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TEPCO Energy Partner, Incorporated (TEPCO EP), which supplies electricity and gas to households across Japan, primarily in the Kanto region, views advanced customer service as a key competitive differentiator. The company is rebuilding its contact center using AI. While improving operational efficiency and customer experience (CX) through cloud utilization, TEPCO EP, as a public infrastructure provider, must also implement strict measures against information leaks.
To meet this requirement, the company adopted Netskope, with its extensive security capabilities, enabling visibility and protection of call logs and cloud service usage. This contributes to establishing a contact center infrastructure that balances both convenience and security.
TEPCO EP is one of Japan’s largest electricity and gas retailers, supplying homes across the country from its Kanto-based operations. Since the full liberalization of electricity and gas retail markets, consumers have had the freedom to choose their energy providers. In this increasingly competitive environment, TEPCO EP has placed a strong emphasis on enhancing customer touchpoints as a core element of business competitiveness.
However, due to the diversification of services and evolving customer needs, contact center operations have become more complex. Natsuki Tokunaga from the Reception System Group, Service Solution Division, explains “Challenges such as difficulty connecting calls, heavy workloads for operators, and rising operational costs had become apparent.” To address these issues, the company began rebuilding the contact center using AI. Standardized tasks are handled by AI, allowing human operators to focus on interactions that require empathy and discretion.
Security assurance became a critical challenge during this process. As a critical infrastructure provider responsible for a highly public service like energy supply, TEPCO EP is required to maintain even stricter information management than financial institutions. Thus, IT infrastructure renewal and security enhancement have always been inseparable. “It is important to create an environment where customers of all age groups can confidently use any channel—phone, web, or chat—as part of our omnichannel support approach,” says Tokunaga.
After deployment, Netskope guided us through settings and fine-tuning step-by-step, sharing screens when needed. I felt confident entrusting them with our needs thanks to their customer success team’s dedication.
As part of its contact center reform, TEPCO EP accelerated AI integration and cloud adoption, with multiple sites now operating across Japan. “Chat and FAQ-based responses are becoming more common, enabling more flexible site operations and consistent customer handling,” says Tokunaga.
However, this cloud-based system also introduced new security concerns. “As we migrated our traditionally on-premise phone systems to the cloud, the risk of handling sensitive information increased. In particular, storing transcribed voice data in the cloud required strict security policies,” Tokunaga explains.
To meet these stringent requirements, the company selected Netskope. The platform was highly rated for its ability to deliver a wide range of security functions without needing to combine multiple products. “Netskope includes features like DLP, secure web gateway (SWG), and detailed visibility and control over cloud applications (CASB), all in one platform. The UI is also very intuitive,” says Tokunaga. “As someone without a technical background, the intuitive interface was a major deciding factor.”
Another reason for the selection was the high-quality support. “After deployment, Netskope guided us through settings and fine-tuning step-by-step, sharing screens when needed. I felt confident entrusting them with our needs thanks to their customer success team’s dedication,” Tokunaga adds.
Now we receive 2 to 3 alerts per day, and almost all are actual cases that require masking. I would say we’re detecting with over 90%, nearly 100% accuracy.
After deploying Netskope, one of the most effective use cases has been the monitoring and masking of transcribed call logs and other text data. In the contact center, phone and chat interactions are automatically transcribed and analyzed to improve service quality. To mitigate the risk of exposing personal or sensitive data like bank account numbers, TEPCO EP uses Netskope’s flexible DLP rule configuration.
“For example, simply detecting a 7-digit number might mistakenly flag phone numbers or membership IDs. We collaborated with Netskope to build detection rules tailored to our logs—such as flagging keywords like ‘account’ or ‘bank’ before or after the number,” explains Tokunaga.
Thanks to the advanced rule engine and tailored rule creation, detection accuracy has significantly improved. “Now we receive 2 to 3 alerts per day, and almost all are actual cases that require masking. I would say we’re detecting with over 90%, nearly 100% accuracy,” says Tokunaga. After a few rounds of rule refinement, they’ve also seen a reduction in operational burden.
Additionally, the company centrally monitors logs from various cloud services, including CRM, voice bots, and systems for authentication and device management like SSO and MDM, all via Netskope. “Even from our Tokyo office, we can monitor issues occurring at remote sites in real time, which helps improve operational efficiency,” says Tokunaga.
As we move to the cloud, security requirements will become more stringent. But with Netskope, we believe we can implement integrated security while remaining flexible in expansion.
Going forward, TEPCO EP plans to continue cloud migration of its existing contact centers in the Kanto region. Between September and December 2025, the company will introduce AI functions at locations in Tokyo, Saitama, Chiba, and Ibaraki in stages.
“While we already have sites across Japan for disaster preparedness, this initiative focuses on updating the remaining on-premise environments in the Kanto area. Naturally, as we move to the cloud, security requirements will become more stringent. But with Netskope, we believe we can implement integrated security while remaining flexible in expansion,” says Tokunaga.
Looking ahead, the company is also considering the use of generative AI. “If we adopt generative AI tools like ChatGPT, the safe handling of training data will become a new challenge. Knowing that Netskope can support those security needs as well gives us peace of mind,” says Tokunaga.
“Netskope is not only a great product, but their strong support system is also a major advantage. I hope we can continue working closely together—even through the gritty process of rule-building—when we implement future systems,” Tokunaga concludes.
TEPCO EP’s initiative to enhance CX while balancing convenience and security will continue into the future.