A century-old Gas & Electric IOU known for its wind fleet and now racing to meet surging power demand faced a quieter crisis: it was failing the customers it still called ratepayers, and regulators had noticed.

The utility had long been admired for operational strength. Its reputation rested on infrastructure, grid reliability, and financial discipline. Investor calls focused on rates, capital programs, and earnings per share. By all traditional measures, it was a success.

But customers did not see it that way. Despite charging customers far below the national average rate, customer satisfaction scores were near the bottom of its region. In fact, small-business CSAT was rated a “D–,” and overall satisfaction ranked 17th among 20 regional peers. Customer complaints were consistent: outages were communicated sporadically, bills were confusing, the website and mobile app were outdated, and call centers were fragmented and lacked empowerment. Frontline teams were often left to absorb the consequences of this friction every day, without clear visibility into root causes or the ability to address them at the source.

The problem was not operational. The utility’s operations were strong. The problem was orientation. As a 115-year-old utility, the company referred to the people it served as ratepayers; a term that reflected how the organization was built, what it measured, and what it rewarded.

Regulators took notice. During rate cases, they began pressing the utility to explain how strong financial performance could coexist with such a poor customer experience. The question grew harder to answer each year.

Incremental fixes would not close this gap. A new call script or a better app layered on the same culture would yield the same result. What the utility needed was a fundamental reorientation around the customer, starting with how the organization listened.

From Signal to Coordinated Action

What followed was not a single initiative. It was a shift in how the utility listened, aligned, and acted. Customer and employee signals became shared understanding. Shared understanding became coordinated action across the business.

The work unfolded in three phases, each building on the one before it.

The first step was to strengthen how the organization heard from customers and from the people closest to them. Internal interviews with dozens of customer-facing team members produced detailed, firsthand accounts of the moments when the utility failed its customers. The level of engagement from field teams reflected something important: these employees had been absorbing customer pain for years and had never been given a formal voice in fixing it.

That changed with the introduction of Voice of the Customer through Employees (VoCE), a structured approach to capturing frontline signals and turning them into insights the organization could act on.

The call center was where customer frustration was most concentrated. A leading customer-satisfaction benchmark firm found that the utility lagged competitors in professionalism, issue resolution, and IVR containment. Feedback from customers and employees was unambiguous.

“No customer makes it out of the IVR system happy.”
“The autopay function is too hard to use.”

The utility responded with a call center transformation program built around five changes.

1. Real-time customer dashboards. Customer pain points were documented, and new call center metrics were tied directly to them, giving teams visibility into both efficiency and satisfaction.
2. Training focused on empathy and resolution. Frontline reps developed competencies in listening, ownership, and issue resolution rather than call-handling speed alone.
3. Charters for accountability. Each customer-facing team defined and owned its role in the overall customer experience.
4. IVR system overhaul. End-to-end diagnosis, AI-enabled workforce management to better match resources to customer demand, Power BI dashboards, NPS tracking, and IVR fallout improvements.
5. Cross-center best practices. Processes were standardized and improved across multiple centers.

Within a year, the call center had implemented Net Promoter Score for the first time. Service levels and first-call resolution improved. Call volume declined by double digits as customers migrated to the mobile app and self-service channels. NPS moved into the 40 to 50 range, well above the utility benchmark of 0 to 30. For the first time, the utility’s call centers were places where customers called to resolve problems, not to create new ones.

With clearer signals in place, the next step was to ensure every function viewed the customer journey the same way.

Billing and digital touchpoints were the starting point. They consistently caused the most customer dissatisfaction and received the least organizational priority. Bills were confusing. Autopay was unreliable. Outage information was scattered across channels, with no real-time visibility.

The utility brought together Customer Service Representatives, linemen, and IT developers for a structured Customer Experience Journey Mapping process. They mapped every step of the residential and business billing journey, from account creation to payment to dispute resolution. The process created a shared view of where friction was concentrated and gave every function a common starting point for prioritizing fixes.

Four changes followed directly from that alignment work.

1. Digital CX projects moved up the priority stack. An accelerated roadmap was built around customer pain points and funded accordingly.
2. Digital touchpoints were rebuilt. Autopay was reengineered. A billing FAQ was added. Outage tracking was transformed with a real-time outage map integrated into the new mobile app.
3. Bill formats were simplified. Customer usability testing led to clearer, easier-to-read statements.
4. Payment options expanded. Customers received more flexible arrangements and clearer communications protocols.

Outage-related call volume declined as customers adopted the real-time map. Digital engagement increased, and billing complaints dropped. Involving the field team in designing the fixes drove adoption from the inside out.

The wins in the call center and billing created momentum. The organization had proof that listening differently produced different results. The next step was to make that discipline the standard for how every function operated.

Customer feedback loops became continuous. Customer input was embedded in campaign planning, outage communications, and technology decisions as a standing operating practice, not a periodic exercise.

CX charters and scorecards reached every function. Marketing, technology, and field operations each established explicit customer-facing accountability.

Board engagement shifted. Executives began presenting customer metrics alongside financial results in investor briefings and board discussions. Customer experience became a measure of company performance, not a departmental metric.

Leaders were trained in VoCE. Operations and technology managers learned to capture, interpret, and act on frontline signals at scale.

The expansion work demonstrated that customer centricity was not just a call center or billing issue, it was an enterprise opportunity.

The most enduring change at the utility was not a system, a process, or a metric. It was the way the organization worked together.

For over a century, the utility operated in functional silos. Field operations ran independently of the call center. Technology made decisions without customer input. Marketing and billing rarely sat in the same room. Each function was optimized for its own performance, not for the customer’s experience moving across them all.

That changed. Cross-functional teams replaced siloed operations. Technology was reorganized into product lines accountable for customer outcomes. Customer goals were embedded in performance evaluations and dashboards. Employees were given the tools and authority to act in the customer’s interest and were recognized when they did.

The consulting team suggested early in the engagement that customers would not call themselves “ratepayers” as a signal of the broader reorientation the organization needed to make. The utility adopted it because it reflected what they needed to become, not just what they were being asked to say.

By 2024, and even more clearly today, the transformation was visible beyond its own walls. The utility earned Forbes Best Employer and USA Today Top Workplaces recognition, nationally and regionally. Sustained grid investments in automation and resilience delivered approximately 320 minutes of saved interruption for the average impacted customer. What began as a cultural shift within the organization was showing up externally in how employees engage, how the system performs, and how the company is recognized in the market.

The results showed what happens when customer and employee signals are translated into aligned, cross-functional action across a regulated enterprise.

What Changed for Customers

• CSAT improved from 17th in the region, rated D-minus, to 2nd. Within 24 months.
• Call center NPS, introduced for the first time, reached 40–50 and held, well above the utility benchmark of 0 to 30.
• Call center volume dropped 17% as customers shifted to digital channels.
• Outage communication became faster and clearer, reducing friction during high-stress moments.
• Mobile app engagement surged with the launch of the real-time outage map.

What Changed for the Business

• Regulatory credibility improved directly. Customer satisfaction became the foundation for rate case discussions, the moment executives had been asked to reconcile but could not before the transformation.
• Approximately 320 minutes of interruption time was saved for the average impacted customer through grid hardening and automation investments made possible by the organizational alignment this work established.
• A major ERP deployment, historically a source of significant customer disruption, was executed with minimal customer impact, reflecting the cross-functional coordination built through this work.
• Customer metrics became as visible as financial results in executive reporting, board discussions, and investor briefings.
• Customer-centric language, expectations, and accountability were embedded in onboarding, performance evaluations, and leadership scorecards across the enterprise.

What Leaders Said Changed Most

One year after the engagement, the utility’s leaders were surveyed about where they saw the greatest impact. The themes that surfaced most frequently were cross-functional alignment, stronger listening, and a more customer-centric culture.

Where Leaders Saw the Greatest Impact

The most durable change was not any single initiative. It was how the organization listened, aligned, and acted together.

The utility’s results reflect a pattern Sprosty sees consistently across utilities and telecom providers.

Progress accelerates when three things happen together. The organization strengthens its listening to customer and employee signals. It aligns around the moments that matter most in the customer journey. It activates change across functions with clear ownership and accountability.

These are not transformation principles. They are operating disciplines. The difference is execution.

For utility and telecom executives who are accountable for customer satisfaction scores, regulatory relationships, and growth targets in the same breath, the implication is direct. Customer centricity becomes real when it shapes how the organization operates, how it prioritizes, and how it turns what it hears into action.

The utility did not reach 2nd among 20 regional peers by running a better customer experience program. They got there by becoming a different kind of organization.

This is the work that became Intelligent Customer Experience, Sprosty’s approach to customer-centric transformation in regulated industries. If your organization is ready to make that shift, we have done it before.