July 1, 2025 – Duration 00:17:02

S5 Ep.1 Nashville Electric Powers Up Experiences Through the Cloud

In this episode of Level Up CX Tech, we talk with Brent Baker, Vice President and Chief Customer & Innovation Officer at Nashville Electric, about their journey to the cloud, the challenges they faced along the way, and how a cloud-based CX platform is helping Nashville Electric deliver a better customer and employee experience.

Transcript

• 00:00 Greg Thomas

  Migrating customer experience technologies to the cloud provides an opportunity for organizations to assess their current state and tailor their CX platform to address their unique needs today and for the future. I’m Greg Thomas from Genesys and welcome to Level Up CX Tech.

• 00:17 Michael Logan

  And I’m Michael Logan.

• 00:19 Greg Thomas

  And Michael?

• 00:20 Greg Thomas

  So in this episode of Level Up CX Tech, we’re going to talk with Brent Baker.

• 00:24 Greg Thomas

  Vice President and Chief Customer and Innovation Officer at Nashville Electric about their journey to the cloud, the challenges they face along the way, and how a cloud-based CX platform is helping Nashville Electric deliver a better customer and employee experience. So Brent Baker, welcome so much to the show.

• 00:41 Brent Baker

  Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for the opportunity. Looking forward to sharing what our experience has been.

• 00:46 Greg Thomas

  It’s going to be awesome.

• 00:47 Michael Logan

  It is.

• 00:48 Greg Thomas

  So just to start off, can you tell us a bit about Nashville Electric as a utility, your role there, and maybe a little bit about the challenges that you were facing in the context?

• 00:58 Brent Baker

  You bet. Yeah. We’re an electric company that serves the Nashville metro area. We have about half a million electric customers that we serve and so quite a few calls that come in every month. Our biggest challenge we were looking forward to to solve was just being able to answer our calls more effectively as well as get our team members that answer the calls a little bit more engaged and kind of the process there, so had a little bit of a culture project as well as a need to serve customers in a different way than we were at the time.

• 01:29 Michael Logan

  When you say that you were looking for a new solution, what were your goals when you signed up to take this aggressive transformation?

• 01:41 Brent Baker

  Yeah. So one of the things was we are a community focused organization. So the goal isn’t always to have as fast of a call as possible. And so there’s a real feeling of making sure we serve the community well. So we want to make that process for the customer to be as caring as possible, but also we needed to add efficiency and effectiveness in what we did. So our goal was to bring in tools like workforce management that might help our employees know what the schedule should look like and what adherence is, as well to improve the technology to maybe get our IVR containment higher or to look at other ways that the quality of our calls could be improved just by improving that management down to the frontline. So really found a need here to answer our calls faster like everybody and to be more efficient, but make sure we keep the customer and employee in mind.

• 02:34 Michael Logan

  So when we went through this process there, you had to have, I’m sure you had an assessment done and you went through all the phases and the appropriate steps to do this. Can you walk us through that your process in evaluations and how you came to the decision that you made to go with Genesys Cloud?

• 02:56 Brent Baker

  Yeah. So we did a holistic review of what we had in place at the time because we had a solution that was not optimized. So we didn’t know exactly all of the problems. We just knew some of the questions that people had about why it operated the way it is, so we brought in an outside expert that had this ability to look in. And so not just in the call center operations. How the technology was set up and our call routing was not optimized. We actually had a few different bounce backs. That’s a little bit different from what the customer service side of things needed to be involved in, but it definitely was an area that we needed to improve with the new rollout.

• 03:34 Greg Thomas

  And so, you know, Brent, once you made that decision, what did that process look like to sort of start to roll out and build that new system? How long did it take? And maybe share a little bit on what you’ve accomplished thus far.

• 03:50 Brent Baker

  Yeah. The interesting thing was that we weren’t just needing to do this because of the improvement to the call center operations in the current state. We were actually rolling out a new customer information system and we needed to have an upgraded IVR in place for the system that we were designing to replace our customer information system, so that project was the first driver. We have to have a better IVR and it needs to be ready for that new customer information system. So that was our first project—to get that up and running. And so we actually had that from the time we had done an assessment and figured out what we really needed to the time we had a system ready—it was a 90-day period. So we had that up and running. That was phase one. Phase two was actually to add that IVR and the whole call center suite for the rest of the day-to-day operation and get that up and running and that was in another month that we had that up and running. So two different kind of parallel projects going on that supported each other, but I would say within four months we were really in a good spot. And then we added some other phases to the project to add workforce management and better reporting along the way, but really successful, quick run at getting the features turned on.

• 05:07 Greg Thomas

  So I know we’re going to come back to workforce management sort of more explicitly here in a moment, but that’s pretty fast—that process you just described. So, how did that go over internally like in terms of rallying the troops and getting everybody on board? Because this is obviously a lifeblood kind of technology for your organization, right? If you have a call center, you can’t talk to your customers, you can’t sort of meet their needs. How did you make sure everybody kind of came along for the ride internally?

• 05:36 Brent Baker

  Yes, we had a couple of things that helped us. One, the previous installation had some people frustrated in a way that gave us a chance to really kind of build on that—that we can do things a little bit better and your job will get a little bit more improved by that experience. So there were some people ready for the change. There was a lot of doubt also that anybody could move that fast. And so I think both of those were actually positive factors—which may not sound like it at the outset, but it kind of was. We really had only positive to go from where we were at.

• 06:09 Greg Thomas

  You could only go up.

• 06:12 Brent Baker

  And so that got us to where people like, if you can really do it, great, that would be awesome. And the fact that we delivered really built a lot of credibility with Genesys, our vendor, and really helped us kind of get things moving in a way that solved a lot of the problems that were existing and proved that we can do things in an expedited way.

• 06:34 Greg Thomas

  So Brent, like you talked a lot about the deployment and how it’s been going. When you think about the service levels that you’re now delivering to your customers, how is that going and what are your observations and goals going forward?

• 06:48 Brent Baker

  Yeah, that’s the best part—we actually really started focusing on adherence this last August and that got our utilization numbers up. We had about a 50% improvement on where we were before and so really doing a great job in the center. And then our service levels—we have a 60-second goal. So we were hitting 50 or 60% of our calls in 60 seconds. We’ve now hit 80% in 60 seconds several months in a row and went back and looked at history and we’ve hit performance—whether it’s average speed of answer or service level—at numbers that have only been hit four times in 15 years. So really a good change. And this is just the beginning. So we’re not done—80/30 is really going to be our future stated goal. But 80/60 is a great place to start, since that’s where we’ve been aiming for. Now that we’re hitting it, we can start to look at the next level.

• 07:42 Michael Logan

  And I want to just go back to that—how quickly you were able to roll this out. Was that the expectation? Was that what you set forth or did you exceed what you had planned?

• 07:55 Brent Baker

  Yeah. So we have a large customer information system project that had to have all of the edge systems in place before that certain date, and that was our deadline. And so if we couldn’t meet that deadline, we probably would not have been able to change out the system. And so that was the expectation. Our partner that helped us do this really committed to getting that done, and we trusted that they could accomplish it. So that was a requirement—we would not have been able to go forward if it would have caused a delay in our bigger customer information system project.

• 08:29 Michael Logan

  That’s impressive. I’m glad that you had the right resource behind you in that. I know that you mentioned that part of this was adding on additional phases to it. So the first phase moved pretty quick, but then you decided to go with the workforce management. Was that a solution you had in place before you started? Did you have anything in place before that or was this going to be new to the organization?

• 08:56 Brent Baker

  That’s an interesting story. That’s another one of the things in the previous installation. It was a purchased feature or module but was never really rolled out successfully. So it started and then stopped because the rollout wasn’t as effective. So people had heard of workforce management, but it didn’t work the first time—three or four years ago. So it was something that we really wanted to move forward with and we couldn’t turn back. So we had to do that well. One of the things that was also going on in the organization was just a lack of understanding of what it takes to make the contact center run effectively. So employees often confused about why their shift or their break time is defined and maybe not adhering to that. Managers and supervisors not knowing which factors impact the center more or less. So putting in a workforce management tool really helps us tell the story as to what the impact would be if certain shifts aren’t covered or certain windows of time don’t have a person available.

• 09:59 Michael Logan

  Was that a hard transition for you though? Because if it wasn’t something that they were used to having installed—implementing workforce management to a contact center—was there some change management that needed to be implemented there too?

• 10:12 Brent Baker

  It was. And that’s one thing that is really fun if you’ve got the right leaders in an organization—and we’re fortunate here to have managers and supervisors with good relationships in the center. I spend a lot of time in the contact center myself getting to know the team and making sure we care about them first. It’s not just about all of the metrics that we want to get right. We had a lot of conversations leading up to the time of cutover of just the first go-live of the first phase. So the team had started to really hear us talk about our goals of enhancement. And so the change management came through normal floor walking and having conversations and explaining our goals. And while there were questions, my commitment to the employee base was that this will help us answer a lot of the questions they have—like why are we talking about average handle time? Why are we forcing certain lunch times and break times?

• 11:09 Brent Baker

  That actually was part of the commitment—was now that we will have that, we’ll be able to explain where our flexibility does exist and where it doesn’t. So I think that real open, honest conversation helped everybody understand the intent is good and we were heading down the right path.

• 11:28 Michael Logan

  What was the reception around that? Was it positive?

• 11:31 Brent Baker

  It was positive. We are a union organization, so I had a few meetings in a union meeting area where we talked through some of their concerns. Some of their bigger concerns were previous situations where the question about average handle time or some way of doing their job was brought up but not understanding the data behind why that might matter. Although they understood why somebody would ask, they wanted to know more information. Once we understood that this is how we’ll have the ability to talk more about what our request is, they got on board because I think it empowers the employees to know—when they know what’s going on and why—they know we’re doing it for the right reason and we won’t do more than we need to. We’ll do what’s right for customers and employees.

• 12:18 Michael Logan

  Well, speaking about what’s right for customer and employees, what do you think is next? What other kind of capabilities are you looking to implement?

• 12:26 Brent Baker

  Yeah. So one of the really interesting things with AI developing—for a long time we’ve looked for that knowledge resource to get employees information as quick as possible. We’re looking at different AI tools to possibly give you that supervisor-type support that you could get through a smart solution that would help us get the call handle time to be a little bit quicker because those reps have access to information more quickly. That’s one. We’re also looking at all of the IVR enhancements that will make it easier for a customer to self-serve. So more and more of those chat features that can be integrated and give answers. It’s better every month—it seems like these technologies continue to improve. So where we can make it easier on the employee or the customer to get the information they need.

• 13:19 Greg Thomas

  Yeah, I think that notion of just continually advancing self-service is so fascinating, right, because we’ve all experienced frustrating self-service where we end up in dead ends or we can’t get the answers we want. But as you say, the technology just keeps advancing and it’s getting more and more able to handle kind of out-of-the-box inquiries and things that maybe you weren’t necessarily anticipating that someone was going to ask about.

• 13:44 Brent Baker

  Yeah, that’s right.

• 13:46 Greg Thomas

  Yeah, so final question. So for folks watching and listening who are on a similar kind of journey, what advice would you give them in terms of what you’ve learned that made this into a successful project?

• 14:02 Brent Baker

  Well, I’ll say one thing that’s interesting—I’ve looked into some opportunities to work on call center changes like this, I’ll call it three different times. There’s another one in between there, but three opportunities like this. Each time there was some issue—call answer time or service level or something was lagging and there was a desire for the company to improve. But also it seems like each time we made a decision of how to get the employees on board in a way that made sure they felt cared for. So I think that’s first and foremost—make sure you listen to the employee base. The second thing is whenever we go for technology, make sure you get the right size of products you really need. And oftentimes we talk about minimum viable products. At times you can look at all of the possible capabilities and buy those first, and if you don’t roll those out right, the time to get those installed is frustrating for those who thought you were going to do some great enhancements. So make sure you pick that right level of technology for the run that you’re going down. And then lastly, really make the team be a part of that decision—of when go-live is, how the change is going to go, and how we’re going to be there for you as we make that changeover. I think that was really key. Because go-live, no matter what technology you do, it seems like has at least a few week period of settling in, no matter how good of a job you do with training. So making sure everybody is ready but not overdone. I think those are some three things—I actually just thought of one more. We had a few people that really wanted those enhancements that I talked about where it might have been a little too many for what you could really accomplish. And the hard part was, they’re great ideas—it just might not be, you know, juice not worth the squeeze concept. And once we started looking at the number of hours to create this really high-in-the-sky idea, it didn’t seem realistic that a customer would actually ever use that new feature. So we backed away from a few of those.

• 16:05 Greg Thomas

  Yeah. And I think those are all great pieces of advice. And the one thing that strikes me about what might knit those together is when you think about cloud-based platforms, there’s this continual treadmill of new features and new functionality. And you have to make sure that that’s a benefit, right? That’s one of the main reasons people like to move to the cloud. But as you say, you’ve got to make sure that you’re biting off what you can chew and that it’s delivering the kind of value—because that’s how you build that willingness and that sort of enthusiasm to kind of keep it all rolling forward.

• 16:36 Brent Baker

  That’s right, yeah.

• 16:38 Greg Thomas

  So that’s all the time we have for today. Brent Baker from Nashville Electric, thank you so much for joining us on Level Up CX Tech. Thanks to the audience for listening. And if you liked this podcast, please subscribe so you get the next episode in your feed, and be sure to visit Genesys.com to learn more about how you can level up your customer and employee experiences. Until next time—

• 16:58 Greg Thomas

  Thanks for listening to Level Up CX Tech.