Smarter utility operations: Serve better, faster
Firstsource combines domain-led operations, AI-assisted workflows, and platform COEs to help energy, water and infrastructure utilities improve customer experience, revenue performance and operational resilience.
WHY THIS MATTERS
The utility operating model is being rebuilt, fast
Investment is shifting, electricity demand is rising, customers are under pressure, and smart infrastructure programs are scaling unevenly. Utilities need operating models that can improve service, protect revenue, support affordability, and execute reliably across customer, meter-to-cash, field, and digital workflows.
Water Stress
4B
Water stress is an operating challenge. ~4 billion people face severe scarcity part of each year. Water utilities need stronger operations across leakage, metering, billing, incident response, communications, and reporting.
UN World Water Development Report 2025
Satisfaction collapse
499
US electric utility residential satisfaction score in 2025, the lowest ever recorded by JD Power. Customers expect more and the gap between expectation and delivery is widening every year
JD Power, US Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction Study, Dec 2025
Collections Pressure
£4.43B
UK faces £4.43 billion of domestic energy debt. Around 1.05 million households are now in arrears with no repayment arrangement in place, leaving suppliers carrying record exposure.
Ofgem, Debt and Arrears Indicators, Q3 2025
Demand Surge
~4%
Global electricity consumption is forecast to grow at close to 4% annually through 2027. That growth puts pressure on customer service, billing, outage communication, field operations and grid-adjacent support.
IEA, Electricity 2025 / Building the Future Transmission Grid
Digital Failure
32%
Largest utilities' websites and apps fail basic standards of customer engagement. Self-service remains the single biggest gap between what customers want and what suppliers deliver.
JD Power, US Utility Digital Experience Study, Feb 2025
Grid Pressure
$20.8B
Grid congestion costs reached $20.8 billion in 2022 as transmission infrastructure struggled to keep pace with demand and generation shifts. Utilities face growing pressure to improve grid performance while controlling costs and maintaining reliability.
Grid Strategies, Transmission Congestion Costs, May 2024
PROVEN OUTCOMES
Performance holds when operations are redesigned
Results drawn from active engagements, not pilots, models, or projections.
£45M
revenue leakage identified
Cash recovered annually for a UK water retailer through outcome-based first-party collections with a 35% recovery uplift year-on-year and £6M additional cash generated.
$305M
revenue accelerated digitally
Propensity-led outreach, targeted digital communications, and channel optimization shifted customers from traditional collections activity to higher-performing digital engagement journeys.
35%
improvement in smart meter connect rates
For one of the UK’s top energy companies, we delivered integrated solution covering inbound sales, outbound customer win back, inbound and outbound smart meter conversion, real-time analytics leading to $2.8 M incremental revenue, $550K lower acquisition costs, and 60% win-back rates.
£350K+
revenue leakage recovered
Process intelligence uncovered billing exceptions and control gaps that had gone unnoticed, enabling the utility to identify and recover lost revenue streams.
Solutions Deep Dive for Energy and Utilities
Where utility challenges become operating outcomes
Each solution addresses a specific utility challenge, combining technology, operations, compliance, and AI-native delivery.
Turn interest into profitable customer growth
We run acquisition, onboarding, switching, retention, and win-back programmes for energy suppliers and retail utilities.
Propensity models prioritize the right prospects, while sales-through-service and next-best-action guidance help advisors improve conversion without compromising compliance.
Programs are designed around state utility regulations, customer protection requirements, and enrollment compliance from the outset.
Propensity models prioritize the right prospects, while sales-through-service and next-best-action guidance help advisors improve conversion without compromising compliance.
Programs are designed around state utility regulations, customer protection requirements, and enrollment compliance from the outset.
Smart meter, field, and incident operations
We operate emergency and after-hours support for utilities managing outages, service interruptions, safety incidents, and vulnerable-customer obligations.
Critical-care customer workflows, emergency triage, and incident communications are built into the operating model, supported by predictive monitoring and surge-management capabilities for storms, wildfires, and other major events.
Critical-care customer workflows, emergency triage, and incident communications are built into the operating model, supported by predictive monitoring and surge-management capabilities for storms, wildfires, and other major events.
Control the journey from connection to payment
We manage the operational chain from enrollment and onboarding through service activation, meter data, billing, revenue assurance, and payment processing.
Exception handling, service-order management, billing validation, settlement support, and payment reconciliation reduce revenue leakage while improving customer experience and operational accuracy across the utility value chain.
Exception handling, service-order management, billing validation, settlement support, and payment reconciliation reduce revenue leakage while improving customer experience and operational accuracy across the utility value chain.
Recover more revenue without losing customer trust
Our collections model combines behavioral segmentation, affordability insight, vulnerability identification, and omnichannel engagement to improve recovery performance while meeting state regulatory and consumer-protection requirements.
CLIENT SPOTLIGHT
Sales operations that build trust
How proactive approach precluded potential issues and ensured that compliance standards were consistently met and exceeded
A major energy retailer operating in the competitive UK residential and business energy markets was struggling with regulatory compliance in their sales operations.
The company, which serves thousands of customers through both direct sales and third-party channels, faced increasing scrutiny from industry regulators and needed to dramatically improve its sales call compliance to avoid potential penalties and maintain its market authorization.
The company, which serves thousands of customers through both direct sales and third-party channels, faced increasing scrutiny from industry regulators and needed to dramatically improve its sales call compliance to avoid potential penalties and maintain its market authorization.
47
percentage points improvement in sales compliance
WHO WE SERVE
Supporting customer expectations across every utility
From energy retailers to water providers, each segment demands a different approach to service, compliance, and operations.
Energy retail and multi-utility
Grow customers without adding service complexity
We enable energy suppliers and multi-utility providers to improve acquisition, onboarding, switching, retention, and win-back performance with data-led customer engagement.
Propensity models, next-best-action guidance, and sales-through-service workflows help prioritize the right opportunities, improve conversion, and maintain compliance across utility markets
Propensity models, next-best-action guidance, and sales-through-service workflows help prioritize the right opportunities, improve conversion, and maintain compliance across utility markets
Water and wastewater utilities
Improve service responsiveness across every journey
We support water and wastewater service providers with customer, billing, metering, credit and incident operations designed for regulated service environments.
Our operating model improves billing accuracy, reduces service friction, manages leakage related enquiries and responds faster to customer and field events.
Our operating model improves billing accuracy, reduces service friction, manages leakage related enquiries and responds faster to customer and field events.
Oil and gas networks
Net-zero transition without service disruption
We support UK gas network operators across billing and tariff, meter replacement and field service, customer service, complaints and vulnerability operations, built for regulated environments.
Our operating model lifts first-contact resolution, runs affordability-led collections with vulnerability identified up front, and keeps 24/7 gas-safety response always on.
Our operating model lifts first-contact resolution, runs affordability-led collections with vulnerability identified up front, and keeps 24/7 gas-safety response always on.
Home service providers
Improve sales and retention across every service journey
We support home warranty, home cover and home-services providers with acquisition, activation, cross-sell and retention operations built for regulated service environments.
Our operating model improves conversion at home-move and installation moments, lifts renewals and cross-sell, reduces churn, and keeps conduct compliant at every touchpoint.
Our operating model improves conversion at home-move and installation moments, lifts renewals and cross-sell, reduces churn, and keeps conduct compliant at every touchpoint.
CUSTOMER STORY
Increased collections yield by 50% in a multi-year engagement
A UK electricity and gas supplier needed to lift collections performance without a dedicated collections team. Firstsource trained customer service advisors to handle collections end to end, using affordability assessment and real-time behavioral scoring to drive every call. Net yield rose 50%, cash collected per call rose 35%, and NPS reached +70.
How Firstsource Delivers
Unlock the operating system that compounds operational intelligence
Explore Kairos, the operating system that turns utility operating knowledge into a durable, compounding asset for customer operations, connection-to-bill, and service delivery, with 25+ years of industry expertise built in.
Transform
Reimagine the utility operating model, workforce, and cost-to-serve. It must be designed for rising customer expectations, regulatory scrutiny, and AI-native operations, not layered onto legacy ways of working.
Implement
Intelligence is embedded into customer journeys, service operations, and meter-to-cash processes. Decision engines and agentic systems are connected directly to production workflows and operational data.
Operate
We underwrite and own the outcomes. A human-plus-AI operating model sits behind every metric, continuously learning from customer interactions, operational events, and regulatory requirements.
TECH ENABLED
The technology ecosystem that ensures you own the intelligence
Not rent it. Every stage of utility operations is powered by a technology ecosystem built for the task: co-pilots, decision engines, domain harnesses, and autonomous agents working together to improve customer outcomes, operational performance, and regulatory compliance.
Audit-ready by design
Decision traceability
Every agent decision creates an immutable record of the action, actor, evidence, and reasoning behind it, making reviews, audits, and regulatory scrutiny easier to navigate.
Rules at the moment of action
Compliance, architected in
UK frameworks alongside US public-utility-commission rules, EU obligations and GDPR are encoded as guardrails inside the workflow.
Autonomy that's earned
Progressive trust
Human oversight remains where the stakes are highest. As trust, performance, and compliance are proven, more workflows can move from supervised to autonomous execution.
Capabilities
The capabilities behind utility performance
Each capability improves a different driver of growth, cost, risk, or customer value.
Grow revenue with precision
We deliver customer acquisition, retention, and cross-sell programmes built on analytics, compliance controls, and next-best-action guidance. We improve conversion while protecting customer trust and regulatory standing.
Learn more
Recover more of what's owed
We deliver collections strategies that combine behavioural segmentation, affordability insights, and digital engagement. We improve recovery rates while reducing customer complaints and compliance risk.
Learn more
Improve every customer interaction
We design customer experience operations around resolution, effort reduction, and loyalty. We improve satisfaction, retention, and customer lifetime value across channels.
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Eliminate operational friction
We manage billing exceptions, service requests, disputes, and complex casework with speed and accuracy. We reduce cost-to-serve while improving operational consistency.
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Turn data into decisions
We uncover revenue leakage, process bottlenecks, and performance gaps through utility-specific analytics, process redesign, and transformation programs. We create measurable improvement plans tied to business outcomes.
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PROOF OF DELIVERY
Proven in production. Measured in outcomes.
Each result runs in production and traces to a named client program, not a projection.
60%
win-back improvement
A Big 6 UK energy supplier used propensity models, customer personas, and tailored contact strategies to prioritize at-risk customers and guide retention conversations.
35%
meter conversion uplift
A UK electricity and gas supplier applied real-time analytics to inbound and outbound smart meter programs, helping agents address customer objections and optimize outreach strategies.
25%
operating cost reduction, end-to-end
A leading global energy provider redesigned customer operations across service, support, and back-office functions, creating a more efficient operating model with audit-ready compliance controls.
WHY FIRSTSOURCE WINS
What utilities keep adding. What actually changes performance.
Most transformation efforts add tools. The best ones change operating behavior.
WHAT TEAMS TRY
WHAT TEAMS TRY
WHAT TEAMS TRY
Buy another platform
Technology exposes problems but rarely fixes the operating model behind them. Adoption stalls, workarounds multiply, and costs remain unchanged.
We redesign the process, operating model, and customer journey around measurable outcomes, then embed automation and AI where they improve performance.
Treat every customer the same
Uniform treatment ignores differences in intent, affordability, vulnerability, and churn risk, reducing effectiveness across sales and collections.
Behavioral segmentation, propensity modeling, and next-best-action guidance help teams prioritize the right customers and interventions.
Add more agents
Headcount improves capacity temporarily but does not address the root causes of inefficiency, repeat contacts, or avoidable work.
AI-enabled operations, workflow redesign, and intelligent automation reduce effort while improving service levels and consistency.
Manage by reports
Traditional reporting identifies what happened after the fact, leaving teams reactive to operational, customer, and regulatory issues.
Real-time analytics and operational insights surface risks, bottlenecks, and performance gaps early enough to take action.
Separate compliance from operations
Compliance reviews performed after the interaction create rework, inconsistent execution, and avoidable regulatory exposure.
Compliance controls, auditability, and customer-protection requirements are embedded directly into workflows, scripts, and decision logic from day one.
TRUST & COMPLIANCE
Compliance built into the operation
We operate inside every regulatory framework we serve, not around it.
Number
Breathing Space Debt Protocol
Priority Services Register
FCA Consumer Duty
Ofgem Consumer Standards
Ofwat Paying Fair Guidelines
GDPR and Data Protection Act
Certifications
PUC frameworks
FERC regulations
TCPA
LIHEAP
CFPB regulations
FDCPA
PCI-DSS
SOC 2 Type II
Meet state compliance requirements for dispute resolutions and vulvernable customer protections
INSIGHTS
Latest from the Firstsource team
Insights from the field, real operations, real outcomes, and perspectives from the people making it work in live operations.
Case Study
How a multi-state US electric utility accelerated $305M through digital outreach
A large, multi-state US electric utility partnered with Firstsource to modernize its collections and customer outreach operations through digital communications. The objective was to supplement existing mailed and field-based processes with timely, electronic outreach that could expand customer response windows, encourage self-serve payments, and reduce reliance on field activity.
Contact Us
The pressure is structural. Let's talk about your operation.
Tell us where costs are climbing and we will respond within one business day.
- Expert teams running live utility programs across leading utility companies
- Every number on this page traces to a named client engagement, not a forecast.
- Our first conversation is a diagnosis of your operation, not a pitch.