{"id":45391,"date":"2026-04-07T16:50:50","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T15:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/?p=45391"},"modified":"2026-04-07T16:50:50","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T15:50:50","slug":"openreach-improves-uk-customer-engagement-via-new-agentic-ai-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ispreview.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/openreach-improves-uk-customer-engagement-via-new-agentic-ai-tech.html","title":{"rendered":"Openreach Improves UK Customer Engagement via New Agentic AI Tech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Network operator Openreach<\/a> (BT<\/a>), which is busy rolling out their new full fibre broadband network across the UK, claims to have reduced missed engineering appointments and inbound contact volumes by one-third after they adopted proactive AI (Artificial Intelligence) agents from NiCE Cognigy<\/a> – redesigning customer engagement across some 15 million customer journeys.<\/p>\n

Just to recap. Openreach<\/a> is busy investing up to \u00a315bn to deploy their Fibre-to-the-Premises<\/strong> (FTTP<\/a>) broadband technology across 25 million UK premises by the end of December 2026. After that, there\u2019s a further ambition to reach up to 30 million premises by 2030 (the build plan and final coverage target for the 2027-2030 period has yet to be announced).<\/p>\n

NOTE:<\/strong> The new FTTP<\/a> network is currently available to 22 million premises across the UK, growing at a rate of c.1 million premises passed per quarter. Various ISPs sell broadband packages over this network, such as BT<\/a>, EE<\/a>, Sky Broadband<\/a>, TalkTalk<\/a> and Vodafone<\/a> etc.<\/div>\n

In order to support this, while also improving efficiency and reducing costs, the network operator has recently been busy making much more use of AI based systems (examples here<\/a> and here<\/a>). The latest example extended this to the customer engagement side of the operator’s business, which involves using proactive AI-based agents from NiCE Cognigy<\/a> (this relates to the original 2024 deployment – here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The agents were designed to engage directly with customers in a “really personal and individual way<\/em>“, which could be by text, by email or by phone (this is often initiated by the AI itself, rather than the customer, as it attempts to anticipate needs). The agents can then explain the upgrade, provide regular updates on the order journey and address a “full range<\/em>” of customer questions. Not to mention being able to do things like book and reschedule appointments etc.<\/p>\n