Replacing the phone systemWe replace the phone system. Never the system of record.
Those are two different systems, and utilities are right to treat them differently. Your CIS and billing platform hold the answers and stay exactly where they are — we integrate with them and write back to them. The IVR in front of them is a menu your customers resent and your team maintains, and it is the part worth retiring.
Option one
Put Grace in front of it
Your existing platform stays exactly as it is. Grace takes the calls she can finish end to end, and anything she should not handle passes through to the system you have today. Nothing is decommissioned, and you find out what she can carry using your own call mix rather than a projection.
Option two
Replace it outright
Grace takes the line. There is no menu to maintain, no routing tree to keep in step with reorganisations, and no licence renewal on a platform built before any of this was possible. Calls that need a person still reach one, with the whole conversation attached.
Most utilities start at the first and end at the second. Deciding up front is not required, and starting with the safer option costs you nothing later.