For its contact centres, the company bought a CRM system from Parchment, one of the biggest vendors in the sector.
One reason for the choice was that the same supplier had already been used for Northlands, back office systems. In addition, Parchment was able to provide the software much sooner than most of the other potential suppliers. One result is that the call centre staff can answer enquiries faster and more effectively, so there are now far fewer repeat calls. This has of course been welcomed by the company and customers alike. Water companies like Northlands have a large network of pipes, and the public needs access to water day and night. This means there has to be a large and complex field operation, and in this area, too, the CRM system has produced great savings, in both time and money. For example, instead of coming into the office to be given work, and information about customers, the engineers are connected to the system via laptop computers,