Client Success Story: Affinity Water
- Affinity Water needed a secure and reliable recurring payment solution across multiple payment channels
- Key IVR implemented Click to Pay and recurring payments
- Key IVR was awarded the contract to become Affinity Water’s exclusive secure payment provider
- PCI-DSS Level 1 security, supported by SFTP integration, tokenisation and processing via Cardstream
About Affinity Water
Affinity Water is the largest water-only supplier in the United Kingdom, serving over 3.8 million people across the South East of England. Committed to delivering high-quality drinking water, the company manages an extensive network of infrastructure to ensure a safe, reliable supply to homes and businesses.
With a strong focus on sustainability, innovation, and customer service, Affinity Water plays a vital role in supporting both everyday living and large-scale development projects, including new housing and commercial sites. Their customer-centric approach drives their ongoing investment in technology and digital services to enhance the overall experience for those they serve.
The requirement
Affinity Water is the largest water-only supplier in the United Kingdom, serving over 3.8 million people across the South East of England. Committed to delivering high-quality drinking water, the company manages an extensive network of infrastructure to ensure a safe, reliable supply to homes and businesses.
With a strong focus on sustainability, innovation, and customer service, Affinity Water plays a vital role in supporting both everyday living and large-scale development projects, including new housing and commercial sites. Their customer-centric approach drives their ongoing investment in technology and digital services to enhance the overall experience for those they serve.
The solution
Key IVR’s initially focused on addressing the main requirements from Affinity Water and implemented a recurring payment setup to support their customer base with flexible bill payments. After successfully applying this feature, they expanded their services by adopting Click to Pay, a pay by link tool that enabled their Credit Control team to collect outstanding debts more effectively.
An opportunity to expand the range of services offered to the group emerged when Affinity Water issued a tender for a comprehensive omnichannel payment solution. The solution being key to delivering a frictionless and improved customer experience. Recognising the strength of Key IVR’s offerings, the company was awarded the contract and became Affinity Water’s exclusive secure payment provider.
All services provide the secure capture of debit and credit details and processing payments in a PCI-DSS Level 1 manner, the highest available. This drastically reduces the risk of organisations handling customer’s sensitive payment data.
In August 2022, as part of a major relaunch, the Developer Experience team at Affinity Water saw potential in using a similar solution. This department oversees new build sites and the installation of water infrastructure. They opted for IVR, Web Payments and Agent Assisted Payment services tailored to their division, creating a unified, secure payment journey across the wider business.
With SFTP integration and tokenisation features in place, Affinity Water’s payment systems are not only user-friendly but also reliable and efficient. Additionally, payments are processed via Cardstream, the chosen gateway provider through Key IVR with a long standing and successful partnership.
“Key IVR have worked with a lot of different teams across Affinity Water and have built a really strong relationship over the years.
We’ve supported them with ongoing training and regular updates to ensure everyone is confident using the solutions. By visiting their site and working directly with call centre agents, we’ve made sure they were comfortable with how it works with customers on the phone.
During the rollout, we worked closely with Ben Graham, Change Delivery Partner and James Tipler, Head of Cash Collection and Debt Management at Affinity Water, and the wider team. Customer surveys really helped us fine-tune the 24/7 payment IVR to meet end-user needs, and thanks to that extra due diligence, the IVR now achieves a 96% payment success rate.”
Sophie Chan
Head of Revenue & Relationships
Key IVR
The outcome
With payment channels now embedded across several departments, and high success rates for customer transactions, Key IVR remains a trusted and valued partner for Affinity Water.
The journey from a single service to full scale implementation reflects the power of collaboration, innovation and ongoing support, ensuring PCI-DSS Level 1 secure and convenient payments for both customers and internal teams.
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