Essent N.V., the Netherlands’ largest energy supplier, has completed a wholesale transformation of its contact centre infrastructure — cutting technology costs by 50%, achieving zero critical incidents post-migration, and improving agent workplace satisfaction by 36%.
The migration – which was delivered in partnership with AI-first customer experience transformation specialists, Sabio Group – was completed in under 12 weeks for an operation spanning over 1,000 agents across two locations.
The scale of the challenge was formidable. In a recently published case study, Essent’s legacy on-premise voice system had become a strategic liability: running on an unsupported platform, haemorrhaging money on specialist maintenance, and blocking the AI-powered capabilities that modern customers demand.
Meanwhile, agents were forced to juggle multiple disconnected screens simultaneously — a workflow that was as inefficient as it was stressful.
“Our agents were constantly working with different screens — multiple chat instances open at once, multiple agent desktop instances. It was messy, and in some cases, quite stressful.”— Michiel Kouijzer, SAFe Product Manager for Customer Interaction, Omnichannel and Digital Transformation, Essent
Rather than a reckless ‘big bang’ cutover that could have effected service to millions of households, Sabio engineered a phased migration strategy — beginning with Essent’s SME segment to validate technical readiness before scaling to the full enterprise operation.
Crucially, the December live chat migration — executed at the peak of the winter demand season — was invisible to customers, with live chat NPS not merely holding steady, but actually improving.
The results were unambiguous. Technology costs have been halved. The agent workplace NPS has surged from +19 to +26 — a 36% improvement. And since go-live, Essent has recorded zero critical incidents; a stark contrast to several outages that periodically plagued its legacy environment.
“A lot of colleagues were saying I was mad for even suggesting this approach. It kind of feels like a victory on a personal level that it did work out. You just have to be a little ambitious — and have the right expert partner who can make it work.”— Michiel Kouijzer, Essent
Sabio’s approach went well beyond conventional implementation. Technical consultants were embedded on-site at Essent HQ in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, working directly within Essent’s agile sprint teams and managing complex coordination across telecommunications carriers, E.ON group networking, and CRM integrations. The outcome is a unified agent workspace — voice, chat, and customer data consolidated into a single screen — that has fundamentally changed the daily experience of frontline staff.
“This project showcases Sabio’s unique position in the contact centre technology landscape. We’re not just moving Essent to the cloud — we’re establishing a foundation for continuous improvement in their customer experience delivery.”— Wouter Bakker, Country Manager, Sabio Group Benelux
With stable cloud infrastructure now firmly in place, Essent is turning its attention to the capabilities that were impossible in its legacy environment: AI-powered call summarisation, agentic customer self-service, and next-generation workforce optimisation.
