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Anglian Water cuts customer call times with IT upgrade

Anglian Water has cut the time it spends dealing with customer calls after overhauling its call centre IT system.

A review of the system, implemented in November last year, has shown the new program used by call centre agents to bring up customer information has cut call times by 78 seconds.

The time it takes agents to complete the forms within the system has also fallen from two and a half minutes to 30 seconds.

The old program had 20 screens and boxes that required completing, but the new 1Customer system, developed with Capgemini, keeps the important customer infomation in one box on the screen for the call centre agents.

The system was developed despite what Anglian Water customer service director Martyn Oakley called “inherent risks” of upgrading the system.

However, he added that because the billing system was not being changed and the new system was able to dove-tail with the one it was replacing, their ability to deliver bills “remained rock solid”.

Training time for call centre staff also dropped as a result of the system, falling from an average of two weeks down to two and a half days.

Anglian Water is now looking to expand the use of this back office system into other areas of the business, such as supporting field engineers who are working with customers.