Industry Sector

Leisure · Charity · Waterways services 

Client Objectives

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. 

About Canal & River Trust

Canal & River Trust is the UK’s largest waterways charity, responsible for managing over 2,000 miles of canals and rivers across England and Wales. This extensive network includes some 71 large reservoirs, as well as locks, bridges, aqueducts and thousands of other structures (over 10,000 individual assets in total) – many of them historic – that require constant maintenance. The Trust took over these assets from the public body British Waterways in 2012, with a mission to protect and enhance this living heritage for future generations. 

The Trust’s network provides green-blue corridors and public spaces used by millions of people each year. Its canals and towpaths attract over 12 million visits annually from recreational boaters, walkers, cyclists and local communities. In 2025 the Trust’s annual National Boat Count recorded 33,080 boats on its enforceable waterways. These include privately owned cruisers (with or without home moorings) and continuously cruising boats, all licensed and supported by the Trust. 

The charity’s volunteer programme is also large in scale: in 2023/24, 22,729 volunteers (including 5,755 young people) donated more than 19,000 hours of service to the Trust. These volunteers help “adopt” stretches of canal, plant trees and manage habitats, remove litter, and support events and education. The Trust’s estate of land and property is extensive as well – valued at over £500 million, it is a major landowner with a unique portfolio of canalside properties used for regeneration projects and income generation. 

Together, these figures illustrate the scale of  the Trust’s operations and the many people it serves – from boating customers and everyday towpath users to local residents, visitors and communities all across England and Wales. 

The Challenge

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.

The Solution

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: 

• Multichannel contact handling: OpenContact now manages inbound customer interactions for every C&RT department (frontline support) via phone, email, live chat and social media. The agents perform actions such as processing boat licence applications and renewals (with payment), booking moorings and passage through staffed lock sections, and routing queries and urgent issues to the correct regional or specialist teams. They also accept donations from supporters and direct would-be volunteers or contractors to the right contacts. 

• Implementation of “Lockie” the Live Chat Bot: OpenContact designed, implemented, and continues to maintain Lockie, the Trust’s AI-powered live chat bot. Integrated across key digital channels, Lockie handles thousands of enquiries each month—offering instant answers to common questions, easing pressure on human agents, and improving response times across the board. The bot’s performance is regularly reviewed and updated by OpenContact to ensure it reflects current policies, service information, and user needs. 

• IVR and telephony: A complex, dynamic Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system was designed and implemented to ensure callers are routed efficiently. This intelligent IVR reduced call transfers and guides callers through self-service options where appropriate. 

• Ticketing and CRM systems: A new ticketing system was deployed to log, track and respond to all customer queries systematically. OpenContact also provided consultancy and project management to implement a Trust-wide CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, replacing a fragmented setup and enabling better service and reporting. 

• Survey and feedback tools: An SMS-based Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) survey system was set up to collect feedback from users after interactions. This allowed the Trust to monitor service quality and make continuous improvements. 

• Reporting and analytics: Detailed reports are generated daily, weekly and monthly (and on-demand). These include call/email/chat volumes, breakdowns of enquiry types, regional breakdowns and cost analysis. Management reports highlight trends and help the Trust forecast workload and budget. 

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. 

The Result

In the first three years of the partnership (and continuing thereafter), OpenContact achieved the Trust’s objectives and more. Key outcomes included: 

• Lower cost per contact: Through efficiency improvements and reduced hand-offs, the cost of each customer interaction dropped by one-third. 

• Reduced email handling: By cutting duplicate and unnecessary email escalations, handling costs fell by 30%. 

• Higher licence uptake: Improvements in customer service led to increased boat licence conversions and thus higher licence revenue for the Trust. 

• Technology savings: The intelligent IVR and survey systems brought significant operational savings, while also improving customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) for enquiries.  Implementation of AI-powered live chat bot reduced initial contacts and related costs.  

• Budget control: Despite handling all inbound traffic and additional channels, OpenContact consistently kept contact centre costs below the Trust’s planned budgets. 

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. 

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