OpenContact transformed customer contact operations for Canal & River Trust, the UK’s largest waterways charity managing over 2,000 miles of canals serving 12 million annual visitors. We implemented comprehensive multichannel support including phone, email, live chat, and social media, alongside “Lockie” – an AI-powered chatbot handling thousands of monthly enquiries. Through intelligent IVR systems, streamlined processes, and improved first-contact resolution, we reduced cost per contact by one-third and email handling costs by 30%, whilst increasing boat licence revenue and maintaining costs below budget.
The Canal & River Trust sought to deliver a high-quality, customer-focused support service for all of its users and stakeholders while reducing ongoing costs and improving efficiency to meet its budget. The Trust aimed to overhaul its contact operations by adding digital channels and streamlining processes, achieving higher first-contact resolution and fewer hand-offs to regional teams.
Canal & River Trust needed a new outsource partner to transform its customer contact service. The Trust wanted to handle all inbound enquiries more efficiently and add digital channels (like live chat and social media) while maintaining a highly customer-centric approach.
Key goals were to improve first-contact resolution, cut unnecessary work (such as duplicate handling of inquiries), and reduce escalations to busy regional teams – all to help bring down the overall cost of serving the public.
OpenContact was selected through a competitive tender. Early on, OpenContact conducted a thorough discovery of the Trust’s existing processes and data, advising on how to extract and analyse information from the incumbent provider. This led to recommendations for a holistic service overhaul. After winning the contract, OpenContact implemented all agreed services, including:
Each of these components was implemented with collaboration between Canal & River Trust and OpenContact. The overall aim was to treat the contact centre as an extension of the charity’s service teams, fully empowering the outsourcer to deliver most solutions without needing the Trust’s staff to intervene.
In the first three years of the partnership (and continuing thereafter), OpenContact achieved the Trust’s objectives and more. Key outcomes included:
These results not only met the Trust’s original goals of quality and efficiency but also freed the Trust’s internal staff to focus on core waterway maintenance and community work.
By partnering with OpenContact, Canal & River Trust has a modern, data-driven contact centre that serves its thousands of boaters, visitors and volunteers more effectively, contributing to the charity’s mission of keeping Britain’s historic waterways alive.
The transformation has delivered real value for our users, our teams, and our budget. We now have the platform, insight, and agility we need to grow.
Canal & River Trust
Senior Leader
