Consumers Energy uses Moveworks Agentic AI platform to reduce costs, modernize communication, and free up IT for high-impact work.
Customer Story
How one employee comms campaign saved Consumers Energy $55K in licensing
$55K
savings resulting from a single communication campaign
Company overview
Founded in 1886, Consumers Energy is one of the leading energy providers in Michigan. It supplies power to over 6 million of the state’s residents and oversees more than 100,000 miles of electrical and natural gas distribution lines.
Challenge
Support was overwhelmed: employees couldn’t find answers, systems were fragmented, and teams lacked tools or time to proactively engage people.
Result
In 12 months, AI Assistant saved 16,000 hours of productivity a month. Automated, cost-saving communication freed time for high-impact work across multiple departments.
Problem: Critical businesses put their employees first
Consumers Energy has delivered reliable power to Michigan since 1886. But despite its long history of keeping critical infrastructure running, one part of the business needed dramatic modernization: the service desk.
With more than 8,000 employees depending on fast support to do their jobs, traditional support channels — like email, shoulder taps, SharePoint links, and the intranet — left employees struggling to find answers, support teams overwhelmed by routine questions, and little time for strategic projects.
Dave Pawlak, Executive Director of IT, and Joe Langa, Team Leader, recognized that employee communication was a major bottleneck. Mass emails were noisy and often ignored, and the support team had no reliable way to ensure employees took action when needed.
“We’re an old-school utility company. We don’t move fast,” said Langa. “But in this tech age, we needed to upgrade to support our team. And we couldn’t wait.”
Across the business, employees were held back by:
- Outdated support processes
- Complex, monolithic systems
- High ticket volume
- Limited team capacity to proactively engage people
- No visibility into whether employees were actually acting on communications
Consumers Energy needed a new approach — one that could unify support, speed up actions, and finally meet employees where they work.
Solution: AI Assistant powers up communication, saves on licensing
In November 2020, Consumers Energy deployed the Moveworks AI Assistant, internally known as CEVA. Living natively inside Microsoft Teams, CEVA gives employees one place to resolve issues, find information, and take action instantly.
Moveworks AI Assistant resolves 35% of all employee support requests in minutes, pulls from Consumers Energy’s entire knowledge base, and has more than 1,000 questions answered per month.
What made the AI Assistant stand out was its ability to launch quickly. The team estimated 200 hours of implementation work — but Moveworks required only about 20 hours to get the AI Assistant fully deployed.
“Moveworks did all the heavy lifting,” said Langa.
As the AI Assistant took over routine tasks, support teams finally had the bandwidth to work on high-impact projects — and focus on transforming service delivery instead of putting out fires.
The AI Assistant handles:
Result: AI Assistant powers employee comms and saves $55,000 in 14 days
Communication was one of Consumers Energy’s biggest pain points. Typical mass emails were ignored, making updates difficult to drive.
AI Assistant allows support teams to send targeted, actionable messages to the right employees — directly in Teams — with built-in tracking that shows who took the required action and who didn’t. This real-time visibility enabled precise follow-ups, eliminating guesswork.
“AI Assistant sent a simple message asking Adobe Acrobat Professional license owners if they still required access. This one comm resulted in reclaiming 1,000 licenses, saving us $55,000 in only 14 days,” said Langa.
AI Assistant has delivered a number of wins:
Looking forward
With thousands of conversations happening through their AI Assistant every year, support agents now focus on strategic priorities instead of repetitive tasks. By modernizing communications, optimizing licensing, and freeing IT to drive transformation, the AI Assistant laid the foundation for future AI initiatives across the organization.
“The question isn’t: How is Moveworks helping now? The question is: Where can we take Moveworks next?”
Dave Pawlak
Executive Director of IT, Consumers Energy