Southwest Gas Achieves Back Office Excellence through Exception Automation

For over 20 years, Southwest Gas had relied on a legacy system to manage critical operations that had served its purpose but was no longer capable of meeting the demands of growing customer needs and an evolving industry. Recognizing the need for progress, the utility made the bold decision to transition to a modern CIS, a significant step forward that came with potential risks.

Such a major transition was likely to create pressure points, especially in the back-office. A surge in billing exceptions could overwhelm employees, disrupt workflows, and lead to inefficiencies, billing errors, and a loss of customer trust. Frustrated customers flooding the front-office with calls would stretch resources and add to the strain, creating a high-stakes situation Southwest Gas needed to avoid.

In search of a partner that would not only mitigate these risks but also truly enhance Southwest Gas’ operations, Avertra’s MiCustomer digital experience platform (DXP) became the centerpiece of this transformation. With a strong focus on back-office automation and excellence, it combined intelligent tools and an intuitive design that empowered efficiency and streamlined exception management, enabling employees to prioritize more meaningful work.

Within 6 months, an in-depth exploration of Southwest Gas’s processes and unique challenges was conducted and the implementation fully completed, setting the stage for impactful changes across multiple areas of the utility.

Streamlined Exception Management

One of the most immediate transformations was in exception management, where automating repetitive processes reduced manual workloads and gave employees the opportunity to focus on higher-value work.

Over the past 3 years, Southwest Gas has truly simplified life for employees and dramatically improved operations, achieving:

  • +4.4 million automatically resolved exceptions
  • 87.7% of all exceptions fully addressed without manual intervention
  • ~3.5K exceptions resolved daily
  • ~26.4K employee hours saved per month

In addition to experiencing a significant shift in how the back-office functioned, these results sparked positive impacts across the organization as:

  • Billing accuracy improved, reducing errors and minimizing delays in financial processes.
  • Customer satisfaction increased as exceptions were resolved faster and disruptions were minimized.
  • Call volumes to the front office decreased, easing the burden on customer-facing teams.

Proactive Problem-Solving

Beyond exception management, Southwest Gas worked to bring greater clarity to their operations. Identifying bottlenecks across complex processes was a constant challenge, leaving employees to navigate inefficiencies without clear direction.

By leveraging advanced analytics and heatmaps, teams gained the ability to see exactly where issues were occurring and understand the reasons behind them. What was once a time-consuming and uncertain process became a targeted approach, enabling employees to address root causes quickly and resolve challenges before they could escalate.

Simplified Onboarding & Learning

Understanding that a great customer experience starts with an even better employee experience, Southwest Gas focused on simplifying how their teams learned and adapted to new processes.

Through intelligent guided procedures, employees were able to build confidence in their roles, especially in cases requiring manual intervention or their unique expertise. By reducing the challenges of adapting to new workflows, employees were empowered to contribute more effectively, creating a more engaged and motivated workforce.

Optimized Workflow Transparency

Having a centralized view of team workflows played an essential role in improving both employee performance and decision-making. Through intuitive dashboards, teams could easily see previous case histories, understand who worked on specific tasks, and quickly dig into details when deeper insights were needed. Ultimately, this transparency allowed supervisors to step in with timely support to improve processes and develop a stronger, more collaborative environment.

Looking Ahead

Investing in the back office has enabled Southwest Gas to drive impactful changes that touch every part of the utility, reflecting the power of looking inward to create lasting impact for employee and customer experiences, all while strengthening operational resilience and delivering long-term value.

Building on this success, Southwest Gas and Avertra are committed to strategically expanding automation capabilities, targeting a 95% success rate in automatic resolutions. With this vision in mind, the goal will continue to center around driving operational excellence, and delivering excellent customer experiences.

Beyond the Front Lines: Investing in Back Office for Utility Success

In the bustling world of utilities, the spotlight often shines on customer-facing roles. However, behind every thriving utility company is a back office quietly powering innovation and growth– for those who invest in it that is.

 It’s time to zoom in on this critical area and understand how investing in a strategic back office transformation can revolutionize your entire organization.

The Hidden Powerhouse: Why the Back Office Matters

Think of the back office as the backbone of any utility company. It quietly handles all the behind-the-scenes tasks, from billing to maintaining systems, that keep the company running smoothly. If we neglect this vital area, small issues can snowball, affecting the entire organization. As the saying goes, “what goes around comes around,” and this is especially true in the back office. 

Many believe that focusing on the front office alone is the cure-all for organizational issues, but ignoring the back office can lead to disruptions that ripple through every part of the business, ultimately hurting the customer experience. While the back office might not interact directly with customers, its impact is significant.

“60% of sources of customer dissatisfaction originate in the back office functions.”

Let’s take a quick look-see at some of the main back office struggles that tend to translate into even bigger ones for utilities, and how to overcome them:

1. The Grind of Repetitive Tasks

If there’s one certainty, it’s that no employee wants their day consumed by monotonous, manual tasks. While this may not seem pressing to some, it’s this burnout where errors start to creep in—errors that do not go unnoticed by customers. Just like that, you’re now looking at a higher volume of customer calls, putting additional pressure on the front office and leading to longer wait times, increased frustration, and additional costs. Your employees are unhappy, your customers are unhappy, it’s a lose-lose situation no matter which way you look at it. 

On average, employees spend 10-25% of their time on repetitive tasks that can be automated. Aside from being a drain on productivity, it’s also a costly inefficiency. For example, processing invoices manually can cost companies between $5-$25 per invoice, representing a significant expense.

So why not take the robot out of the human? By allowing automation to step in and carry that load of manual exceptions, back office employees are able to do what they do best—think, analyze, and focus on more value-driven and meaningful work. It not only addresses the issue of costly inefficiencies but also significantly boosts productivity. In fact, it was revealed that 79% of employees name increased productivity as one of the main benefits of using automation.

Overall, with 85% of companies reporting greater speed, accuracy, and volume handling as a result of automation, it’s safe to say that it can take your lose-lose situation and transform it into a win all around, for both your utility and employees .

2. The Hidden Troubles of Ineffective Training

There’s a big focus on simplifying the customer experience (and rightfully so), but it’s important to remember that the foundation of it lies in providing an even better employee experience, especially for newcomers. Starting a new job is nerve-wracking enough, but when the software involved feels like it requires a Ph.D. to operate, it creates a steep learning curve. In turn, this leads to an inability to effectively train employees, meaning that your team is always a step behind, trying to cope with day-to-day tasks rather than focusing on strategic improvements and customer enhancements.

Start nurturing learning journeys and invest in intuitive, self-paced training programs supported by intelligent guided procedures.  A survey has shown that 58% of employees prefer self-paced training, which allows them to master their roles confidently at their own speed​. In doing so,  you simultaneously improve operational efficiency, boost morale and the experience for your customers, creating a cycle of success.

3. Bottlenecks that Cook Up Chaos

The back office department can be similar to a busy kitchen, everyone’s trying to cook but keeps bumping into each other because there’s not enough space. It’s here, in the cramped quarters of routine tasks and outdated systems, that bottlenecks form quietly. Being so much more than minor annoyances, they’re the silent chaos that slow down everything from processing applications to updating customer records. When the back office can’t keep up, it’s not just the paperwork that suffers, customers start feeling the delays, turning what should be a smooth process into a drag for everyone involved.

It’s time to rethink that kitchen.  Instead of having everyone crowding around and creating chaos, streamline the setup. Advanced analytics can identify exactly where the bottlenecks are and suggest the best ways to clear them. Research has shown that removing bottlenecks not only improves workflow efficiency but also boosts productivity, leading to a 30% increase in overall efficiency​. This means creating more space for your team to work efficiently and enabling faster decision-making.

4. Supervision in the Dark

Understanding how hectic unsupported back office departments can be, imagine trying to manage one. It’s no surprise that supervisors find themselves constantly feeling like they’re flying blind and putting out fires rather than preventing them without a clear overview of team performance and proper task management. The consequences? Inefficiencies, miscommunications, and missed opportunities for improvement. 

Light up the dashboard and provide supervisors with a holistic view of their team’s strengths, weaknesses and progress. This kind of transparency is a game-changer, with companies reporting up to 15% time savings per week. When supervisors have real-time data and a comprehensive overview at their fingertips, they can shift from reactive firefighting to proactive strategizing through clear, actionable insights. Just like that, teams become more accountable, communication improves, and supervisors are able to make informed decisions that drive performance through the roof. It’s like having a bird’s-eye view of the entire operation.

After all, to empower their teams, supervisors must first be empowered themselves.

Back Office, Big Impact: Transforming Utilities from the Core

At the end of the day, it’s clear that the backbone of any utility isn’t just the people we see but also the ones we don’t. The back office holds one of the keys to driving excellence, yet their challenges often remain unseen. However, with the right effort to turn vulnerabilities into strengths, it becomes possible to ignite a cycle of positive change across the entire utility landscape.

Investing in the back office isn’t just about improving internal processes; it’s about creating a ripple effect of benefits. Enhanced back office operations lead to faster service delivery, fewer errors, and higher customer satisfaction. Employees experience reduced stress and greater job fulfillment, fostering a motivated and productive workforce.

For customers, this means quicker resolutions and a smoother experience. For employees, it means a supportive work environment with the tools they need to excel. And for the community, it means a utility that operates efficiently and effectively, contributing to a brighter, more reliable future.

It Starts with You.

Change begins with a decision to act. By focusing on key process improvements, you’re setting the stage for significant operational gains and driving excellence from the core. And in doing so, you ensure a better future for your customers, employees, and the communities you serve.

Ready to be a part of the change? Take the first step and check out MiCustomer DXP and explore a robust back office strategy that ensures your key contributors have the tools they need to thrive.

Five competitive advantages of an omnichannel experience

An omnichannel is a business communication strategy that focuses on giving customers the power to choose how they want to contact you. Whether through a chatbot, email, phone call, or text message, an omnichannel is designed in a way to provide a seamless experience no matter which method of communication customers choose. Research has shown younger-generation customers prefer messaging-based communication over phone calls and emails due to the lack of disruptions. Customers want to receive assistance while performing their daily activities without having to put their lives on hold, but a personalized experience is not the only advantage of an omnichannel. Here are four other benefits.

1. Less agent effort needed

Many call centers are the culprit of high turnover rates. Employees are overworked. Dealing with frustrated customers is not easy. Nothing is more demotivating than doing repetitive tasks all year long. Agents are not always recognized for their efforts. A call center job is not your typical 9-5. These are just a few of the downsides of a call center. With an omnichannel, requests are distributed across multiple channels, giving employees more time to focus on more rewarding tasks without overextending themselves.

2. Improves and enhances customer experience

The modern customer does not want to be restricted to a single channel when reaching out. They want to get in touch with you whenever and wherever they want, without it disrupting their lives. An omnichannel does just that. It provides customers with a stream of seamless communication with the same high quality level of service across every channel.

3. Cost effective and efficient

Expect a significant reduction in costs when you opt for sending messages to your customer’s channel of choice compared to when you overwhelm them through every outlet possible.

4. Centralizes data

Due to the shift in technologies such as artificial intelligence and automation, data is now seen as an essential asset to how organizations can improve their efficiency. What was once a step that required information-gathering before serving a customer is now readily available for agents. Employees from different departments within a company can access real-time customer data from a single place. This means call center agents no longer have to gather all the customer’s information before serving them, saving more employee time and effort and dissolving any customer frustrations. Unifying your database can also help identify patterns in customer behavior and deliver valuable insight to improve a customer’s overall experience.

5. Deflects calls

Calls are deflected when your points of contact are distributed across multiple channels. For example, customers can opt for other means of assistance like chat or email, where they are not required to pick up their phone. Customers can even start or stop a service, send complaints, enroll in recommendation programs, and personalize their Customers can self-serve and be more efficient to solve any issues they face on their own. 

Looking to adopt an omnichannel business strategy? Let us handle it from start to finish. Book a demo with us today and reap the benefits of an omnichannel.




Top Four Digital Agent Myths Busted

Today, more and more companies are keeping up with the latest digital trends in an effort to build a future-ready workforce. Some are looking up to digital agents. However, the majority of companies resort to human labor-based business process outsourcing (BPO) for back and front-office operations. This is in the hopes of a high return on investment. But there is a major downside that companies seem to overlook with this decision. 

Human-based BPO has a lifeline of up to five to ten years. This makes it a non-sustainable solution for companies seeking future-proof solutions. Aside from that, BPO fails to measure valuable insight on user-experience, creating a ripple effect of endless consequences. Overall, companies begin to suffer financially from high customer churn and investment failure. On the bright side, digital agents are the future workforce, and they are already here. However, just like anything else, they are no exception to being a target of criticism and misconceptions. Let’s tackle them one by one.

1. Robotic sounding voice based conversational agents are not fluent in enough languages

While this may be true, covering enough languages fluently and localization go hand in hand. Artificial intelligence, the technology responsible for conversational agents, adapts through progressive learning algorithms when given new data. AI can recognize and extract structure and regularities in data and convert them into algorithms to learn a certain skill. The quality of voice and human-like interaction increases in maturity the more conversational AI is used through its evolving capabilities. This means companies can improve the capability of these services the more they use them.

2. Intent and context need to be updated every now and then

Natural Language Processing is a self-sufficient technique that is capable of independently performing a syntax and semantic analysis to better understand the user’s inquiry through a digital agent. 

– Syntax analysis refers to the rules and regulations for writing any statement in a programming language. 

– Semantic analysis refers to the meaning associated with the statement in a programming language. For example, when utilizing different machine learning techniques, models can run in both, supervised and unsupervised manners.

– Supervised learning is a machine learning approach that uses labeled datasets designed to supervise algorithms into classifying data or predicted outcomes accurately. 

On the other hand, unsupervised learning uses machine learning algorithms to analyze and group unlabeled data sets. These algorithms find hidden patterns in data and get trained to recognize them without human intervention. Additionally, they can also perform rule-based pattern matching, classifications, decision trees, and the deployment of neural networks enabling intelligent decision-making, context creation, and more. This way, a digital agent is molded into a contextual and intelligent bot that is solution-driven and empowered for human interaction. 

3. They displace employees

Tedious exceptions can be automated so that employees doing menial tasks are trained into higher caliber professionals. Exception management is one example of a job that requires problem-solving as the main skill to solve high priority cases. A human agent is expected to monitor digital agents to ensure the digital workforce is running smoothly. In the case of an exception, these agents are trained to intervene and solve the issue accordingly. When human agents are coupled with an empowered digital workforce, more than half of process time is reduced altogether. Employees become more efficient and customers become more satisfied – a win-win situation for everyone involved.  

4. You can never automate 100% of the interactions

With proper segmentation engines, targeted personas, rules, tolerance, and approval limits, anything and everything can be automated. Through data mining and tribal knowledge, you can automate up to 80% of human-to-human interaction and business processes. Although some argue that the “human factor” would be missed from customer interactions, customers just want to be served and served efficiently. Additionally, digital agents can only execute requests that are within their approved limits, leaving critical tasks to the human workforce. Through collaborative intelligence, digital and human agents can serve customers efficiently.

In a world where technology is ever-changing, companies that outsource business processes must evolve and seek ways to ensure a future-ready workforce. Avertra is a digital experience company with an ongoing mission to simplify customer and employee experiences. With a decade worth of experience in various industries, we help automate businesses, even those that outsource business processes with a different solution provider.

With its proven track record of many successful and fruitful partnerships, Avertra has proven that not only can their digital agents handle complex business process executions such as start and stop service, and resolve high bill complaints, complex billing outsorts, and correcting asset placement and more, but all of these complex processes are executed without involving a single human and wasting their valuable time. In result, agents are repurposed for more meaningful tasks in need of human skill. 

Book a demo today with Avertra for a chance to be part of the digital revolution and expect a high return on investment



The Future of Work: Intelligent Process Automation

Companies that want to reap the benefits of digital transformation need to be prepared for some change. But change isn’t necessarily bad, especially when it can improve efficiency, employee satisfaction, and customer journeys. This is where Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) comes into play – the phenomenon defining the future of work. 

In an interview with Bashir Bseirani, CEO & CTO at Avertra Corp., we delve into how companies can innovate, enhance operational excellence, and most of all, create people-driven organizations. 

You may have heard of general conceptions about automation, but IPA stands to be unique in nature as it combines Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The core purpose of IPA is to “automate end-to-end business processes”, “mimic activities carried out by humans, and over time, learn to do them even better”. 

With a myriad of learning, reasoning, and contextual decision-making capabilities, IPA executes repetitive tasks without the need for human intervention. This reduces the reliance on manual processes while still sustaining the human touch that is essential to many businesses.

Let’s dive deeper into Bashir’s take.

How does IPA unify user experiences?

Bseirani: As consumers, we expect things to happen now. Silicon Valley enterprises, like Facebook, Uber, Amazon made us reliant on instant services. With the rising demand in customer expectations, they now expect quick responses to complaints and personalized experiences. IPA alone has the ability to connect systems and processes to each other to ensure an end-to-end experience with a people-first approach. For example, in the utility industry, starting your electricity service is automated without the need for an agent to intervene. This then automatically integrates the start service into the field services system and sends a direct confirmation to the client, completing the full cycle of the job. 

Investing in systems that can talk to each other allows for smoother interactions between humans. Self-service and automation together allow employees to remove low value purpose tasks while increasing customer satisfaction. For example, let’s say a user has a complaint or request, through IPA, a virtual agent can handle this request via the customer’s channel of choice without the need to contact a human agent. Automation allows you to go to a human only if necessary based on the context and the extremity of the request, which you can set tolerances for. This streamlines the relationship between human interactions and evaluates the best use of employees because their time is of value. 

How does IPA support workforce empowerment?

Bseirani: Reducing manual touchpoints for employees means that you are reducing the overall number of steps to complete a single request or process. This opens up space for employees to really focus on the problem at hand and make productive decisions instead of wasting time navigating between screens, checklists, governance, and all different types of tedious tasks that come with process management. The main benefit of automation is enabling employees to work on more complex, high value tasks and quality output. Through enhanced work-life balance, employees are given the freedom to innovate and cultivate skills for their personal and professional growth. 

At Avertra, we practice what we preach. Our team is automating the entire employee lifecycle for our Human Resources department from onboarding, recommended health plans, performance management, career development, and beyond. This will lead to not only a great internal employee experience for us, but it will also provide detailed visibility into our employee lifecycle as a whole. There are many different use cases internally and externally for IPA that can support organizational efficiency and scalability. 

What are some of the benefits of IPA?

Bseirani: In a world where companies want to bring out the best of their employees and optimize internal processes, IPA is an effortless way to do both and has the power to build a polished business environment while also enabling businesses to reap these benefits:

  1. Save employees hours: There is no longer a need to waste time on paper-based manual tasks. IPA can handle the bulk repetitive tasks for you. This will save thousands of employee hours a month, resulting in enabled and empowered teams.
  2. Reduce operational costs: With high cost labor markets being a big financial burden on organizations, there is now an opportunity to reduce the overall costs of staffing, sustaining resources, and the human labor costs of executing processes.
  3. Reduce human error: Humans make mistakes, it’s inevitable. Whether it’s the process of giving a discount or making a modification to a document, there is always a possibility for subjective error. This will have a downstream impact across the organization. With IPA, there isn’t a limit. IPA can read a document, understand an image and text, and most importantly, learn and understand contexts to make logical and optimized decisions. With a proper flow, training, and technology stack as the foundation, organizations can reduce reliance on human judgment to make logical decisions. 

What can you automate?

Bseirani: The question should be what can’t you automate? You can automate any system-to-system interaction, human-to-system interaction, and in some cases, up to 80% of human-to-human interaction. 

Processes within Call Centers, Marketing, HR, Talent, Sales, Back Office, Finance departments can all be automated. Imagine the time and costs saved and how much value could be delivered with such savings. According to Mckinsey, “automation can deliver over 100% return on investment and decrease 50-60% in process time”.

With our experience at Avertra, we’ve been able to work with enterprises such as utilities, banking, telecommunications, and Internet Service Providers to automate complex business processes of all kinds. This includes start and stop service, exception management and resolution, bill complaints, asset replacement, and beyond. 

What role does the employee experience play in achieving an overall great customer experience and how does IPA fit in?

Bseirani: As ironic as it sounds, IPA has the ability to create a people-driven organization. If you don’t focus on the overall well-being of your team, customers will suffer from a poor customer experience in various forms. To name a few, delayed responses and unresolved issues are some issues that customers will face. IPA can make internal teams happier by giving them the tools to solve their own problems in a quick and efficient manner. The higher the work quality is, the happier the employee is, leading to a great customer experience. 


Intelligent process automation is one of those things that can be hard to wrap your head around at first. But once you do, you’ll see the endless possibilities: imagine having a virtual agent that can handle all the tedious work for you so you can focus on what’s really important. Imagine having a system that knows exactly what needs to be done and does it without any human intervention — delivering it in a form that’s ready for consumption by your customers or employees. Imagine being able to track every step of each process, so if something goes wrong, you know exactly where to look for the cause of the problem.

Automation will stop being just a buzzword in the market and become more central for businesses to implement. Now is the moment to take strategic steps to ensure not only your survival in such a competitive landscape, but lead to greater creativity and innovation across your business, employees, and customers simultaneously. 



8 strategies from a customer success expert

In the United States, 59% of people will walk away from a company after several bad experiences, and 17% after just one bad experience. This means, one big error, or unforeseen disaster, could lead to losing many of your customers. As digital transformation continues to reshape the world of customers, organizations are constantly hunting for the latest technologies and processes in the market that can potentially reform their business and provide exceptional customer service. Considering its cross-functional approach and multipurpose, customer success has become an essential ingredient in the digital transformation journey of any business. 

So what exactly is it and how does the term apply to an organization as a whole?

Customer success is a mindset

Today’s most successful emerging companies have already invested in customer success. Without a doubt, these companies were 21% more likely than their stagnant counterparts to prioritize customer success. Although some may argue otherwise, customer success is much more than simply a department within a company. It is a mindset that can be practiced across an entire organization to enhance your customer’s overall experience. It is a cross-functional approach that requires strong teamwork to achieve higher quality products and services. 

As a company, your success is directly tied to how well your customer’s needs and expectations are met or exceeded. So how do we do this?

1. Build a strong team of leaders

From the founder of the company to the last hired employee, customer success is everyone’s responsibility. When hiring, reach out to people who understand your vision and the importance of placing customers at the forefront of the company’s values goes a long way. As a matter of fact, those who understand the connection between customer satisfaction and success leads to greater innovation and productivity.

2. Innovate with your end user in mind

Some customers are inevitably going to face issues during the process of setting up their account. By focusing on improving the experience of end users through interactive tutorials, you help guide them towards becoming more self-sufficient. In fact, building customers to become more independent will build more loyalty and trust towards your brand, and a greater customer experience overall.

3. Onboard customers and engage them all the way through

A great onboarding process that covers all aspects of your product or service will help set a great first impression. Getting them acquainted through the necessary tools, training, resources, and knowledge is the first and foremost step in building loyal customers. Answering questions, providing step-by-step tutorials, offering unlimited one-on-one guidance from representatives, and celebrating whenever a customer uses your product correctly are all ways you can better connect.

The second step is involving your customers throughout the entire development process to understand and match their vision. Keeping them in the loop will let them know exactly what to expect, while your team responds to their needs and expectations. All too often, companies force their own ideas, and forget to take the time to understand what their customers truly want and need. Not doing enough research to gather the pain points of your end-user is the recipe for failure. 

Keep in mind that once you’ve passed the implementation phase, being proactive shouldn’t be understated. Providing useful recommendations and the needed maintenance and support during all phases will bring more positive feedback in return.

4. Develop a customer success strategy

A defined process and plan will help you meet your business vision effectively. It starts with the most basic building blocks such as getting to know your customer to developing a strategy around your target persona. 

5. Empower customers with intuitive tools

When you support your end-user with a user-friendly and intuitive interface, they become self-reliant. This will make them more familiar with your product, making them less likely to seek alternatives to your service. 

6. Ask for feedback

Not only should you survey your customers before ideation, but providing a follow-up survey six months later goes a long way. Utilizing feedback will help you map and identify potential roadblocks, and address them accordingly. Doing so will also pave the way towards an upsell or cross-sell of a product. 

7. Streamline communication

Optimizing your communication responding quickly will build a stronger relationship with your customers. For example, around-the-clock customer service and various channels of communication is one way you can enhance their experience.

8. Provide real value

Ask yourself, what do end users benefit from your product or service? Will it make them happier? If it doesn’t change their life or provide real value, it’s easier for them to forget it.

Customer success is a competitive differentiator, and digital transformation has made it more important than ever. Cultivating customer success as a mindset across your organization will build a stronger relationship with your customers while also being the catalyst for better end-user experiences. Stay up to date with the latest industry-related news by checking out our resources page.