from regular tasks and rethink workflows.
“There were some people reluctant to do it as well, but most embraced it as ‘how can it enhance my job?’” Callander says.
A major highlight was the hands-on hackathons. These competitions saw cross-functional teams tackle genuine business challenges, building “agents” that automate or assist with everyday tasks. Out of 14 AI agents presented, two are moving into full development after rigorous assessment for business value and impact.
Innovation that sticks
One was the Smart Sales Advisor, a conversational agent designed to assist retail staff. A five-person hackathon team set themselves a challenge to boost sales conversion by 5% and speed up customer handling times by 10%. The system was developed over two days using AI co-pilots integrated into Tahi, 2degrees’ newly completed operations and business support system.
Fine-tuned based on feedback from 2degrees store staff, the system’s recommendation engine suggests the most appropriate plans and upgrades for individual and group plans, based on existing usage, network experience and plan information.
2degrees estimates that Smart Sales Advisor has the potential to deliver $2 million in value per year due to reduced customer churn, increased sales and improved employee engagement and productivity.
Hacking your way to success
2degrees developed what it calls a “Frontline Copilot” during August that offers insights and responses during customer support calls. Ideal for assisting with billing queries, plan optimisation, usage anomaly detection and note summaries, it saves 2-3 minutes per call across high-volume calls, a saving of up to 1600 hours per month.
Another was an agent built for the Network Operations Centre. This automates incident reports and stakeholder communication during network events, freeing staff to focus on resolving issues.
Callander says AI is great for laborious tasks and reporting that often give valuable insights, but can take hours to compile. One example he gave was reviewing competitors’ sign-up journeys on their websites – a process reduced from hours of manual work into just 15 minutes.
Overall, successful proof-of-concept AI systems developed during the month could save 2degrees staff up to 3000 hours per month.
Proof of value: The next step
But not every AI-inspired idea made the cut. Only around 8% of the AI experiments made it from ideation to production. A key learning was that attempting to build AI agents to automate complex tasks was too ambitious within a month.
“Agents work best when roles and tasks are clearly defined,” Callander says. “Unlike human teams, which often thrive on collaboration and flexibility, AI agents need precise inputs and tightly scoped handovers to succeed.”
2degrees has established a “proof of value” stream, putting both paid and browser-based AI tools through their paces to inform investment decisions for ongoing licences and company-wide rollout.
As the blitz drew to an end, the challenge turned to keeping up the momentum.
“Everyone was like, what now?” Callander says. “I told them, don’t stop, just keep going, keep using the tools.”
The company has now folded learnings from the month into its AI Centre of Excellence, with ongoing upskilling and additional hackathons planned.
The culture shift required
The AI month succeeded in breaking down silos, enabling technology and customer facing staff to co-create new solutions.
“It’s best done in a group, not done sitting at home behind a screen,” says Callander. “There’s a lot of cross-functional work required, where you wouldn’t normally get them working on a problem together.”
Callander’s advice to other businesses considering a similar leap? “Start, don’t wait. You can do it on any scale. Keep the follow-up tight, show off successful use-cases, and invest in building data quality.”
For 2degrees, the AI experiment proved that putting powerful tools in the hands of curious people, with structure and leadership support, is a shortcut to business innovation. The next step is embedding that spirit for the long haul.