Folkestone and Dover Water Services Ltd (FDWS) is owned by Veolia Water UK, part of the French company, Veolia Environnement, a world leader in environmental services.
FDWS supplies approximately 50 million litres of water each day to 160,000 people and 74,000 properties throughout the Folkestone and Dover area. It is a water only supplier, totally reliant on underground reservoirs and operates in an area recognised as one of the driest in the country.
With offices based in Folkestone, FDWS employs over 90 employees and
is considered by OfWat (Office of Water Services) as a consistently high performer in the water industry. The company provides a high level of customer service and consistently looks at improving customer satisfaction.
When an aging printer needed replacing, Simon Harre-Young, business systems analyst at FDWS, recognised an opportunity to improve customer service by increasing the company’s scanning capabilities.
The purchase of a Xerox Workcentre 4150 with scanning capability, would allow FDWS to consider piloting an electronic document management system (EDMS) within its customer services department. The Xerox Workcentre 4150 would also complement the two existing Xerox devices already in use at FDWS.
The benefits of the purchase and subsequent increased use of scanning documents would:
- increase the availability of scanning facilities across the business
- increase the availability of customer data to staff electronically
- reduce the dependency on paper records
- reduce the amount of photocopying, paper storage and paper usage.
Scanned correspondence from customers can be stored electronically and linked to customer contact, billing and work management systems allowing staff to retrieve all customer details easily at any time.
Not only will this improve customer satisfaction by having the facility to manage enquiries more efficiently, but also it will remove the need for substantial office storage space and the cost of annual archiving.
“When looking for a reliable supplier of a replacement device, First Choice Business Systems was the obvious choice, “ says Simon Harre-Young, “First Choice has been an approved supplier with FDWS for several years.
“In all the years we have been working with First Choice we have found their service exceptional and highly dependable,” says Simon, “they listen to our needs, deliver on time and always keep in touch to ensure the best customer service.
“Should the EDMS pilot prove successful, we would like to extend the system to other departments and processes, in particular finance, regulatory and company-wide correspondence,” claims Simon.
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