30% Uplift in Quality Assurance: Transforming Customer Experience for a Leading Clean Energy Provider

Client Overview

The client is a prominent supplier of electricity and natural gas, committed to delivering clean energy solutions to residential and business customers across the United States, with a customer base exceeding 5 million.

The Challenge

Modernizing Customer Experience Amidst Growing Demand and Legacy Constraints

As the client’s customer base expanded, the existing legacy infrastructure struggled to keep pace with the increasing volume and complexity of customer interactions. The lack of a centralized knowledge system and reliance on outdated processes led to inconsistent service quality, prolonged resolution times, and elevated operational costs. To address these challenges, the client aimed to:

• Enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of customer care operations
• Reduce average handle time (AHT) and improve first call resolution (FCR)
• Elevate overall customer satisfaction and quality assurance (QA) metrics 

Achieving these objectives required a comprehensive transformation of customer care processes, integrating advanced technologies and streamlined workflows.

Sutherland Solution

Implementing a Holistic Customer Care Transformation Strategy

Sutherland partnered with the client to design and execute a comprehensive transformation of its customer care operations. The solution encompassed:

1. Establishing a Global Operating Model: Implemented front-office operations in the U.S. with bilingual agents proficient in English and Spanish, ensuring effective communication across diverse customer segments.
2. AI-Powered Knowledge Management: Deployed Sutherland’s Cognitive Knowledge Engine (CKE) to provide agents with real-time access to accurate information, enabling quicker and more consistent issue resolution.
3. Process Redesign and Automation: Reengineered existing processes to eliminate inefficiencies and integrated automation to handle routine tasks, thereby reducing manual effort and errors.
4. Advanced Analytics Integration: Introduced analytics across customer care operations to monitor performance, identify areas for improvement, and drive data-informed decision-making.

This multifaceted approach aimed to enhance the customer experience, improve operational efficiency, and achieve measurable improvements in service quality.

The Outcome

Measurable Gains in Service Quality, Operational Precision, and Customer Experience

Sutherland’s end-to-end customer experience transformation initiative delivered tangible improvements across the client’s customer care ecosystem. Most notably, the client realized a 30% uplift in Quality Assurance (QA) scores, a testament to the improved consistency, accuracy, and professionalism of customer interactions driven by intelligent knowledge access and streamlined workflows.

The optimization of call handling processes – powered by Sutherland’s Cognitive Knowledge Engine and front-office process redesign – resulted in a 15% reduction in Average Handle Time (AHT). Agents were equipped to resolve customer issues more efficiently, contributing to shorter wait times and enhanced customer satisfaction.

Critically, the introduction of process automation and error-proofing measures led to a dramatic reduction in service order errors, from over 25% to under 5%, reinforcing the reliability of downstream operations and improving fulfillment accuracy.

Additionally, the Average Speed of Answer (ASA) stabilized, even amid fluctuating call volumes, allowing the client to uphold service-level commitments and maintain a high-quality experience across all customer touchpoints.

Collectively, these outcomes empowered the client to elevate its customer service delivery to a new standard – one that is scalable, digitally enabled, and aligned with its brand promise of clean, reliable, and customer-focused energy solutions.

That’s digital outcomes delivered!