Mergers are always a time of huge upheaval, but as utility firms South East Water (SEW) and Mid Kent Water proved, moments of turmoil can provide the impetus to commit to sweeping changes in methods.

When the companies merged last year, they saw an opportunity to drive efficiencies and improve customer services through a converged communications strategy. These twin improvements are critical to the success of the new company – ­ the merger was approved by the regulators on the condition that SEW, now the UK’s second largest water-only company, let efficiency gains trickle down to its 2.1 million customers in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire.

By consolidating all voice and data traffic onto the next-generation digital network provided by ntl:Telewest Business and by moving to a new IP infrastructure which uses Cisco technology for its call centre platform, savings are racking up. Simultaneously, call-centre agents and field staff have greater access to critical information.

Mary Sabalis, head of business systems for SEW, says that aside from satisfying Ofwat, the water services regulatory authority, its strategy will safeguard business in the future.

“We have removed the technical barriers to providing excellent customer service. We are also starting to see the beginnings of competition, with talks about other companies being able to sell water on our behalf,” she says.

“If we provide poor service, customers are more likely to sign up to someone else, which encourages us to achieve the maximum potential of the new system to improve customer service.”

The Internet Protocol Virtual Private Network (IPVPN) ­ – which covers eight principal sites and 55 water stations – ­ provides a secure, flexible and managed infrastructure for carrying voice, video and data traffic, providing higher bandwidth for information sharing between employees.

Sabalis, who came from Mid Kent Water, says that planning has been crucial to success. “Before I left, all the building blocks were in place for voice over IP (VoIP) and wireless, with a pilot in one site and all telemetry sites on the IPVPN. There was a big planning exercise, where the network needed to take us in the future and all the groundwork was laid for IP telephony as both legacy systems for voice needed to be replaced,” she says.

The pilot for IP telephony was carried out in the Snodland and Haywards Heath sites, before being rolled out across the group.

Sabalis says there will be significant savings on inter-company phone calls as previously calls between Snodland and Haywards Heath – ­ the headquarters of the water companies established pre-merger – ­ relied on external numbers.

She says further savings will be made when videoconferencing takes off in the next couple of months between the three major sites at Snodland, Haywards Heath and Frimley.

“We have departments located at separate sites. It was good to meet people face to face when we merged, but now we have got to know each other properly, videoconferencing will help cut down on travel. Voice conferencing is great, but if a meeting necessitates showing documents then videoconferencing is the answer,” says Sabalis.

For videoconferencing to work, Sabalis says that preparation is vital. “You have to site it properly by ensuring good acoustics and lighting, which should take about 10 days per site,” she says. One of the biggest effects of the new network is on call centre operations. During the merger process, a decision was taken to insource the call centre to comply with SEW’s identity as a community-based company.

“We had insourced the contact centre at Mid Kent Water to provide a better service, as water companies rely on having local knowledge. South East Water had an outsourced contact centre in Bristol, but we expanded the team on the Mid Kent side and are fully insourced,” says Sabalis.

Having an IP contact centre means that extra agents can be added to meet spikes in demand. “As a water company, you are doing a good job if a customer never calls you with a problem, but obviously we do get calls about billing and leaks and Ofwat regulates the call abandonment rate. “The IP contact centre means that we can staff up seamlessly,” says Sabalis.