With Cadent responsible for managing more than 1.1 million calls a year that come into the National Gas Emergency Service, it’s vital it has connectivity it can rely on – which is where Vodafone comes in.
Approximately 23 million UK homes rely on a gas boiler to heat their homes. For 11 million of these across the North West, West Midlands, East Midlands, East of England and North London, that gas is delivered by Cadent.
As one of the nation’s four main gas distribution networks, Cadent helps manage the motorway-like network of gas pipes that lie beneath our feet. In turn, allowing households and businesses to receive a safe, reliable flow of gas when – and where – they need it.
Cadent is also responsible for the National Gas Emergency Service, meaning it takes all calls coming into the service to report gas leaks, suspected carbon monoxide or damage to pipelines.
Given the potentially serious nature of these calls, the process is critical, with operators having a targeted window of 30 seconds to answer each call, and between 1-2 hours to have an engineer arrive on site.
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How Vodafone will help Cadent manage customer calls
As the existing provider of core connectivity and business operational technology outside of its contact centre, the relationship between Vodafone and Cadent isn’t a new one, dating back to 2016.
However, the partnership has recently expanded and, as of March 2026, Vodafone provides the contact centre solution used for the smell gas service, while helping to optimise the centre to keep up with increasing demands.
As a result, Vodafone: carries the call into Cadent; provides the platform that it takes the calls on; and delivers the call solution to Cadent to then make return calls back out – whether that’s to another gas network or to the customer themselves.
From working anywhere to real-time transcription
To provide this full contact centre service, Vodafone is working with long-standing partner, and leading cloud communications provider, Content Guru.
Together, Vodafone and Content Guru provide businesses with Vodafone storm® – a cloud-based contact centre solution that helps tie all aspects of digital customer service together.
By bringing every contact channel into the single interface, Vodafone storm® connects colleagues and their devices with the systems they rely on, allowing agents to adapt customer journeys in real time.
Plus, when the contact centre solution goes live, it will also introduce Cadent to AI features such as real-time transcription and summarisation (RTAS).
An increasingly common feature in the customer service field, RTAS is an in-built tool that transcribes a live call for the agent, summarising the conversation and even providing prompts for the agents to use during the interaction.
Not only does this allow the agent to listen more attentively at the time, reducing the likelihood of critical information being missed, but it also frees them up from the admin that would traditionally take place after a call.
All of which means customer queries can be serviced more quickly – something that, in Cadent’s world, takes on even greater significance given the urgency of some of the calls it receives.
Find out what to do if you smell gas on the Cadent website, and stay up to date with the latest news from VodafoneThree by following us on LinkedIn and Instagram.
