Thames Water Selects Unify to Meet the Growing Needs of the Connected Consumer

MILTON KEYNES, England, June 19, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Unify today announced it has been selected by the UK's largest water and wastewater services provider, Thames Water, to support its corporate focus on improving customer satisfaction, meeting regulatory compliance and increasing operational efficiency to all 15 million customers.

Thames Water's corporate objectives will be delivered through the flexibility, scalability and resilience of OpenScape Contact Center, OpenScape Voice and Unify's Managed Service as Thames Water strives to meet its regulatory performance targets to become one of the top five companies based on aggregated industry achievement. 

Unify's OpenScape Contact Center and the underlying OpenScape Voice technology enables Thames Water to take greater control of the day-to-day operation, administration and configuration of the contact centre. This is achieved through improved visibility of operations with a real-time dashboard and a comprehensive reporting suite. The platform allows Thames Water to have greater reliability and flexibility in order to quickly configure and deploy new business units to meet consumer expectations effectively, as well as the ability to modify call routing and allocate resources to demands as and when needed. 

In addition, Thames Water will be supported by Unify's Managed Services including both hardware and software support, comprehensive training and remote monitoring. A software assurance package is also included which guarantees that Thames Water is constantly up to date with the latest software enhancements. Unify will also be working closely with Thames Water to ensure a smooth transition on launch day with training and incentive activities for all agents across their three locations.

Thames Water can now widen its service delivery and both "in" and "out of hours" contact to further increase satisfaction and meet increasing "always available" consumer expectations. These changes have been made to reflect the changing nature of how customers choose to interact with their utility provider. Both agents and customers will benefit from enhanced features in the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) platform that enables sophisticated call routing and self-service options to speed up response times. Clear and instant access to data will equip agents to handle calls in the most efficient and effective way possible. This will increase first call resolution and improve the overall customer experience.

Functionality such as Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), postcode recognition and Text to Speech, to identify callers and play incident messages where appropriate, will provide convenient services to customers and reduce operating costs. For instance, Thames Water can pre-empt an influx of calls due to a specific burst water pipe through "In-Queue" messaging, where customers can receive status updates without needing to speak directly to an agent, while also offering call-backs as an alternative to queuing. 

Andy Clark, Head of IS Services, Thames Water, comments: "Our customers and the experience they have with us is one of our top priorities. To achieve the highest standards and to meet the changing demands of increasingly tech savvy consumers, we need guaranteed performance and scalability from our supporting infrastructure. Having access to real-time monitoring and historical reporting ensures that agents are working effectively and efficiently to meet customer expectations."

Trevor Connell, ‎General Manager, West/East Region, Unify, adds: "We are proud to support Thames Water as it strives to provide the best service possible to both customers and employees.  Consumers are now more than ever about choice and by investing in a technology and service roadmap, Thames Water will be able to offer a point of differentiation in the highly competitive Utility market. With OpenScape Contact Center, based on IPT softswitch technology, agents are better equipped to react and respond to customer demands. Our technology is modular and scalable in design, giving Thames Water the opportunity to expand and develop the platform as and when needed. It incorporates the potential for greater integration with social media and the desktop, giving the organisation's employees new flexible ways of working."

¹SIM is designed to improve the level of service that water companies provide based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative measures to enhance customer service.

About Unify

Unify is one of the world's leading communications software and services firms, providing integrated communications solutions for approximately 75 percent of the Fortune Global 500. Our solutions unify multiple networks, devices and applications into one easy-to-use platform that allows teams to engage in rich and meaningful conversations. The result is a transformation of how the enterprise communicates and collaborates that amplifies collective effort, energizes the business, and enhances business performance. Unify has a strong heritage of product reliability, innovation, open standards and security.

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