Northern Ireland Water (NI Water) has awarded a new long-term contract to specialist customer service and billing software provider Echo Managed Services to deliver contact management, billing, and collection management services.
The contract, which follows a competitive re-tender process, will see Echo continue to provide the water company with contact management services for up to 10 years – an initial 7 year term with a further 3 year extension option.
Echo has worked with NI Water for the last 17 years and will be delivering a Two-part solution including both service and software with the implementation of its innovative CRM and billing software, Aptumo.
Echo said the introduction of Aptumo will transform NI Water's customer experience through comprehensive data, omni-channel capabilities, and a 360º customer view. Implementation of the new platform will begin over the next 12 months. The state-of-the-art technology is already used by water companies in both England and Australia.
Native to the Salesforce platform, the Aptumo CRM and billing solution will provide sector leading security and resilience - and will allow customer engagement to be delivered by the Echo and NIW teams from any location or device. The highly configurable Aptumo solution enables change to be delivered in-house by the customer service teams which can significantly reduce the ongoing cost to own.
The solution will give the contact centre team a holistic 360º view of customer interactions, enables greater automation within workflows, and recommends ‘next best actions’ driven by Salesforce-powered AI, Einstein.
They will also have access to a personalised dashboard which displays a workload overview, items due a response, and upcoming events, all to help them better serve NIW’s customers.
The omni-channel customer entry capability gives customers a choice in how they want to contact the water supplier, along with the freedom to move between channels and the confidence that a full communication history will always be available.
Stephanie McCullagh, director of customer & operations at Northern Ireland Water commented:
“We are excited to be working in partnership with Echo to realise a step change in NI Water’s future customer service delivery. This is an extraordinary opportunity for us all to help shape our new solution and work together to deliver a world class service for our customers.”
Monica Mackintosh, managing director at Echo Managed Services, added:
“Echo has a long-standing and collaborative relationship with Northern Ireland Water, so we’re delighted to be the chosen partner for the new contract and to have the opportunity to continue working together. We’re looking forward to the months ahead as we start out on this new journey to implement Aptumo and further transform service for Northern Ireland Water’s customers.”
Over the next 12 months, NIW will be working in close collaboration with Echo, process owners and key stakeholders to help deliver the new platform by Q3 2024.
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