Enterprise digital transformation consultancy and IT services firm ECS has helped South East Water (SEW) achieve business continuity for its 2.2 million customers during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The three-week engagement included the deployment of a remote outbound contact centre for agents working from home in just two weeks using Amazon Connect.
Like many customer-facing organisations, SEW was experiencing increasing volumes of customer queries just as social distancing rules required contact centre agents to work remotely. Because Amazon Web Services recommends ECS as the premier service delivery partner for Amazon Connect contact centre solutions, SEW appointed ECS to quickly develop a minimum viable product based on Connect, returning the organisation to full performance.
As well as setting up the new remote outbound contact centre to run with minimal OPEX costs and IT resources, ECS augmented SEW’s existing contact centre systems to make it easier for agents working remotely to deliver an enhanced customer experience for inbound calls. This immediately reduced queue waiting times by allowing customers to opt for a prompt call back from an agent instead.
ECS delivered an entirely scalable, consumption-based cloud solution that gives SEW’s agents the tools they need to work remotely, and gives SEW’s customers a way to get the help they need when they need it. Following the launch, ECS continued to enhance the solution to ensure a solid platform to build on in the future.
Mary Sabalis, Head of Business Systems at South East Water, commented, “One of the biggest challenges was finding a solution that enabled us to support our customers as well as we do under normal circumstances while ensuring our agents could operate productively from home. ECS understood our urgency and quickly delivered a tailored solution that has achieved business continuity and provided a better experience for our customers. We’ve been so impressed with ECS. We look forward to working with them again as we consider more AWS Connect capabilities including AI, ML and real-time analytics.”
“SEW encountered operational challenges at the start of the COVID-19 lockdown that meant that its IT team was busy resolving a variety of high-priority challenges. We worked alongside them from the outset, albeit virtually, and adopted a shared-risk approach to prevent delays in delivery. This flexibility and trust resulted in a good working relationship and the adoption of agile ways of working to streamline the project. The result was that we were able to set up a contact centre in just two weeks and also train SEW’s team on using AWS tools,” said Mark Farrington, Group CEO, ECS.
Amazon Connect is a self-service, cloud-based contact centre service that makes it easy for any business to deliver better customer service at lower cost. It is based on the same contact centre technology used by Amazon customer service associates to power millions of customer conversations.
When deploying Amazon Connect, ECS provides the tools and processes to integrate AI, ML and automation into contact workflows. The firm then helps clients extract and analyse data or business insight. Each step is accelerated using ECS Pod methodology agile delivery, ensuring a fast, sustainable and secure transformation.
About SEW
With over 2.2 million consumers across the South East of England, South East Water (SEW) supplies on average 521 million litres of drinking water from its 83 water treatment works every day. Motivated by its mission statement of being the water company people want to be supplied by and want to work for, SEW prides itself on pulling out all the stops to make sure it continues to supply their customers with the highest quality of water and delivery of service, even during times of uncertainty.
About ECS
ECS is a digital transformation consultancy best known for empowering clients across all industries to transform using IT. Founded in 2008, we are devoted to enabling enterprises to change the way they change. We do this by adopting agile and DevOps techniques, and using our expertise in digital engineering, data analytics and customer experience – powered by Amazon Connect. The results include the rapid upskilling of teams, accelerated release cycles driving more meaningful customer experience and innovation. ECS has offices in London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Singapore, Manchester and Pune.
