Our laser focus on customer service is paying off, but we aren’t stopping here

Lutz Schüler, Chief Executive, Virgin Media O2

Six months ago, I wrote that we were on a mission to transform our customer service.

While we knew the majority of our customers were satisfied with their services, we recognised that too often we weren’t getting it right. So, we drew a line in the sand and pledged to do better.

Backed by a comprehensive, four-point strategy – investing more in customer-facing areas of the business, simplifying our systems and processes, upskilling our agents and removing the most persistent and frustrating pain points – we set a goal to deliver consistently exceptional service for all customers.

Are we there yet? No, and lasting change takes time. But following the ‘green shoots’ of progress I highlighted earlier this year, which gave us confidence we were on the right track, we have made huge strides six months on. This is a direct result of the significant investment we’re making and, most importantly, the dedication, skill and commitment of our people, whose laser focus on improving our customers’ experience with us means that we are surpassing the ambitious targets we’d set ourselves.

Today, the regulator, Ofcom, has published its latest industry complaints statistics, showing that overall complaints about Virgin Media and O2 fell by 42% year-on-year. While this is a welcome demonstration of the improvements we’ve been making, it is only accurate up to the first quarter of this year. Our more recent data shows that our progress is actually even stronger, with a decrease of 54% across broadband, landline, TV and mobile services.

We’ll never eradicate complaints entirely, but we’re making strong progress and giving customers confidence that when they do need to tell us about an issue, we’ll resolve it as quickly and efficiently as possible. That’s why many of the changes we’ve been making are aimed at improving first-time resolution, which has increased by 8% over the past six months.

Only last week, for example, we launched our very own AI tool, Lumi AI, which helps supercharge our agents and provide more insight-driven and personalised customer service. Lumi AI listens to a customer interaction in real-time and, based on millions of previous conversations, provides the agent with helpful prompts and tips of how a similar issue has been resolved for customers in the past, increasing the chances that any issue can be resolved more quickly. The latest data shows that we’re now resolving 70% of complaints in under 24 hours.

Lumi isn’t the only AI tool at our disposal, either. Earlier this year we invested in a new AI-powered customer contact centre service, which enables a customer to explain the reason for their call at the outset before instantly routing them to the most relevant team, reducing the likelihood of an agent having to transfer them elsewhere.

We’re also using an Auto Call Summarisation tool which, again, listens to interactions ‘live’ and produces an accurate summary of what was discussed, saving our agents time which they can use to have more effective conversations and pick up the next call more quickly – reducing waiting times.

We’re not planning for AI to replace our agents – instead, it’s about creating empowered super-agents and giving them the best possible tools to meet our customers’ needs, backed up with investment.

Also over the past few months, we’ve set up a brand-new team of specialist agents in Manchester to handle the most complex and sensitive customer issues, and announced a partnership with Money Wellness that enhances the support available to customers experiencing financial vulnerability.

These new initiatives and partnerships are shifting the dial in how we serve our customers and show how we’re innovating to give everyone the best possible experience with us.

There’s still work to do and we’re not resting on our laurels, but with complaints down significantly and more issues being fixed first time, it’s clear our investment in customer service is paying off.