How Centracom Replaced their Call Center with AI Voice Agents — and Cut Costs by Nearly $500k
Centracom, a Utah-based telecom provider, used Thoughtly’s AI voice agents to offload over 12% of their support calls—cutting more than $400K in costs and unlocking a roadmap for full-service automation across their customer support operation.
Key Results:
- 3,000+ monthly inbound calls now handled by AI
- ~$420,000 in annualized savings vs. legacy call center
- 12% of all support calls fully automated—and growing
- Deployed tier-1 support agent tailored for telecom troubleshooting
- Platform integrated with ticketing systems for end-to-end automation
- Vision to automate outage detection and account diagnostics
📡 Background: Telecom Scale, Local Pain
Centracom has been serving Utah residents with Internet and phone services for decades. But as the customer base ballooned to nearly 30,000 households, the support operation struggled to scale. Their outsourced call center in Georgia was costly, slow, and frustrating for customers.
“People felt like they were being outsourced. Call times were long. Customers were frustrated. We knew something had to change.”
Kenyon began exploring generative AI solutions on his own. After testing OpenAI’s API, Dialogflow, and other tools, he realized the challenge wasn’t technical capability—it was time-to-deployment and product fit. That’s when he found Thoughtly.
🤖 The Pivot: AI for Tier 1 Troubleshooting
Unlike most AI call solutions focused on sales or intent routing, Thoughtly was willing to build with Centracom from the ground up—customizing agents specifically for ISP troubleshooting and support.
Today, the agent handles billing issues, basic connectivity diagnostics, and escalates complex issues to Tier 2 when needed. Customers call in, and AI gets to work.
💰 ROI: Replacing a Call Center
Previously, Centracom paid ~$500,000/year to an external call center vendor. Thoughtly’s AI solution costs ~80% less and, according to Kenyon, "the experience is just better."
More than 3,000 calls per month—about 12% of all inbound traffic—are now handled entirely by AI. That number is increasing every month.
🧵 Real Conversations, Real Value
The agents don’t just follow a script—they carry on human-like conversations. In one memorable case, an elderly caller began describing her grandchildren mid-troubleshooting.
“The agent listened for a bit, then politely steered the call back to the issue. It was shockingly natural. We all laughed, but it saved a ticket from going to Tier 2.”
Even emotionally charged or meandering conversations are handled with empathy and precision.
🔌 Integrations & Platform Fit
Thoughtly now integrates directly with Centracom's ticketing system. It logs tickets, triggers escalationEscalationMoving a conversation to a human, specialist, supervisor, or alternate workflow when the agent detects risk, uncertainty, urgency, or a request it should not handle alone. when needed, and feeds into internal dashboards for visibility—all without requiring engineering lift from Centracom's team.
“The Figma-like interface was a huge plus. It made building logic intuitive for a telecom use case—no APIs or backend needed.”
🌐 What’s Next: From Agent to Autonomous Ops
Kenyon’s long-term vision is ambitious: agents that proactively detect outages, interface with backend APIs, and notify customers automatically—before a call is even placed.
“This is my Mona Lisa. We’re building something that goes beyond Tier 1—it’s a fully integrated, intelligent support system.”
As Thoughtly expands its AI capabilities and integrations, Centracom sees a future where customer support is faster, cheaper, and more human—without humans.
