A 20-Year Partnership in Customer Experience Innovation for Electric Ireland
Innovating Customer Experience and Automating Service Delivery for Over 1.3 Million Customers
For over two decades, Abtran has supported Ireland’s largest utility in delivering seamless customer experiences and driving innovation across contact centre and process automation services.
2.5m
Contacts handled per year
30%
Reduction in cost to serve through automation
+20%
Increase in customer and agent satisfactions
Services Provided
- Omnichannel Contact Centre
- Service Automation
- Process Automation
- Customer Experience and Retention
- Digital Mailroom Services
Electric Ireland, the country’s largest energy supplier, delivers electricity, gas, and home energy services to over 1.3 million households and 95,000 businesses. Since 2004, Abtran has been a trusted partner, supporting the utility through market shifts, product expansion, and a growing demand for digital-first customer engagement.
To manage and enhance the full customer lifecycle, from acquisition to retention, Abtran delivers a fully managed omnichannel contact centre service. This includes inbound and outbound voice, email, web chat, chatbot, social media monitoring, and a secure digital mailroom handling all paper-based communications. Each year, Abtran manages approximately 2.5 million customer contacts on behalf of Electric Ireland.
A key milestone in this partnership has been modernising the customer metre reading process. Previously handled through time-consuming phone calls, the legacy system often led to customer frustration and operational inefficiencies. Abtran introduced a secure, automated solution powered by Amazon Connect and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), enabling customers to submit readings through a conversational chatbot. This user-friendly process significantly improved data accuracy, reduced repetitive advisor workload, and empowered customers to self-serve. As a result, customer satisfaction increased by 20 percent and operational costs dropped by 30 percent.
More than 10,000 automated readings were completed within three months of the launch. With ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 certified deployment, the solution ensured the highest security and compliance standards. The learning capability of the robotic platform enabled continuous optimisation, reducing exceptions and enhancing performance over time.
Customer advisors can now focus on resolving complex queries, while the automated system efficiently manages high-volume, repetitive tasks. This approach has helped balance technology and human support to deliver meaningful outcomes for the client and its customers.
