Dynamics 365 delivers an intelligence-led, predictive approach to service and operations for Wessex Water

“The holy grail at the end of all of this is connecting everything up,” says Ian Williams, Group CIO at Wessex Water. 

Wessex Water supplies water to over 2.8 million customers across the south west of England, focusing on the environment, sustainability and the local community. It holds the top spot for customer service of all the water and sewerage companies in C-MeX, Ofwat’s measure of customer experience. 

“We’re very proud of the position we have and have sustained over the years and we’re looking to maintain it. And that requires an evolution,” states Donald Sherratt, CRM/Dynamics Competency Centre Manager at Wessex Water.

A desire to continually improve customer experience

“The software and technologies that we use have to enable the delivery of excellent customer service,” explains Ian Williams. 

However, the incumbent CRM system was aging, slow and difficult to use. It didn’t give a joined-up view of the customer or the operational realities that might affect the customer’s use of the service. The business began looking for a better system that could replace the tired, legacy solution.

“What really attracted us to Microsoft Dynamics 365 particularly was the capabilities that were built into it and the desire of Microsoft to continue to develop the product,” states Ian Williams. As a result, the water company chose to switch to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service, including Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service Insights with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service Professional.

Benefiting from a single view of the customer

Alex Griffiths, Regional Scheduling Manager at Wessex Water confirms, “On our Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service package, we’re able to capture the whole history of the customer.”

“It’s just making the Finance staff’s job a lot easier because it’s all there,” agrees Hannah Wheeldon, a customer care advisor at Wessex Water and user of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 system. “We can provide clear information to the customer straight away.”

The improved view of the customer and the ease of use are helping the Wessex Water team to enhance the service it delivers to customers. “One of the key features we like is our event management tool which means that effectively we can text customers on a large scale,” explains Alex Griffiths.

Donald Sherratt adds, “And it does offer that single platform on which you can evolve your business and start to bring some of your functions together. And also that out-of-the-box capability to configure not code.”

Wessex Water is number one for customer service

With any large-scale technology replacement project, you might expect there to be some disruption to operations. However, the work of the Wessex Water team has ensured that this wasn’t the case here.

“We’ve managed to maintain our leading position,” Donald Sherratt reports. “We’ve also seen some very positive results… the effect of implementing functionality like event management is fewer customer complaints, reduced volume of calls into our call centre and, also, for our customers, it gives them reassurance.”

By enabling the more integrated operations that are resulting from the team’s choice and implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365, the Wessex Water team are transforming the way the business works. It’s the first step towards creating a data and intelligence-led organisation. 

Ian Williams concludes, “we can get to a predictive world where analytics can predict where something is going to go wrong.” In this way, Wessex Water will have the information necessary to take an even more proactive approach to both maintenance and customer service.