Openreach Make UK Organisation Changes to Improve Performance
Network access provider Openreach has moved to improve how they engage with UK communication providers (e.g. broadband ISPs) and their customers by making a series of organisational updates, which they hope will deliver an “even sharper focus on customer experience and end to end operational performance“.
The first step in this involves the creation of a new Customer Experience team, bringing together several parts of the business already dedicated to service and transformation. Surinder Khatter, Managing Director within Service Delivery, has thus been appointed Chief Customer Experience Officer (CCXO) to lead this new unit. “Surinder will oversee how we manage every stage of the customer journey, from getting customers onto our network quickly and easily to the communications they receive and the behind-the-scenes processes that keep services running smoothly,” said the announcement.
Openreach are also unifying all their service engineering capability into a new Service Operations team. This will be led by Pete Stewart, currently MD of Service Delivery, GB Operations. The new unit will bring together UK Operations, their FTTP service engineering teams, the Complex Engineering teams responsible for maintaining the copper network, and their Civils teams.
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Openreach Statement
By bringing these teams together, we aim to deliver an even more joined up, efficient and responsive service. This will help us connect customers faster and more effectively, while continuing to improve the day-to-day experience for the people who rely on our network.
Engineers in this structure will benefit too, with access to a broader mix of work and more opportunities to build new skills. This approach helps us preserve essential copper expertise while continuing to grow and strengthen our fibre capability across the network.
The changes will come into effect on 1st April 2026.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Openreach will still be in the awkward situation of “engaging” both with CPs and with end customers at the same time as trying to keep its distance from the latter.
A new approach will need to be a lot cleaner and clearer.
For the last five weeks I have (edge case, to be honest) been receiving appointment reminders from Openreach by text, confirmations by email, notifications of delays, prompts to re-book by text and email, even two Openreach(!) phone calls: all at the same time Openreach systems engage with my ISP who prompt me and alert me to the same appointments, prompts, reminders, and changes blizzard. (My ISP mostly uses email, occasionally text, but documents everything with updated ticket statuses.)
I realise that some customers choose to ignore email, others ignore any text with a hyperlink, and everyone blames the junk folder. But cleaning up who to expect to update you about what could quite be a tricky challenge. Good luck.
I want Openreach to setup Live Engineer Visit via app (for live tracking) would be a good idea!
Give that if engineers object to their names on the SMS service then customers receive nothing about when the engineer is arriving. I can’t see this ever getting off the ground.
You want to know where the engineer is as you can an Amazon delivery?
If that’s the request absolutely not. None of your business where they’ve been: all you should be told is an ETA and that they’re on their way having finished the previous job.
Same circus, different monkeys. I feel for the people who are constantly being reorganised in a bid to try and be seen as more productive.
Not to mention more job cuts and uncertainty for staff. The bottom is falling out of Openreach as an employer.
More macromanegement and squeez for the engineers . They don’t want people, they want robots to obey . All in the the so called “efficiency”.
How about cutting prices to 10,15,20,25 range for starters and not rip off the customers you have left