Virgin Media O2 UK to Improve Customer Support via New Training
Broadband and mobile giant VMO2 (Virgin Media and O2) has this morning announced that they’re partnering up with the Institute of Customer Service (ICS) on a new certified training programme for frontline contact centre staff, which is designed to help them better handle “complex and sensitive customer interactions“.
Over the past few years the operator has been putting a lot of effort into improving the quality of their customer service (support) teams, which has already helped to reduce the volume of complaints they attract (i.e. a nearly 50% reduction was seen last year) and also resulted in better outcomes (70% of complaints are now resolved within 24 hours).
The new training programme aims to build on that by supporting significant customer service improvements through a bespoke and officially recognised training programme for contact centre staff. The first group of employees has already completed this “intensive training programme“, which is said to have strengthened the skills needed to manage customer relationships and build trust.
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The programme focused on practical techniques that deliver real service impact, including developing deeper customer relationships, understanding different service styles and customer types, enhancing emotional intelligence and empathy, and handling “challenging interactions” (a polite way of saying that not all people are easy or polite to deal with).
Alan Stott, VMO2 Director of Customer Contact, said:
“Investing in our people is one of the most important ways we can improve the experience we deliver to our customers. This certified training programme gives our colleagues practical skills to better understand and support customers, resolve issues more effectively, and build stronger relationships. Ultimately, it will ensure our customers receive a consistent, empathetic and high-quality service every time they interact with us.”
The new programme supports prior improvements, such as the adoption of Lumi AI to support agents with real-time prompts and insights from millions of previous customer interactions. Not to mention other tools that automatically summarise conversations, helping save agents time and reduce wait times for customers.
VMO2 highlights how the “latest” Ofcom data shows complaints against their service fell again last year by almost 50% (here). But while this is true for Virgin Media, they have perhaps knowingly overlooked that quarterly complaints against O2’s mobile service more than tripled in Q4 2025. Hopefully the new training scheme will improve the situation – it’s “now being rolled out more widely to agents … including to additional frontline teams and partners“.
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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ICS have their work cut out , ive been with virgin 4 years now , biggest mistake of my life , its fine (but over priced) when you dont have issue , omg prepare for the worst if you have ask them to fix anything. In my 30 years of using ISP’s this is the worst by far I have ever seen, it took 4 phone calls ( 3 hours of my time) 1 engineer visit and 3 months for them to fix a simple cabinet fault they knew about already . My advice to anyone is to avoid at all costs , a stable connection and good CS is the most important thing with any service imo and with virgin they seem to care very little
Customer service training for customer service operatives? What a novel idea…
In my view, CS training will only go so far. There are some structural issues within the company that are preventing their teams working together to solve problems. Until then, customers are just going to be shuffled between departments.
I wonder if it’s one of those modern “training” exercises where you watch a video on your computer then answer a few multi choice questions with one blatantly obvious correct answer and two or three really stupid ones, No one is supervising to make sure you pay attention and all you have to do to get the badge is get to the end. But, hey, the box got ticked and we have have trained and certified help desk people.
I’ve had it with one employer where the sent you to do an online training test about new legislation, the first thing it came up with “Your manager will have told you all about this” – we had been told sweet F.A. by our manager. I won’t say who it was but it was a well known grocery chain.
> a polite way of saying that not all people are easy or polite to deal with
In my experience it would help if the customer repellent system (AKA IVR) wouldn’t piss off the caller even before they get to speak to the agent. Most big companies are terrible at that. If I call a phone number it is because I want to speak with a person. So a simple to navigate, flat IVR is enough to decide if I want sales or tech support. (Or even: separate numbers, and someone just picks up the call, what a novel idea!)
A good place to start would be giving English lessons, simply being able to say your name and how’s the weather doesn’t qualify as satisfactory understanding of English.
Actually just ban outsourcing customer service to other countries period!
I am sure those off-shore contractors will be very pleased with VMO2’s further investment in their country.
i recently joined VM and had an issue with the package they setup with me it snowballed out of controlled from one issue. no one took any responsility. backoffice team started to put charges for packages on my account with auth then some how remove them and add in higher charges. I had around 8 complaints raised all seem to open and close with no resolution to why they closed. in the end they left me in tears on the phone, having lost my wife in the past year i joined to save money and they created such an mess i decided to call it quits and go back to EE. they have no complaint hiearchy. when you ask for someone senior they refuse and want to manage theselves. there is no sturcture or signposting identifing vunerable customers. they have alot to do to improve customer service in my opinion.
Is this some sort of joke?
[Quote]”developing deeper customer relationships, understanding different service styles and customer types, enhancing emotional intelligence and empathy, and handling “challenging interactions””[/quote]
Why is VM trying to train an army of cheap unqualified psychotherapists??
Surely basic training in WiFi standards, billing systems, IP Config, etc would be skills more suited for ISP staff???
Who in their right mind wants to “develop a relationship” with some random foreign support agent when their internet stops working???
This entire training seems to be geared towards providing amateur therapy, and not giving the skills nor understanding necessary to fix anything that always goes wrong with VM…
This just proves VM has no idea. And this is just a case of cause-blindness.
They say these are “techniques that deliver real service impact”… However none of these techniques can possibly have any effect whatsoever on actual internet service delivery!!! By what mechanism does someone being “empathetic” fix my internet???
Truly bizarre.
In fact, the fake empathy provided by customer support reps is simply outrageous and should outrage everybody. How can a person working for peanuts be empathetic to a VM customer whose internet costs more than their salary? Customer support needs to be trained to get rid of fake “sorrys”. They already give you fake names, now they will be dishing out fake sorrys.
A customer seeks customer service because they want something tangible. They either want the service they’re paying for, or their money back. NOT empathy for goodness sake… Support need not be able to do anything other than providing an accurate fix date or money back; ANYTHING else is training them to swindle and mislead customers.
Seems like all this training in psychological mechanisms is just training to help gatekeep fleeced customers from their money.
A better customer service strategy would be for the CEO to sacrifice 20% of his salary to help reimburse all the annoyed customers who’ve been paying for something they’re not getting.
Needed a new optical cable for the router. Very specifically told them not to send a co ax. They said they wouldn’t. Asked again. Definitely wouldn’t be sending co ax. They sent co ax. Had to wait further still for an engineer to come. All because they don’t understand what their routers use
Starting from the bottom of the barrel, at least there’s only one way for them to go! That said, I’m not sure they will ever get any better, they have out-sourced so much of the operation I suspect there is no real knowledge left inside the company on how stuff works!
They need to sort out their end of contract price hikes. £32 to £85 a month for 500 Mbps is what I had to pay while I waited for a competitor to get Openreach to my property.
Also, it took Virgin 22 days to get a returns box to me for me to send their kit back. Meanwhile, they kept sending me reminders to return their kit within 30 days or be charged. It’s a good job I wasn’t on holiday as they only gave me a week to send it back in the end. Useless. They also still need to send me a cheque for the credit i have after my final bill. Why couldn’t they just refund it into the account they took the payments from like any other company?