Virgin Media O2 Reduces Walkout Rate by 62%

The leading telecommunications company improves store experience and increases customer retainment with Verint Queue Management.

Results

62%
Walkout reduction
27%
Greater floor efficiency
£29m/y
Conversion opportunity

About Virgin Media O2

Virgin Media O2 is the commercial brand of Telefonica UK Limited and is a leading digital communications company. According to Ofcom, Virgin Media O2 has the highest customer satisfaction of any mobile provider in the UK. They have almost 500 UK stores, over 2,500 employees, and more than 23 million customers. They’re utilizing Verint Queue Management to create an even more powerful customer experience.

Opportunity

Virgin Media O2 wanted to evolve its customer experience so they employed store hosts to greet and assist customers as they enter their stores. Previously, these store hosts managed customers using clipboard and pen, a process which limited visibility on customer or store associate activities.

Store hosts were unable to provide customers with accurate waiting times, causing some customers to become frustrated and walk out without service. Typically, the customers that were most likely to walk out were those wanting to sign up for new contracts, meaning Virgin Media O2 was losing significant revenue opportunities every year.

“There has been a reduction in the number of walkouts. More customers are now willing to wait because we can give them accurate waiting times.”
Store Leader
Virgin Media O2 UK

Create a better virtual queuing experience with Verint Queue Management

Virgin Media O2 deployed Verint Queue Management* software, across their 487 UK stores, enabling store associates to create a better virtual queuing experience. In doing so, Virgin Media O2 improved the store experience and increased customer retainment. As the Store Leader at a Virgin Media O2 UK store notes, “It’s something that we kind of show off to a customer and say ‘look, here you go, why don’t you enter your name in,’, and it creates that little bit of trust that ‘oh, my name is captured on a system.”

Luxury retail shopper with an orange bag and a phone

Benefits

The improved shop floor operations and the footfall insights that Verint provides enabled Virgin Media O2 to better allocate their resources, which ultimately saves them significant costs. Staff transaction time has dropped by 27 percent, with Verint ensuring that more positive and productive conversations take place in less time. Providing the shop floor team with more time allows them to serve more customers and undertake more tasks.

Thanks to the improved waiting experience and better customer service, Virgin Media O2’s net promoter scores (NPS) reached an all-time high since deploying Verint Queue Management software. Having an improved waiting experience ensures Virgin Media O2 isn’t just retaining customers but also capturing those walking out of their competitors’ stores.

Virgin Media O2’s head office now has access to invaluable business intelligence analytics on their stores’ footfall, performance, and operations, helping them to make smarter commercial decisions, and thus improve sales and efficiency across their entire store network. The data analytics and insights gained from Verint has helped Virgin Media O2 save £200,000 a year, which would otherwise have been spent on mystery shoppers and surveys. These insights can be used internally or provided to consultants to make faster and more meaningful changes across their business.

The improved in-store atmosphere and team collaboration has reduced stress and improved store team morale, increasing employee retention. This greatly reduced Virgin Media O2’s spend on recruiting and training for new employees.

*The solution referred to as Verint Queue Management was called Qudini Walk-in Virtual Queuing when originally purchased, prior to acquisition by Verint.

“Without [Verint Queue Management], I would feel a lot less in control than I do right now. But I know exactly what is going on in my store and it helps me lead my team a lot better and it gives me the time to be able to do that.”
Store Leader
Virgin Media O2 UK

Featured Verint solutions

Queue Management
Manage customer wait-time expectations and deliver better customer service with our highly configurable, digital queue management software solution.