Virgin Media O2 create new team in Newcastle to help handle repeat UK calls UPDATE
Broadband and mobile operator Virgin Media (O2) has today announced the creation of a new dedicated team of 150 agents in Newcastle, who will be responsible for handling repeat customer calls. The goal is to help the telecoms provider to boost first-time resolution of more complex issues across their entire UK customer base.
The decision to establish the hub is said to have occurred following an internal review designed to better understand the reasons behind repeat customer contacts. That research found that around half of repeat calls originated from a small cohort of groups – customers with extended complex issues, vulnerable customers or those with specific needs, and nuisance or spam calls.
The new dedicated customer hub will thus be designed to better enable agents to provide tailored support for these repeat callers. For example, customers with extended complex issues will benefit from “greater continuity of ownership and proactive case management“, thus hopefully avoiding the frustration that can be caused by repeated explanations of their query to different agents at different times.
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In addition, vulnerable customers often require additional support and will benefit from speaking to a familiar advisor who is empowered to spend more time ensuring that support is provided and fully understood. Meanwhile nuisance calls, which are generated in the same way as those received on people’s mobile phones, will also be routed through to this team, preventing them from consuming agent resources and helping to reduce waiting times for genuine customer calls.
The 150 agents involved in the new hub will naturally receive enhanced training to support all of this and to provide a more personalised experience.
Alan Stott, Virgin Media O2’s Chief Operating Officer, said:
“We’ve made huge strides in our customer service over the last two years, with complaints significantly reduced and first-time resolution – the gold-standard of customer service – on the rise. But we know there’s even more we can do to deliver for our customers.
That’s why we started a deep-dive to understand why, in some cases, first-time resolution wasn’t being achieved, and we found that almost half of repeat calls were being driven by a small subset of customers.
Through launching this new team of agents in Newcastle, we’ll be able to ringfence these calls so that those repeat callers benefit from a dedicated advisor better equipped to help them, while also freeing up our wider team of agents to respond to other customers more quickly and efficiently.”
The development could perhaps also be seen as a counterbalance to Virgin Media’s recent move to make greater use of AI based support agents (here).
UPDATE 3:23pm
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ISPreview queried why nuisance calls would also be routed through to this team, rather than just blocked.
A spokesperson for VMO2 told us:
“We do of course have active blocking for known spam numbers and are already stopping thousands from getting through. The issue is as soon as we isolate one, a replacement can be set up very quickly.
Before the Newcastle hub team was set up, a spam call from a repeat ‘offender’ could land with any one of our agents, making it more likely that repeat nuisance calls from the same number aren’t identified, or at least aren’t identified as quickly.
By now routing repeat spam calls through to the new smaller team in Newcastle, they can be identified and blocked more quickly.”
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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“nuisance calls, which are generated in the same way as those received on people’s mobile phones, will also be routed through to this team, preventing them from consuming agent resources”
If they know they are nuisance calls, why don’t they just block them rather than redirecting them to a specialist team
I already put that same question to them and am awaiting a reply. There must be some context we’re missing.
While reading I assumed in this context nuisance calls are from customers who are calling the customer services team with nonsense repeatedly. So in my understanding this team would deal with the more complex issues, and with idiots.
@htmm
I’d always assumed that Virgin Media broadband customers would have to be somewhat idiotic, just to place an order with them; either that or desperate, with only a sub-10Mbps service available from Openreach.
A step in the right direction. I just hope that they really can work across departments to solve cases. I got stuck between sales, installations, legals etc. with each department blaming the other and nobody taking ownership. I would hope a department like this could do the running around I had to do and give a single clear answer.
How do you get “first time resolution” of repeat calls? It’s either a first call or a repeat call, can’t be both.
I presume the idea is, if a specialist team handle repeat calls they can gather information on what is generating those repeated calls and better fine tune front line support to handle such issues in the future.
OK, is it my imagination or, after all these years, is someone at VM actually trying to make things better for the customers?
I am awake, right? And this isn’t some kind of alternate reality?
If I were to put my cynical of VM hate on. The team has been formed because they are handling too many first-time resolutions of issues, and its their job to make it worse!
Cost (direct and reputational impact on attracting new customers) is finally bearing down on VirginMedia in a competitive market.
And clearly this would likely be a “second call” resolution, unless frontline “first call” twig in the initial call that the customer issue is too complex for them to address, and therefore they pass the call immediately to this new team.
Called get a ticket system
That’s the current problem. You call up and someone logs a ticket for another team to look into. Who don’t. Nobody chases anyone up. You call up and it’s a new agent who reads your ticket… and then creates another ticket for the other department to read.
They basically wear you down until you give up.
My read on this is that its a team to deal with any user (whether they are an O2 customer or not) who is found to be wasting customer service time according to O2.
Maybe I’m not giving O2 enough of a chance, as there is of course a chance this team will actually work to solve cases from repeat callers, as each case properly solved could potentially be one less number that regularly calls CS.
I just got the feeling that this team is almost sitting in front of the ordinary customer service.
Call centres manned by people in the same country as the supplier should be mandated by law, I’ve stayed loyal to EE because customer service is exceptional and almost always some cheerful Scottish person who fixes the issue there and then.
Sky and Virgin feels like trying to get a platinum trophy on playstation