Virgin Media O2 is a British mass media and telecommunications company formed in June 2021 as a joint venture between Liberty Global and Telefónica through the merger of their respective Virgin Media and O2 UK businesses. It’s one of the largest entertainment and telecommunications operators in the United Kingdom, with around 47 million customers in 2021.

The Challenge

The manual approach to workforce adjustments and adherence tracking in Virgin Media’s multiple contact centers was excessively inefficient, and it was preventing workforce management (WFM) teams from devoting sufficient time to higher-value tasks. Notifications to agents were handled manually, as was the scheduling of off-phone work. Non-unified messaging to the organization’s 7,000 agents led to inconsistencies and contributed to poor agent engagement.

The Solution

In October 2021, Virgin Media turned to Intradiem’s contact center automation to remedy these efficiency and engagement problems. The organization’s WFM/Resource Planning Manager worked with operations managers to drive internal awareness of the automation initiative, establish thresholds for use cases, and lay the groundwork for training and preparation of agents for the change.

Intradiem’s contact center automation was deployed to 5,000 agents in multiple contact center locations over five weeks. The platform was used to dynamically deliver training directly to agent desktops, send notifications to agents to help keep call handling time within pre-set thresholds, facilitate agents’ ability to take breaks on time and use off-phone time to stay current on internal communications. Intradiem technology uses a rules engine that leverages real-time (not historical) data to take immediate actions to optimize operations.

The Results

Dramatic gains in efficiency followed. Within four months of launch, more than 3,500 hours of offline time were delivered to agents’ desktops via Intradiem to make productive use of what had previously been wasted available time. The organization’s retention area saw a 3% reduction in “personal break” usage. Average call handle time (AHT) was reduced by 15-60 seconds across various centers.

Initial success from the deployment of Intradiem’s contact center automation is now being followed up with a roll out of Intradiem’s coaching use case, to reduce preschedule shrinkage, as well as the introduction of a mobile Intradiem app that enables agents to view their schedules and report lateness or absences remotely.