Case Study: First Utility achieves £2 million annualized benefit and 50% faster advisor onboarding with Zendesk

First Utility saw a £2 million annualized benefit by switching to Zendesk

First Utility, founded in 2008, is the UK’s largest independent energy supplier, serving 800,000 homes with a 700‑advisor support team. Growing product lines and a patchwork of back‑office systems left advisors facing a convoluted Salesforce interface that was hard to manage, slowed development, and made onboarding and day‑to‑day support more difficult.

Working with Unify Communications, First Utility replaced Salesforce with Zendesk (Support, Guide and the Zendesk API) in July 2017, integrating telephony, billing, a chatbot, SLA management and analytics. The simpler, API‑driven platform cut advisor onboarding time by about 50%, reduced average handling time by 20 seconds, and—together with lower license and development costs—delivered roughly a £2 million annualized benefit while improving advisor and customer satisfaction.

First Utility

Rob Harris

Head of Customer Service Platforms