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Broadband ISP and mobile operator Virgin Media and O2 (VMO2) has this morning informed ISPreview that they’ve created and launched a new AI (Artificial Intelligence) tool, Lumi AI, which aims to “drive its customer service turnaround strategy” by helping customer service agents to provide “faster, more effective and more personalised” support.
At present VMO2 already uses some other AI tools for different tasks (more on this later), which the company claims has already helped to reduce customer complaints – by more than 50% – over the past year (first-time resolution has also increased, which means fewer follow-up contacts are needed). The new Lumi AI tool builds on this by helping the provider’s support agents by analysing conversations in real-time and providing “helpful prompts” based on millions of previous conversations on the same topic.
During an interaction with a customer, Lumi AI will advise an agent if a customer may need more information on a specific point, or suggest a specific resolution which helped a different customer with a similar query or issue. It can also be used to recommend products and services that are most likely to be of interest to a customer, enhancing the value they receive from their package.
Lumi AI is currently being piloted among a cohort of Virgin Media and O2 agents across care, telesales and retentions. The system is to be “rolled out more widely over the coming weeks and months“, including in the new 500-strong team recently launched in Manchester to resolve the most complex and sensitive customer issues.
Alan Stott, VMO2’s Director of Customer Contact, said:
“We know that when a customer needs to contact us – whether over the phone or online – they simply want to get through to us without long delays, they want to ensure we understand their issue and they want a satisfactory resolution as quickly as possible.
Through investing in new digital tools and leveraging the expertise of partners, we are making real strides in improving the Virgin Media O2 customer experience. Far from replacing our human workforce, AI technology is helping to create a team of super-agents better equipped and more empowered to resolve customer issues first-time.
With complaints falling, and call transfers and waiting times down as well, our transformation strategy is well under way and making good progress, but we can’t afford to stand still. Technology is evolving more rapidly than ever before and we’ll continue to work with our partners to explore new and innovative solutions that deliver a consistently exceptional, industry-leading customer experience.”
In terms of the other AI tools that VMO2 are deploying to boost their customer service and support quality, the first is a new AI-powered customer contact centre service, from Amazon Web Services, which went live in early 2025 and allows a customer to explain the reason for their query at the beginning of the call before instantly routing them to the most relevant team (i.e. reducing the likelihood of an agent having to transfer a customer elsewhere). This has improved ‘first time resolution’, which is up by 8% over the past 6-months, with “70% of complaints now fully resolved within 24 hours“.
The new AI tools also provides support agents with a more holistic view of the customer they are speaking to (e.g. details of previous calls/interactions), which makes it easier for them to identify the context of a call without the agent needing to pull everything up manually. In addition, new software is also being used to analyse conversations and highlight customers that may be vulnerable or have additional needs.
Finally, an Auto Call Summarisation tool has been deployed that actively listens to the conversation and concisely captures the salient points discussed. This cuts down on support agents needing to take manual notes, as it’s done for them, and allows greater focus on the customer who also benefits from being sent a post-call summary.
The most recent consumer complaints data from Ofcom (here) does appear to show a clear and consistent level of improvement over the past year. For example, back in Q1 2024 Virgin Media were seeing around 18 complaints per 100,000 customers for their broadband services, but this dropped to 11 in Q4 2024 (the industry average is c.9). O2 has also seen a similar trend.