From Gut Instinct and Confusion to Data-Driven Decisions and Efficient Processes

Uplight: Creating a More Sustainable Future

Uplight is a company that provides software products and services to many of North America’s leading electric and gas utilities, with a focus on accelerating clean energy solutions. As a Certified B Corporation, balancing both purpose and profit, Uplight was formed through the merger of six legacy companies, and they’re growing fast.

The Challenge: Too Many Systems, Not Enough Clarity

Uplight had a bright future and a lot at stake. However, because they are the result of a merger of so many companies, they possess a large and complex array of products, along with multiple teams, processes, and tools to support their utility clients and their clients’ end customers, and also — complexity that wouldn’t scale.

In March 2021, a private equity company that valued the company at $1.5 billion identified the need to simplify operations in order to prepare for a hypergrowth phase, calling it “extremely urgent.” Indeed, company leaders were already well aware that they were struggling with inefficiency and low internal customer satisfaction as a direct result of having so many disparate processes and systems in place.

They required a swift fix for their inefficiencies, poor internal CSAT and lack of visibility to client requests and issues. Additionally, they had to sufficiently support not only their utility clients, but the utility end customers.

Like any growing company, their support function needed efficient processes and a way to make data-informed decisions so they could efficiently allocate resources. Their solution would have to address the lack of comprehensive, defined customer service processes and include a unified system to manage customer issues.

Multiple challenges prevented Uplight from achieving their goals:

● Too many tools and processes to intake, triage and complete support work

● Blurred lines between pillars made issue ownership unclear and impeded (as well as lengthened) problem resolution

● Ineffective and undefined processes forced client success managers to rely on legacy or backdoor channels to solve client issues

● Inability to properly prioritize support work, due to inefficiencies

The Vision: Consistently Great Customer Experiences

Uplight wanted to clarify issue ownership and increase visibility into the issues, while delivering a consistently great customer experience. Executive leadership also needed to reduce the number of issues they got personally involved in and gain greater visibility into the efficacy of their support system.

They aimed to quickly identify their biggest customer pain points, so they could proactively direct resources toward them. Previously, they’d relied on gut feelings to make those decisions, without enough data to substantiate them.

The Missing Piece: A Collaborator to Drive Consistency and Efficiency

While Uplight understood many of their challenges, they knew they couldn't fix them simultaneously with limited resources. At this point, their Chief Business Officer engaged Trek Advisory Group for help, due to their track record of helping fast-growing companies scale their customer support.

Perspective, Prioritization and Proper Framework

Uplight had some perspective on their problems and potential solutions, but it was based too much on intuition and not enough supporting data.

Trek began by interviewing Uplight employees, in a breadth of roles, to thoroughly understand the issues and their impacts on the organization. We assessed how their challenges related to each other, as well their interconnectivity across departments and teams. We analyzed their current state by shadowing their people and observing their processes.

Once assessed, we led Uplight through the Hoshin planning framework to prioritize their problems and structure solutions. Together, we devised a concrete action plan to surmount their challenges and provide the experience their customers deserved.

From Future Vision to Tangible Reality

Since partnering with Trek, Uplight’s future vision has sprung to life. Persisting through challenges, they are well on their way to stabilizing their support structures, processes and continue to scale.

The results:

● Stabilization of support processes and addition of new processes to fill gaps

● Socialization (and full buy-in) of future state vision with all stakeholders and executive team

● Clarity of issue ownership

● Clearly defined KPIs and goals

● Implementation of a single support platform that provides visibility

As David Schoenberg, SVP of Delivery and Operations at Uplight, “We've seen a lot of projects start and end at the PowerPoint stage; they falter in the implementation. That has not been the case here. Since working with Lara, we’ve moved beyond theory and gut instinct to solve practical problems based on real data.” This has been key to implementing greater efficiency across all of their systems and processes.

Through a collaborative relationship with Trek Advisory Group, Uplight is now on a path toward making data-driven decisions with streamlined and efficient processes that enable them to help clients much faster, while focusing on the things that clearly matter most.