From Excel spreadsheets and NPS below zero to a 4.7 Trustpilot rating, Openreach and NiCE pull back the curtain on one of the UK's most ambitious AI deployments.

Introduction

Rhys Fisher, Associate Editor at CX Today, sits down with Chris Herbert, Director of Customer Service at Openreach; Eifion Lloyd, Senior Manager of Customer Enablement and Strategy at Openreach; and Giles Bryan, General Manager of Proactive AI at NiCE.

With 25 million homes in scope and 700 communications providers depending on Openreach's infrastructure, this was a national transformation. If you want to understand what proactive AI actually looks like when the stakes are real, this is the conversation to watch.

Main Description

Openreach manages the UK's largest broadband network, but before NiCE came in, customer communications were fragmented, inconsistent, and largely out of Openreach's hands – owned instead by hundreds of individual comms providers. NPS sat below zero. Engineers were turning up to empty homes. Something had to change.

In this case study interview, the teams behind the deployment break down exactly how they got from there to here:

Starting scrappy and scaling fast: the early proof of concept ran on daily Excel uploads, crashed occasionally, and was far from elegant. But it proved the value, and that was the point.

The proactive shift: why waiting for customers to call is already a failure, and how Openreach rebuilt its engagement model around reaching out first via SMS, email, and voice.

Inclusivity by design: how NiCE's platform handles landline-only customers without a separate spec, separate team, or separate configuration.

A number that didn't make the press release: a generative AI chatbot trialed before Christmas cut install cancellations by 22%.