The Business Issue

BT Business serves organizations ranging from one-person businesses to some of the largest corporations and public sector organizations in the UK. But for years, its customer engagement model reflected how the business was organized internally rather than what individual customers actually needed. Modern business buyers expect telecommunications providers to understand their specific operational context and recommend solutions in real time. For BT Business, traditional engagement models fell short.

Historically, product teams focused on driving their own targets. Mobile teams promoted mobile offers. Broadband teams promoted broadband. Voice teams promoted voice. As a result, a single customer could receive three disconnected, competing communications in a single month. On the front lines, desk sales and retention agents relied on price books and their own judgement to handle high-stakes customer calls.

As BT sharpened its focus on customer-first engagement, leadership knew that patching individual campaign tools wouldn't fix the flaw in a product-capability approach. Instead, BT Business needed to replace isolated product pushes with context-aware, value-driven conversations.

The Solution

To support that shift, BT Business established a dedicated Customer Value Management (CVM) function structured around the complete customer lifecycle – spanning acquisition, cross-sell, upsell, and retention. They deployed Pega Customer Decision Hub™ as the central AI decisioning engine powering this team. The ambition was clear: Deliver the right message to the right customer about the right solution at the right time.

The platform functions as the centralized decisioning layer across both inbound and outbound channels. When a customer calls the sales or retention desk, Pega Customer Decision Hub analyzes data, such as churn propensity, customer location, current products, and current pricing, to help agents identify the best product and price for each customer at that moment. BT Business is also working to bring in richer data sources, including intent and servicing data, to further enhance those recommendations over time. At the touch of a button, the agent knows exactly what product and price to offer. On outbound channels, when BT Business sends a customized product and price offer via email or post, Pega ensures it’s the same offer the customer sees if they visit the website or call the sales desk.

To even further ensure every interaction is consistent and relevant, BT Business integrated Pega across its wider enterprise ecosystem. By connecting the platform with ServiceNow and public web properties, the CVM team now tailors web experiences based on a visitor’s location or the device they are using. Leadership also centralized all decisions regarding customer communications to scale this approach effectively. To prove value early and often, they also changed how they measure success – shifting from isolated transactions to focus on a long-term customer lifetime value (CLV) model.

Yet, technology alone does not drive success. Without agent adoption, the new decisioning engine would be useless. To build trust, leadership engaged frontline sales teams early, showing agents how AI processes massive amounts of real-time data to support – not replace – their expertise. When agents flagged data inaccuracies, leadership kept the rollout moving while at the same time exploring how Pega could automatically capture missing customer information to close those gaps.

The Results

For BT Business, building a customer-first culture and deploying AI-powered decision-making went hand in hand. As the company moved away from product-centric quotas, the team stopped asking, “What can our products do?” and began asking, “What do our customers actually need?” Today, CVM team members sit at every commercial decision table, ensuring customer impact guides every proposition and offer before it hits the market.

This combined approach yielded value that adds up, delivering immediate financial and operational wins. By delivering personalized next best actions, contract re-sign rates increased by 1.9% where Pega was deployed. In addition, targeted upsell campaigns – such as migrating mobile customers from SIM-only plans to handset contracts – delivered double the conversion rates compared to historical benchmarks.

This complex AI orchestration remains completely invisible to business customers. They simply experience faster, more relevant interactions with an organization that understands their business needs. Looking forward, BT Business is expanding Pega Customer Decision Hub into Genesys Cloud to incorporate customer sentiment analysis and power agentic live chat, ensuring they remain agile and ready for whatever comes next.

Want to dive deeper into their journey? Watch their PegaWorld session here.