In the hyper-competitive world of washing cars, cleaning up the technology is the road to success.

As a nationally-recognized industry leader, Waterway Carwash offers a wide range of services to exceed the customer’s expectations of a typical car wash experience. Through the careful consideration of the people they hire, the constant refinement of car wash technology, and the precise detail within each new building’s architecture, Waterway displays a relentless pursuit of customer service excellence.

The challenge

Waterway started with a difficult-to-use, fragile, and single-user Access database. This outdated technology became a hinderance for Waterway’s internal support and customer service teams. Customer service representatives at storefronts required modern technology to streamline reporting and customer follow up, while support teams needed multi-user system access. Waterway needed to migrate its customer management system to the cloud without pausing operations.

The plan

To begin, Technology Partners would guide Waterway through a discovery process to identify long-term business needs and the improvements that could yield the most impact.

In an era when modern web applications have become crucial to an organization’s flexibility and consistency in delivering quality end-user experiences, Technology Partners would first modernize Waterway’s legacy applications used by their customer service team. This would allow for consistent, ongoing use by anyone brought to the team. “The new programs Stephen built for us utilized many best practices,” said Mike Pusatera, IT Consultant, Waterway.

The next step was to streamline customer issue processing and integrate it into the now modernized applications. This would require replacing the old access system with a properly authenticated, cloud-based web API backend and React single-page application (SPA) front-end build. Waterway’s chemical program and damage reporting would be transformed in the process. Their single-use reporting system would then be extended so data could be shared more easily. This would also eliminate delays and occasional manual errors when servicing customers.

Finally, the Technology Partners team would improve Waterway’s customer relationship front end. The team would build new secure and capable applications built within the cloud environment that would leverage the improved database, allowing multiple users to access it at once–even from their homes. This would eventually prove to be crucial during the Coronavirus pandemic. “It’s easy to use, simple for people to understand and allows them to do their jobs more effectively,” said Pusatera.

The results

Years later, Waterway continues to provide a variety of car wash services with high-quality customer service. Store management, customer service and support teams use the modernized systems nearly every day. The Technology Partners team partnered closely with Waterway each step of the way to ensure the foundations built could be extended. The professional quality of coding by the Technology Partners team has allowed others to maintain, extend the system, and consider how to broaden usability.

Not only can customer service team members be onboarded to the improved systems immediately, but also, the team’s issue resolution time has decreased from two weeks to a couple days. As the Coronavirus pandemic disrupted their standard way of doing business, the web-accessible systems allowed for a flexible working environment for Waterway’s support teams. The modern REACT front-end has also led to internal users’ increased confidence in their systems. Feeling better-equipped has enabled Waterway teams to support customers even better than before.