Gareth Lister, Director of Customer Products at Virgin Media O2
This week, I’m pleased to be meeting with the new Minister of State for Data Protection and Telecoms, Chris Bryant, alongside others in the telecoms sector to discuss the Digital Voice Switchover.
The programme, which will see us in time deliver all landline calls over the broadband network in future, is essential to ensuring we can continue to offer reliable services now and for the future.
Late last year, we voluntarily signed the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s Public Switched Telephone Network Charter where we committed to protecting vulnerable people when they’re moved onto digital services.
Having taken the decision to pause any migrations while we carried out an end-to-end review of our processes and brought in additional safeguards, we restarted the programme on an opt-in basis for customers who aren’t vulnerable or use a telecare device in April.
This cautious approach was the right one, however we cannot continue this way forever. Copper lines are increasingly losing resilience, with Ofcom data showing a 20% rise in the number of incidents last year alone. We need to ensure customers are migrated to the new system before outages become more pronounced.
Our number one priority is ensuring that all our customers are prepared and supported throughout this switchover, which we’ve been working to achieve in a number of ways.
Increasing customer awareness
We know how important it is to not only reach our vulnerable customers directly, but their friends and family, too. We’ve been using all channels at our disposal to raise awareness of the migration and provide customers with engaging and informative communication about the switchover – why it’s happening, what they need to do and what additional support is available.
Alongside letters, customer marketing, texts and emails, we’ve been using screens at more than 200 of our stores nationwide – including on some of the UK’s busiest high streets – to let customers and the public know about the change. We’ve also gone live with a newly created ad on our TV platform to help spread the word. Since kicking off in July, we’ve reached millions of customers and still have more activity to come.
Developing a gold-standard support package for vulnerable and telecare customers
Collaboration is the key to this switchover’s success and in recent months, we’ve begun a first-of-its-kind partnership with TSA, the largest industry body for technology enabled care in the UK.
We’re working together to go further in how we support telecare users, and have been successful in trialling a new way of working in Stockport, collaborating with Stockport-based telecare provider Carecall, to identify and support our shared customers with a smooth transition to Digital Voice.
Carecall is a part of Stockport Homes Group, which provides housing services on behalf of Stockport Council and key to this trial’s success is the data sharing agreement we have in place with the local authority. We’ve used this to identify customers in most need of support, and then arranged joint appointments attended by staff from both organisations to deliver the new service, committing to never leaving a property without a working landline.
Since we started, we’ve managed to switchover around 80% of our shared customers that we’ve spoken to, rising to 95% when taking into account booked appointments, all the while taking on board learnings and making improvements. Feedback so far has been positive, and whilst we know change is never easy, it’s been fantastic to see so many customers say they’ve felt well supported along the way.
Further trials in other parts of the country are already in the works, helping us create a gold standard blueprint for future roll out.
Collaboration with government, local authorities and the telecare industry is key to success
This trial demonstrates the importance of working in partnership, however more than 4 in 5 local authorities we’ve contacted have either failed to engage, or been too slow to set up these essential data sharing agreements.
We cannot do this alone which is why we, alongside the TSA, continue to call for Government to create a “Telecare Charter”, which should clearly set out a range of commitments for the telecare sector and local authorities which requires them to work with our industry to ensure nobody is left behind. This vital migration needs to be a collaborative effort.
And whilst a public awareness campaign is something we’re talking about already as an industry, there are challenges here, particularly when it comes to hard-to-reach audiences and a perceived lack of authority. When people see adverts with company logos they assume it’s marketing as opposed to important service information.
We think the Government could also play a bigger role here by fronting a campaign with the industry which will help us drive necessary engagement.
I’ll be raising these important points with the Minister this week and look forward to sharing our recent learnings as we continue positive discussions about how we best support all customers through this essential migration.
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