From 50 FTEs to a Strategic Partnership Delivering £22m+ Debt Reduction

Overview

A leading UK-based utility retailer needed a partner that could adapt alongside it by scaling responsibly, shaping new ways of working, and delivering consistent customer outcomes across sales, service, smart metering, digital, and back-office operations. Firstsource became that long-term partner, supporting the client through periods of change, growth, and increasing complexity.

Challenges

As the relationship evolved from a small operational footprint into a strategic, multi-country engagement, the client faced a set of interlinked challenges that required trust, flexibility, and deep energy domain expertise and utility retail knowledge.

• Building stability in a young operating model: They were still defining its end-to-end service philosophy, requiring partners who could operate without rigid playbooks and adapt to change as the model matured.
• High repeat demand and fragmented journeys: Limited visibility into repeat contact reasons and ownership across journeys led to higher repeat rates, increased cost-to-serve, and inconsistent customer experiences.
• Complex and aged complaints: A growing volume of aged complaints drove rising regulatory exposure, Ombudsman cost, and NPS decline, with limited insight into root causes.
• Smart meter adoption under regulatory pressure: Outbound smart campaigns lacked effective outreach, re-contact options, resulting in missed appointments, reduced trust, and potential penalties tied to government installation targets.
• Sales compliance and vulnerability risk: Early sales compliance levels were well below industry expectations, increasing regulatory risk and highlighting the need for stronger governance and vulnerability management.
• Sales Outbound and Collection: There was no current solution for OB sales, customers who had moved away without initiating inbound contact meaning loss of customer reinstate and impact to revenue. Client carried a developer debt book of over £100m with no internal recovery capability.

How We Made It Happen

Firstsource responded by acting not as a traditional outsourcer, but as an embedded operational partner, co-creating solutions while maintaining accountability for outcomes.

• Evolving into a universal, end-to-end operating model: Aligned to the client’s philosophy, Firstsource implemented a universal agent “family” model where teams owned client defined customer bases end-to-end, covering calls, digital, back-office, billing, and complex exceptions, reducing handoffs while maintaining ownership and improving consistency.
• Targeted hiring and training: Identified suitable resource within existing operations and bespoke hiring to form teams of industry and outbound experts. Training delivered with partner around sales, products, customer and industry impact.  Commission scheme models to reward delivery performance. Sustained levels of performance and Firstsource becoming sole centre of excellence for Inbound sales. Reduced the client's debt book by £22m+ through targeted collections capability.
• Analytics-led insight and repeat reduction: Text analytics, journey mapping, and emotion detection were used to identify repeat drivers across 395 customer journeys, enabling targeted process fixes, agent coaching, and measurable reductions in repeat demand.
• Dedicated ownership of complex complaints: A bespoke complaints team was created to manage complex and aged cases end-to-end, supported by closed-loop NPS feedback, blocker visibility, a hub and spoke model for effective issue resolution and structured escalation, accelerating resolution and restoring customer trust.
• Smart operations as a centre of excellence: Inbound return lines, SMS re-contact options, and proactive appointment management transformed smart operations into a centre of excellence, supporting regulatory compliance while improving customer experience and conversion.
  • Client propelled to highest % of smart customer base of any big utility retail company.
  • Over contract length Firstsource has delivered over 400,000 smart meter appointments.
  • Supported client to maintain best in class results of smart meters functioning correctly.
  • Leveraged technology and expertise developing from traditional outbound call platform to omni channel smart centre of excellence – a one stop shop for all things smart.

• Strengthening compliance through coaching and governance: Weekly trend analysis, targeted coaching, simplified compliance tooling, and risk-based monitoring lifted sales and residential compliance to sustained best-in-class levels, while reinforcing fair treatment and vulnerability management.

Conclusion

Over time, our partnership with the client has evolved from a small operational engagement into a deeply trusted, multi-country relationship. By combining flexibility, domain expertise, and a people-first culture with disciplined execution and analytics, Firstsource has helped them stabilise performance, reduce risk, and consistently deliver better customer outcomes while also scaling responsibly alongside the business.