Customer Story

A Breath of Fresh Air: Reinventing Customer Support at a California Utilities Company

How a California public utilities company replaced tribal knowledge with guided knowledge, cutting escalations from 80% to 10%, accelerating training, and boosting retention.

TL;DR

The short version (TL;DR)

Company: California public utilities company serving over 280,000 customers

Challenge: Highly complex procedures, combined with a reliance on tribal knowledge. 12-month training times, 80% escalation rates, and struggles with new-hire retention.

Solution: Find & Follow and a Knowledge Ops Platform to change the company’s systems, habits, and culture.

Results: Faster training, escalations dropped dramatically, new hires contributed within weeks, and one-year employee retention soared.

The short version (TL;DR)

The Company

California public utilities company serving over 280,000 customers

The Challenge

A reliance on tribal knowledge, resulting in 12-month training times, high escalation rates, and a struggle with new hire retention rates.

The Solution

Find & Follow and a Knowledge Ops Platform to change the company’s systems, habits, and culture.

The Results

Faster training, escalations dropped dramatically, new hires contributed within weeks, and one-year employee retention soared.

CSR Team Improvements

0 weeks

Decrease in time to contribution

0 months

Decrease in time to proficiency

Fewer escalations

>0%

Better employee retention

The Company

California Public Utilities Company

The California Public Utilities Company serves over 280,000 customer accounts, handling 4,900 inbound calls and 3,000 web forms each month. With a team of 120 employees, including CSRs, supervisors, analysts, and field representatives, they manage customer complaints and troubleshooting, which can often be highly stressful.

The Challenge

Complex Procedures Leading to a Reliance on Tribal Knowledge

Due to the complex nature of customer inquiries and the limited tools available, the utility company was forced to rely heavily on tribal knowledge to handle calls and requests.

Even after a 16-week classroom training program, it still took new hires up to 12 months to work independently.

Because of the complex processes and lack of accessible resources, nearly 80% of customer calls and requests had to be escalated to supervisors, contributing to high stress, burnout, and an alarming 17% employee retention rate.

Tenured employees, who held the most knowledge, faced immense pressure as they became the primary support for resolving complex issues.

The company needed a solution to make knowledge more accessible and enable employees to perform more efficiently, especially in a high-pressure environment where customer satisfaction was at risk.

The Solution

A Complete Change in Systems, Habits, and Culture

The California public utilities company needed a holistic solution that addressed not only its systems but also the habits and culture that had developed over time. The company partnered with ScreenSteps to introduce changes across these three areas to create a more sustainable and efficient operation.

Knowledge Ops Platform

The company implemented the ScreenSteps’ Knowledge Ops Platform, which provided them with a structured approach to creating, organizing, and delivering knowledge. They separated foundational knowledge (the who, what, and why) from actionable knowledge (the how) and organized them all in a centralized knowledge base.

ScreenSteps helped create standard operating procedures and call flows that employees could:

Find in 5 seconds or less
Easily follow while interacting with a customer
Trust was accurate, certified, and up to date

CSRs were directed to use these SOPs live during customer interactions. This change ensured that employees had the resources they needed to perform with confidence during every call or request, no matter the complexity.

Find & Follow Framework

With the Find & Follow Framework, employees were no longer trained to memorize how to perform tasks and solve problems.

Instead, they were trained to consistently rely on approved SOPs for assistance. This shift in habit allowed employees to focus on delivering customer solutions without the added pressure of trying to remember every detail.

This change also allowed trainers to focus on teaching employees the why behind their jobs.

Together, this helped to dramatically reduce the need for escalations, empowering CSRs to handle more issues independently.

An Organization of Guided Knowledge

A top-down commitment to knowledge sharing and continuous improvement marked a cultural shift within the company.

Leadership decided to prioritize guided knowledge and Knowledge Operations, which led to a broader buy-in from all employees.

This fostered an environment where feedback was encouraged, and both new and seasoned employees embraced a culture of continuous learning and accountability.

“One agent stood up after that call and twirled at her desk! She felt so empowered to be able to actually help the customer in the way that she had always wanted to do. She never felt like she could do that before.”

The Results

A Breathe of Fresh Air

The implementation of these systems, habits, and culture changes had a profound impact on the company’s performance. Not only did it reduce the strain on supervisors and senior employees, but it also significantly improved employee retention and overall productivity.

Key metric improvements:

81% faster speed to contribution

New hires began contributing effectively by week 3 instead of 16.

88% decrease in time to proficiency

Tasks that once took 1-2 years to master were now being performed at the 6-week mark.

88% fewer escalations

Escalations dropped from 80% of calls and requests to just 10%.

4x better employee retention

Employee retention jumped to 83%, a significant improvement from the previous 17%.

Culture improvements:

Increased accountability

A new culture of feedback and transparency, leading to public accountability. Employees are supported and have the resources to perform.

Increased trust

Increased trust between employees and leadership, with the company demonstrating a clear investment in employee success.

This transformation provided the company with a sustainable, scalable solution to managing customer interactions while simultaneously improving employee satisfaction and retention.

"Agents are feeling really good about who they are as an employee, about the work that they do, and about the autonomy that they have. It's been absolutely just transformative."

Improve training and operations with SOPs designed for performance

Give your employees the support resources they need to work confidently and consistently.

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