Agile telcos need the right systems in place to better serve customers in an AI world. Antony Savvas looks at some of the latest developments that can help drive this success.
As part of Virgin Media O2’s ongoing efforts to remove “persistent pain points” and improve customers’ experience, the company has reduced the number of calls transferred by its agents by 1.3 million in 2025, saving customers around 1.45 billion seconds of their time, we are told.
This is a direct result of cross-skilling 5,000 support agents, simplifying team structures and delivering AI-led improvements to the automated phone system. Following the effort, the communications service provider (CSP) says the latest statistics from UK regulator Ofcom show that complaints about Virgin Media O2 have fallen by “more than 50%” over the last 12 months.
Historically, all customers calling either Virgin Media or O2 were prompted to press a number on their handset depending on the nature of their query, with their response dictating which team they’d be routed to. However, where a customer query didn’t fall perfectly within the options presented, or they wanted to discuss more than one issue, customers would often be transferred between teams, “causing customer frustration”.
Today, the majority of customers are now invited to explain the reason for their call at the outset, with AI driven-natural language understanding (NLU), used to better understand the customer’s intent and connect them to an agent who can provide the support required. The company plans to fully roll out this system across all customer journeys over the coming months, ensuring more customers get the help they need first time.
A comprehensive review was also undertaken to identify where and why high volumes of customer calls were being transferred. Using “heatmaps” that showed particularly high traffic transfer routes, Virgin Media O2 implemented changes including simplifying teams to minimise the need for customers to speak to more than one agent. To enable this, the company rolled out new agent training, with 5,000 employees cross-skilled to be able to provide a wider range of support to customers.
“Nobody enjoys spending their time on the phone to their service provider, particularly when they’re being transferred between teams,” says Alan Stott, Virgin Media O2 director of customer contact. “That’s why we’ve introduced AI technology which allows a customer to explain the reason for their call at the outset and quickly routes them to the appropriate team. These improvements helped to reduce call transfers by over a million last year, saving our customers a combined 400,000 hours on the phone to us. We’ll continue to invest in our people and systems throughout 2026 and beyond, to ensure we’re consistently giving our customers the best possible service.”
Nokia telco cloud
The telecoms industry is entering a pivotal chapter in its modernisation journey. As networks evolve from traditional infrastructure to cloud-native architectures, service providers face a fundamental challenge: How do you build a data foundation that can support both today’s cloud-native workloads, and tomorrow’s AI-driven network automation, all while maintaining reliability on a global scale?
Nokia chose Red Hat OpenShift as its primary reference platform in June 2023 for core network applications, and it has now selected Pure Storage as the data infrastructure foundation for the next-generation telco cloud it is now selling to CSPs.
Nokia says Red Hat OpenShift provides a consistent, carrier-grade foundation for its cloud-native network functions (CNFs), and its applications for autonomous network operation, that “will define the next era of telecoms”. By choosing Pure Storage to anchor the data layer, Nokia adds it is delivering “predictable outcomes and repeatable rollouts” across multiple CNFs and deployment sites through a fully lifecycle-managed offering.
“Partnering with Nokia for the first time is a significant milestone that unites two innovators with a shared vision for the future of cloud-native networks,” says Maciej Kranz, general manager for enterprise at Pure Storage. “Pure Storage will provide the trusted, high-performance data platform underlying Nokia’s next-generation container cloud CNFs and applications, delivering the scale, efficiency and simplicity service providers demand. We’re bringing leading all-flash technology to unlock new opportunities together.”
Marcelo Cheminn Madruga, the head of portfolio technology, incubation and architecture at Nokia Mobile Infrastructure Cloud and Network Services, adds: “We selected Pure Storage as the storage solution for our Red Hat OpenShift platform reference architecture due to their industry-leading all-flash technology that delivers the unparalleled speed, scalability, and sustainability critical for today’s demanding telecom applications, including Nokia CNFs, applications and AI workloads. And Pure’s inherent efficiency not only boosts performance, but also significantly reduces energy consumption and embodied CO2e when compared to traditional storage systems, firmly aligning with Nokia’s environmental priorities.”
Sabio and Bouygues Telecom
Sabio Group, the AI-first customer experience transformation specialist, says it has demonstrated the “critical value” of pre-implementation consultancy through its strategic partnership with France’s Bouygues Telecom.
By investing in expert guidance before vendor selection, Bouygues Telecom transformed what began as a technology refresh into a comprehensive customer experience transformation serving millions of customers across consumer and enterprise markets.
Sabio’s consultancy programme established the foundations for successful transformation, it says. This included more than 300 consulting days, which helped to identify and optimise 35 user personas across the organisation, and re-design more than 20 customer journeys to enhance customer experience. The complete project went on to span 25 operational sites and helped to successfully integrate over 15 outsourcing partners into transformation planning, as well as involve more than 3,900 internal users.
When Bouygues Telecom’s customer relationship platform approached end-of-life, the firm recognised that successful transformation required more than releasing a request for proposals (RFP) to vendors. Instead, they engaged Sabio’s expert services in contact centre transformation to provide strategic consultancy that would define requirements, evaluate options and establish implementation foundations before any vendor selection occurred.
“The project began due to technical obsolescence,” says Yves Rousseau, the functional architect for CX at Bouygues Telecom. “A market study revealed nearly all vendors offered cloud-based solutions, changing the game for us. That realisation led to a strategic reset: going back to foundational business needs instead of writing detailed specs to hand off to an integrator.”
Sabio’s pre-implementation consultancy delivered three critical phases of preparation:
Phase 1: Defining the Target Model – Creating a transformation charter, functional specifications, and evaluation frameworks that enabled effective vendor demonstrations and selection
Phase 2: Operating Model Design – Following the selection of Genesys Cloud as the Contact Centre-as-a-Service (CCaaS) platform, Sabio reinforced Bouygues Telecom’s teams to accelerate implementation preparation through agile methodologies
Phase 3: Deployment Strategy – Establishing detailed mapping foundations for the transition proof-of-concept, translating business requirements into configuration language
“CCaaS solutions demand new methodologies and concepts, requiring a return to fundamentals and to the core business need, with a fresh external perspective and CCaaS expertise,” explains Rousseau. “We needed to draft an RFP that vendors could respond to effectively, without missing the mark.”
The true value of Sabio’s pre-implementation consultancy became evident when the selected vendor began their work. The comprehensive groundwork completed during the strategic phase “dramatically accelerated” implementation timelines and reduced project risk, said the partners.
“Our early preparation was so robust that when the vendor came on board, they realised major groundwork was already in place, validating our approach and delivering immediate value to Bouygues Telecom,” says Guillaume Faure, principal solutions manager at Sabio.
Antony Savvas