Helping Utility firm E take QA and compliance to the next level

How UK energy supplier E grew its annual call center quality scores by 18% with evaluagent’s Quality Assurance platform.

• Industry

  Utilities

• Size

  75-125 seat call center operation

• Result

  18% year-on-year improvement in call center quality scores

• Result

  Number of calls evaluated per day up 100% on average

Introduction

E (Gas & Electricity) is a UK-owned energy supplier with around 300,000 customers across England, Wales, and Scotland. Known as Britain’s best prepayment energy provider, its activities are focused on keeping costs down so customers pay less. 

E is committed to offering the highest level of customer service, but recognizes that when its customers do get in contact they can often be frustrated – particularly over the last year with energy prices increasing. So how does E keep on top of so many interactions while customers are experiencing high levels of vulnerability?  

Challenges

The E team’s QA approach requires the monitoring of customer calls for both service delivery and risk management – but were still approaching the task in a largely manual way.  

Tracy James, Quality Standards Manager at E, says: “Leaving aside the time and cost implications of managing the process with spreadsheets, it also didn’t give us the control we needed to easily calibrate calls and create a more rounded view of our overall performance.”  

E needed a comprehensive QA and performance management approach that could provide a more structured way to evaluate, coach, and improve agent performance – something we knew we could help with. 

Implementation and benefits

Thanks to evaluagent’s ability to provide a comprehensive view across both agent performance and quality evaluation, E onboarded the platform and saw immediate benefits. The team could quickly prioritize what to focus their time on, and track QA activity against key E business KPIs. “This improved level of productivity is critical, particularly as agent headcount increases through E’s winter ramp-up,” Tracy explains. 

The simple, easy-to-use interface has also brought benefits for Tracy when unearthing insights: “For me, quality is visual. If a call and is green, or it’s red, I know exactly where I am. That’s what I get with evaluagent – an immediate visual awareness of performance. I can scan through multiple calls or agents and pick up valuable insights quickly. It’s these practical details that confirm evaluagent has been designed by people who live and breathe contact center excellence.” 

And it’s not just the insights Tracy’s able to gain, it’s the ease and speed at which she can find them: “Before, we had to trawl through up to a hundred spreadsheets for each of our agents to try and determine if there was a pattern. Now, with evaluagent in place, we’ve got much more control, and this can be carried out at the touch of a button.” 

Results

Daily evaluations are up 100% 

Before deploying evaluagent, Tracy’s quality team members were typically able to evaluate between eight and nine customer calls each day. Now, they’re able to process and score 17 calls each per day – effectively taking individual call evaluation times down from 45 minutes each to between 20 and 30 minutes per call. 

While QA productivity benefits are already delivering clear benefits in terms of cost and time, there’s also a powerful knock-on effect for both agents and quality team members. “Our evaluation team has become much more confident and comfortable with the process – they’re even asking me for extra calls to score!” 

E’s quality score has increased by 18% 

Year on year, E’s contact center as improved its Quality Score by 18%, now up to 83.7%. Tracy credits evaluagent with this marked improvement, with a feedback loop that means evaluations lead to genuine impact across the contact center. 

“Thanks to the QA framework that evaluagent provides, we’re now collectively much clearer – and that’s translating directly into how our agents have responded to feedback,” explained Tracy. “Our team managers can see the difference, while increasingly concise scorecard evaluations mean our agents know exactly what’s expected of them – and they’re delivering!” 

Time well spent 

Minimizing wasted time spent on laborious processes has translated into genuine business impact for Tracy. “The efficiencies evaluagent has helped unlock from our regular calibration sessions have helped to release around five to six hours a week from my schedule,” says Tracy. “That’s allowed me to spend more time working on other projects, such as liaising more closely with our quality operation in South Africa.” 

Proven business value 

When E installed a next-generation 8×8 cloud contact center platform to handle its telephony, its IT team recommended working with 8×8’s built-in Quality component, rather than evaluagent. 

But Tracy and the team made a business case to keep evaluagent, thanks to the proven benefits they’d already seen: “We looked carefully at where evaluagent made a real difference for us, and two areas were key: the software’s in-depth capabilities and its powerful visualizations. Features like the appeals process for team leaders, the ability to add and remove staff, and control over admin rights are all invaluable.” 

Future for E and evaluagent

evaluagent will continue to play an important role in supporting E’s QA process, particularly as the company’s business continues to grow. A greater focus on compliance and vulnerability – brought about by Ofgem’s updated rules for energy firms – will also see evaluagent continuing to help E both develop its agents and adhere to more stringent regulations. 

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