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Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia began implementing a project to construct the world’s largest reservoir for drinking water, called the Jeddah Water Storage Project. For a country with no rivers or lakes, and derives approximately 50 percent of its water through desalination via the Persian Gulf, the news made quite a splash.

In the wake of this story comes yet another momentous plot development by the country’s National Water Company (NWC), and it could help keep customer interactions flowing smoothly as infrastructure shifts are executed. The NWC chose Vocalcom MEA as its principal contact center software provider last week.

"We are privileged to be chosen to support NWC's Customer Experience and Contact Center requirements. We are eager to participate in governments' strategies across the globe to enhance the e-citizen's quality of life. This action is in line with Vocalcom's roadmap to enable smart cities," said Ali Kassab, EVP of Corporate Growth and COO of Vocalcom MEA.

So what exactly does this all mean?

In a nutshell, Vocalcom is implanting a complete overhaul of the customer service experience — internal and external — for anyone using services provided by the state, so basically everyone in the country. Included in this national-scale renovation is the integration of HP OpenView technology in contact center solutions. For those who don’t know, HP OpenView is a suite of business computer management programs that was rebranded as HP BTO (Business Technology Optimization) for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), and is intended to optimize digital service infrastructures.

The new initiative anticipates improved employee productivity across customer-service channels, while also consolidating the strata of customer interaction touch points for reliable management of service delivery.

Looking forward, Saudi Arabia’s collaboration with Vocalcom may also be a step toward “smart cities” as referenced by Kassab, which is a neologism for a digitally streamlined municipal infrastructure. The push for smart cities could precipitate industry growth for companies such as Vocalcom that deliver smart services , some of which have already been implemented in urban infrastructures in parts of the United States and Europe.

It would be a bit preemptive of us to call Vocalcom’s new — shall we say, client relationship — a tidal wave in the ever-growing pool  of smart digital infrastructure, but this billow has volume, and it will be interesting to see what happens when it comes to a crest.