Energy company Essent's super-fast CCaaS migration is recorded as a success story: from an on-premise environment to a cloud solution in a short time. However, that sprint was accompanied by its fair share of hurdles. Ziptone spoke with Michiel Kouijzer, Product Manager Digital Experience at Essent.

 

When Ziptone reports to Essent in Den Bosch for the interview, it turns out that the central reception hall of Essent's headquarters is undergoing a major renovation. A salient detail: the energy company is choosing to reinstate a reception area for B2C customers; something that had previously been discontinued. It shows that a customer contact organization is not only never finished, but sometimes also has to take a step back.

Michiel Kouijzer He is on more than familiar ground at Essent. He has worked there for over ten years; before that, he worked there as a customer contact representative during his student days. Nowadays, as a product manager, he is responsible for 'digital'. In his previous role as product owner for digital and voice, he was closely involved in the replacement of the Avaya contact center platform in 2024. The same platform he had already worked with as a student.

Existing platform due for replacement

Until recently, the more than 1.100 customer contact employees also used the on-premise Avaya platform, which was hosted at parent company E.ON in a German data center. That platform had been for a while end-of-support and the end date of the current annual contract was approaching. Moreover, management was relatively costly and labor-intensive. In short: sufficient arguments to initiate the renewal.

However, the organization tended to postpone that decision because digital innovation took precedence, says Kouijzer. “There was also the idea that the telephony channel would gradually dry up. Compare it to the idea that customers won't come to your office if they have questions. Of course, that didn't turn out to be true. When I became product manager, the replacement was one of the first things I was eager to sink my teeth into.”

First, Kouijzer had to perform the necessary missionary work. “What helped was that one of the enterprise architects was on my side when it came to the long-term vision: the aim was to create a more modular IT landscape instead of a monolithic one. In other words: best of breed, where you opt for easily integrated solutions. This also limits the risk of vendor lock-in.”

Why AI-first??

The most important phase of the decision-making regarding a new platform took place during the period when expectations about AI—after the initial hype—had slumped somewhat, Kouijzer explains. That meant even more bureaucratic work to push for investment in an AI-first platform.

What also helped in making a decision: over the past year, the number of P1 and P2 incidents and problems with both the voice platform and the chat solution increased. Or as Kouijzer says: “We shouldn’t have waited much longer.”

When an agreement was reached and the team wanted to explore a new platform—Avaya was also being considered—it became clear that E.ON Group prescribed Genesys as one of the standards. “E.ON informed us that extensive research had already been conducted into Genesys, a solution that was also high on our own list. A compelling justification was needed to be allowed to deviate from that standard. We compared E.ON’s research with our own needs. This resulted in a positive assessment, and consequently, the decision-making process shifted from platform to implementation partner.”

Cultural fit

There was roughly three-quarters of a year between the start of the replacement project and the decision-making; all in all, the platform selection process from start to finish took about a year. By early 2025, the requirements for the implementation partner were also ready. Engaging a partner was necessary in any case, because due to the earlier choice to collaborate with Wise As a service provider, Essent itself no longer had sufficient in-house expertise. “Discussions were held with various parties, and cultural fit and costs were assessed. Sabio was already our service provider and therefore had a good understanding of our architecture. And Essent is, of course, not unique when it comes to migrating from Avaya to another platform.”

“We indicated the scope and timeframe, including the deadline, to the various parties: is it feasible? Those parties said: tight, but with hard work it should work,” Kouijzer recalls.

In mid-March 2025, following various demos and negotiations, a contract was signed with Sabio. After that relatively long lead time, the actual migration took very little time: by the end of May, all telephony functionalities had been delivered. Incidentally, the contract with Avaya expired in June.

"Where there is a will there is a way"

Just over two months for a cloud migration is quite fast: there are also organizations that need half a year or more. Is that high pace due to careful preparation or to an expert partner?

“In any case, where there’s a will, there’s a way,” laughs Kouijzer. “We thought we were reasonably well prepared. And personally, I believe in the 80/20 rule: if you have the biggest part in order, the last bit will work out fine too. Of course, we conduct risk assessments beforehand, and the associated processes are actively managed – from technology to HR impact.”

“One of the assumptions was that we had the functional and technical documentation in order, but that turned out not to be the case. There was time pressure: as mentioned, the contract for the existing solution was expiring. If we missed that deadline, we would incur double costs for a year, amounting to approximately half a million euros; this had not been accounted for in the budget. We did not inform the project team about this, by the way, to avoid stress. We did, however, thoroughly map out the risks. The only major risk was being unreachable by phone. On the other hand, it is not very complicated to set up a number, lines, and for calls to come into the contact center. For me, that was acceptable; for the rest of the organization, the rule was: switch to the new platform on time and 'as-is'.”

Disappointment after the first week

“In that first week, we already ran into the documentation problem, a consequence of fragmented knowledge within our organization. In hindsight, we should have tested that more thoroughly. As a result, it was necessary to adjust the working method in consultation with Sabio after just the first week. Significant acceleration was required, and the classic project approach was no longer suitable for that.”

After the first week, we continued using a more agile approach with parallel workflows: getting documentation in order while simultaneously configuring and implementing technology. This shift took a toll on the team, which had to work extra hours, and on the relationship with our implementation partner. The agile approach also had advantages: we could verify more quickly whether the chosen solutions worked technically. This, in turn, restored confidence in meeting milestones.

Telephony over in ten weeks' time

After more than ten weeks, all the intended telephony functionality had been delivered: the workflows, journey-based skills, and routing. “After that, we proceeded with the migration of the rule-based chat, for which a point solution (iAdvize, ed.) was originally used. The migration of this to Cognigy took six months instead of the estimated three. The main reason for this was the high degree of complexity in the flows, the configuration of the handover for escalations, and the integration with Genesys.”

One of the reasons for switching to Genesys is to increase the innovation capabilities for the contact center. “And as far as I am concerned, increasing employee satisfaction was certainly an important part as well,” says Kouijzer. “Previously, employees had to consult various screens; now there is a unified desktop where all information is together. The agent desktop is integrated into Genesys: calls, chats, and customer information are now on the same screen.”

Exploring new possibilities

The Genesys platform offers all kinds of built-in features. “You can decide for yourself what you purchase. For us, the availability of recordings and transcriptions – the basis for further automation – was essential. So we set that up after the Works Council approved it.” “We consulted with the Works Council regarding the introduction of new technology,” explains Kouijzer. “Essent’s Works Council closely monitors what the use of AI means for customer contact work, including privacy.”

With the arrival of transcription capabilities, we can automate summarizing, have quality management (QM) for voice and chat, and use analytics functionality. This easily enables coaches to refer back to specific conversations employees struggle with – such as explaining the final settlement.

50% cost savings and eNPS up

The tangible results for Essent to date: a cost saving of 50% (resulting from the elimination of costs for licenses, hosting, and maintenance); the eNPS among agents has increased by 7 points; the AHT has decreased by more than 50 seconds solely due to the introduction of automated logging and summarizing. The new environment runs in a dedicated cloud environment provided by Genesys.

In addition, we are continuing to automate, as long as it aligns with customer needs. Integrating the knowledge base and agent assist functionality are still on our to-do list. And, for example, an agentic voicebot for home batteries. Such an application impacts knowledge management, and therefore the CMS of our websites. We are currently still building separate knowledge bases around individual use cases to maintain good control, but that is not scalable in the long run.” That, too, needs to change soon.

Next stop: agentic AI

Agentic AI is also one of the next steps for Essent. “There is a lot of potential in it. I don’t believe in the rule-based chatbot, unless you are dealing with very specific transactions – think of taking meter readings. When enabling more unstructured conversations, you must keep in mind whether solutions align with customer needs. You can also take the customer profile, sentiment, or other relevant signals into account. In terms of personalization, the energy sector might be lagging somewhat behind when compared to e-commerce, for example. We must be careful not to send everyone to the voicebot first, and only make an employee available when the customer really can’t figure it out.”

 

Is Essent prepared for the AI ​​agent who wants to change a term amount on behalf of the customer?

Interesting question! Technology is developing rapidly, and I have no doubt that it is technically possible on our end. But whether we want to offer these kinds of possibilities is, first and foremost, a policy choice. AI is certainly promising. If you look at how people search for information now… When you are on the train, it is striking how often people ask ChatGPT something. Personal assistants will increasingly become the norm; the only question is whether they come from your company or from the consumer themselves: what will be the dominant channel? I believe there is a high probability that consumers will soon no longer go to Essent, but will contact them via their own interface or assistant. Whether AI agents will also literally call customer service representatives or company voicebots seems very cumbersome to me. Why would an automated solution choose an inefficient detour?

 

About Essent – Essent NV is part of the E.ON Group and operates alongside subsidiaries Energiedirect and Vandebron. Essent serves approximately 3 million customers in the Netherlands. Essent's customer service department employs over a thousand agents, distributed across the company's two main locations in Den Bosch and Zwolle, a nearshore outsourcer in Turkey, and a flexible pool of remote workers (via SUSA) and part-timers. Over a million calls are handled annually. As Essent's implementation partner, Sabio also has responsibilities regarding the management, monitoring, and performance of the contact center, as part of a comprehensive managed service contract. Essent has been working according to the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) for some time, an approach in which multiple agile teams collaborate in a coordinated manner on complex change projects. The agile teams, comprising both IT and journey specialists, are organized around the steps in the customer journey.

(Ziptone/Erik Bouwer)

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