Openreach Uses NiCE Cognigy AI Agents to Upgrade U.K. Broadband Deployment to Deliver Tens of Millions in Financial Benefits for Openreach and its Clients
Openreach has reduced missed appointments and inbound contact volumes by one-third, while delivering a more seamless, proactive customer experience at national scale
NiCE have announced that Openreach, a unit of the British Telecom Group, has deployed proactive AI agents from NiCE Cognigy to redesign customer engagement across 15 million customer journeys during one of the U.K.’s largest digital infrastructure transformation programs. By shifting from reactive management to AI-driven proactive engagement, Openreach is delivering a more seamless broadband upgrade experience at national scale, increasing appointment success, reducing inbound contact volumes, and generating operational and commercial value for Openreach and its clients such as Vodafone and Sky.
Powered by NiCE Cognigy’s agentic AI, Openreach has introduced a proactive, automated engagement model that adapts based on live performance signals. Instead of waiting for customers to initiate contact, AI agents anticipate needs and start real-time conversations by text message, email and voice, providing updates, suggesting options, answering questions and automating actions on customers’ behalf. The approach is designed to make the process more transparent and easier for customers.
Chris Herbert, Openreach’s director of customer service, said,
“Our proactive AI agents are transforming the broadband experience across the U.K. and delivering tens of millions in financial benefits for Openreach and our customers,”
“By moving to proactive, AI-driven engagement, we’ve improved appointment success, optimized operations, and given customers greater clarity during a complex national upgrade. At this scale, that combination of efficiency and trust makes a meaningful difference.”
Jeff Comstock, President of CX Product & Technology at NiCE, said,
“AI is redefining how organizations engage customers, shifting from reactive service to intelligent, proactive orchestration,”
“This deployment demonstrates how agentic AI can deliver measurable outcomes at scale, enabling organisations to automate complex interactions while maintaining trust, inclusivity and control.”
The impact extends across both customer experience and operations. In addition to reducing missed appointments and contact volumes, Openreach has lowered repeat contacts, allowing service teams to focus on more complex interactions. Openreach said customer satisfaction improved, with its Trustpilot rating rising to 4.7 out of 5 from 2.0, based on hundreds of thousands of reviews after the rollout of proactive AI engagement.
We’re the people who make the net work. Our wholesale broadband network – the UK’s largest – supports more than 680 service providers like BT, SKY, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Zen to provide broadband, TV, phone, data and mobile services to their customers. Any company can access our network through equal pricing, terms and conditions, and our team of around 28,000 people help deliver services to every community in the UK.
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(NASDAQ: NICE) is transforming the world with AI that puts people first. Our purpose-built AI-powered platforms automate engagements into proactive, safe, intelligent actions, empowering individuals and organizations to innovate and act, from interaction to resolution. Trusted by organizations throughout 150+ countries worldwide, NiCE’s platforms are widely adopted across industries connecting people, systems, and workflows to work smarter at scale, elevating performance across the organization, delivering proven measurable outcomes.
