Under One Touch Switch the new provider runs the switch, so a customer leaving you may never speak to you at all. Retention still works, but only as a short, optional, honest conversation that starts within hours of the switch request and never gets in its way.
Most broadband retention teams were built for the opposite. The old model assumed the customer would ring to leave and the save desk would get its chance. That call is now optional, and Ofcom designed it that way on purpose.
How does One Touch Switch actually work?
The customer contacts the provider they want to move to and gives their name, address, current provider and the services they want to switch. The new provider matches those details against the losing provider's records through a central hub. If the match fails, it asks for more, such as an account number.
Once there is a match, the losing provider has to send the customer switching information without being asked. The customer reads it, confirms with the new provider, and agrees a switch date. Ofcom's 2021 description of the process says that date "can be as soon as the next day, but can take longer". When the new service is working the old one should stop automatically, and Ofcom says the old provider must not charge for any notice period after the switchover date.
There is no code for the customer to ask you for. Part of the industry proposed a code-based option, Code to Switch, and Ofcom chose not to go with it.
The rules sit in Ofcom's General Conditions, C7.18 to C7.27, and those numbers are unchanged in the consolidated version Ofcom lists as in force from 8 April 2026. Providers were meant to have the process live by 3 April 2023. They missed it, and One Touch Switch launched for most customers on 12 September 2024. A year on, in September 2025, Ofcom reported more than 1.6 million switches through it and more than 300 providers signed up.
What does it change for retention?
Three things.
You may never hear the customer's voice. Condition C7.19 says the process must not require the customer to contact the losing provider, get its consent or take any step it asks for. The new provider leads.
Ofcom meant to take the save desk out of the journey. Its 2021 statement cited its own 2020 research: 24% of switchers who contacted their losing provider had difficulty with being asked to stay. It said One Touch Switch removes the need for that contact, so losing providers "will have no opportunity to engage in retention activity by design".
The window is short. Your first signal is the match request from the hub. Anything that waits for a weekly churn report arrives after the decision has been made.
So the question moves from how you handle the call to what you say, unprompted, to someone who has already chosen to go, and how quickly you say it.
What are you allowed to do when a customer is switching?
The conditions do not contain a blanket ban on a losing provider ever contacting a leaving customer. They do set firm edges, and the design leaves any contact with you as the customer's choice.
The switching information must be complete and neutral. Under C7.12 you must tell the customer, among other things, the services that will move, the impact the switch will have on other services they have with you, which services stay unaffected, the total charge due on the switch date (any early termination charge sits in that figure), and how to keep or return equipment. C7.13 says it must be accurate and in clear, comprehensible and neutral terms on a durable medium, and C7.27 says it goes promptly by the quickest method unless the customer asked for another. Do not put an offer inside it.
You must not slow the switch down. Providers must not delay or abuse the process (C7.4), and termination procedures must not act as a disincentive to switching (C1.8). An offer the customer has to answer before anything moves would, in our reading, fail both.
Do not turn their contact into a save attempt. Some customers will have to get in touch, for example to correct contact details so the switching information reaches them. In its February 2022 statement Ofcom said it expects providers not to engage in unwanted save activity in that situation, and pointed them to C1.8.
Marketing rules still apply. Our reading is that a retention offer sent by text or email is direct marketing under PECR. The ICO's soft opt-in lets you send it to an existing customer only if they had a simple way to opt out when you collected their details and in every message since. Someone who has opted out of marketing should not get an offer just because they are leaving. The ICO notes its guidance is under review after the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025.
How can a retention conversation work in that window?
What tends to work is small and polite.
One message, sent quickly, kept separate. The neutral switching information goes out as required. A separate message follows soon after: we have seen you are moving, here is one thing worth knowing before you go, reply if you want to talk. If the customer does not reply, that is the answer.
Ask why before offering anything. The reason decides the route. Price can get an offer. A fault gets help with the fault, not a discount on a service the customer says is broken. A move to an address you cannot serve gets a thank you. Signs of vulnerability get a person.
Make one honest offer and accept the answer. If they say no, the conversation ends and nothing else in your systems contacts them about it. The full list of guardrails is in what an AI agent should never do in a cancellation call.
Be straight about how staying works. The new provider leads the switch, so our reading is that a customer who wants to stay has to cancel with them. Ofcom says customers have the right to cancel an order within 14 calendar days. Say that plainly rather than promising to stop it for them.
Hand over the ones worth a person. A customer who is wavering, upset or asking something the agent cannot answer should reach someone the same day, with the conversation attached.
What should you measure?
A headline save rate on its own misleads. It says nothing about who you contacted or whether they stayed.
- Reply rate from leavers. It tells you whether the message reads as useful or as a nuisance.
- Saves still customers at 90 days. A save won on pressure tends to come back as a cancellation.
- Leaving reasons, by category. A clean record of why people go is often worth more than the saves, because it shows where the operation is losing them.
- Opt-outs and complaints from leavers. If either rises, the message is wrong.
- Time from match to first message. Hours matter here.
The wider economics are in the economics of retention with conversational AI.
What do you need to set up?
- A trigger from the switching event, not from a report. When the hub tells you a customer is being matched for a switch, that has to reach whatever sends the message within minutes.
- Eligibility rules written down first. Who gets a message, who gets help instead, who gets nothing: marketing opt-outs, open complaints, active faults and vulnerability flags.
- An offer agreed in advance for each situation, signed off by finance, so the agent is not making up a price.
- The customer's contract facts to hand: end date, early termination charge and what the bundle includes, so every answer matches the switching information they already have.
- Outcomes written back to your CRM with the reason, so suppression holds across every system that sends.
- Test scenarios before go-live: a decline followed by a second message, an opt-out in different wordings, a fault, a vulnerable customer, and a customer who wants to stay after confirming.
How this fits the rest of the customer lifecycle is in AI for ISP and altnet customer retention.
If you want to see how a leaver conversation feels from the customer's side, try our agent.
Sources: Ofcom, General Conditions of Entitlement, unofficial consolidated version listed as in force from 8 April 2026 (C1.8, C7.4, C7.12, C7.13, C7.18 to C7.27); Ofcom, Quick, easy and reliable switching, statement and consultation, 28 September 2021 (paragraph 4.144) and statement, 3 February 2022 (paragraph 3.68); Ofcom, enforcement programme CW/01268/03/23; Ofcom, switching broadband provider guidance; Ofcom, 12 September 2025 One Touch Switch first-year figures; ICO, guidance on electronic mail marketing under PECR.
