Challenge

The CEO needed to reduce operating expenditure by £250M while simultaneously improving customer experience outcomes and positioning the company for a successful private equity exit.

Approach

We conducted a total assessment and redesign of Virgin Media's operating model — starting not with org charts or cost lines, but with the customer. Mapping journey pain points revealed the root causes of operational underperformance and gave us the evidence base to establish clear principles for a new customer-centric model. Working across every function in the business, we:

• Analysed customer journey pain points to identify root causes of operational underperformance

• Established principles for a new customer-centric operating model grounded in customer evidence

• Redesigned how every function in the business operated around those principles

• Built governance frameworks, decision-making authority, and measurement systems to sustain the model

• Embedded CX considerations into core business operations

We delivered a model the organisation could own, operate, and build on.

Outcomes

The redesigned operating model delivered against every dimension of the original brief:

• £250M in operating expenditure reduced

• CX function able to directly link its activities to revenue impact and NPS improvements

• Operating model became the blueprint for customer-centric transformation across the organisation

• Virgin Media achieved its long-term strategic goal — sale to Liberty Global — within six years

We stayed connected to the organisation long after the engagement ended — checking in with senior executives at three, six, and beyond. The model held. The exit validated the central argument: that customer-centricity and commercial performance are not in tension. Designed well, one drives the other.