Lumbee River Electric Membership Corporation (LREMC) set out to do more than replace aging contact center infrastructure. The cooperative wanted to make it easier for members to get help, expand self-service options and prepare for a future in which voice, text, chat and automation increasingly converge.
LREMC serves more than 58,000 members across five counties in eastern North Carolina. Its member services team needs reliable tools for both routine operations and high-volume outage events. Priorities included stronger outage communications, 24/7 availability, easier access to account information, enhanced security and better integration across channels.
The project began with a straightforward need: The cooperative’s previous system was due for an upgrade, said Craig Davis, vice president of information technology at LREMC.
“It was an older system and we needed to upgrade,” Davis said. “We just looked at the different options and WebEx was our choice. We liked it. It checked all the boxes, and we were somewhat familiar with the way it worked already.”
Reporting and analytics, particularly automated call scoring, delivered one of the biggest improvements, Davis said.
“One of the big things they really like is some of the reporting and analytic features,” he said. “The scoring of the calls, that is automated now for the most part, where before supervisors had to go in individually and rate or score each call.”
Previously, supervisors listened to recorded calls and evaluated factors such as knowledge and speed. Much of that evaluation is now automated, while supervisors can adjust criteria and establish guardrails.
“They are able to tweak it,” Davis said, “and there were some criteria they set in place as guardrails for that.”
The new system also gives staff more flexibility. Eligible member service representatives may work remotely up to two days per week, and Davis said the system has performed well in that environment. The cooperative’s virtual desktop approach keeps application traffic on its network rather than a home network, helping maintain performance and consistency.
LREMC hired Consult Global IT, an independent, vendor-agnostic consulting firm, to guide selection and implementation. Davis said the firm helped gather requirements, evaluate vendors and manage implementation.
“They gathered information from us to determine what we were looking for,” he said. “Once we made a choice, they then guided us through the project management phase.”
Bill Moore, president of Consult Global IT, said the work was less about adding “bells and whistles” than tailoring a modern, cloud-based platform to the cooperative’s needs.
Most, if not all, of the new systems are cloud-based. It’s not necessarily more complex as it is making sure that you fine-tune the systems to work for the cooperative.
“Most, if not all, of the new systems are cloud-based,” Moore said. “It’s not necessarily more complex as it is making sure that you fine-tune the systems to work for the cooperative.”
The firm also served as LREMC’s advocate throughout selection and implementation. It helped define requirements, evaluate vendor proposals and ensure the final system matched what the cooperative requested and purchased. Moore said the goal was to ensure the system was built as specified rather than delivered as a generic “cookie-cutter” deployment.
That advocacy mattered during the build, according to Davis.
“We sat down and went over everything with the vendor to make sure that we were getting what we wanted,” he said.
LREMC’s approach reflects a broader shift in utility member services: Contact centers are becoming multichannel collaboration hubs that combine live agents, automation and analytics to deliver faster, more consistent service.