When IAG New Zealand (IAG NZ) acquired NZI in 2002, two large and complex businesses had to be integrated into one cohesive entity.

This necessitated end-to-end replacement of the company’s telecommunications platform and required the building of a brand new purpose-built infrastructure and service delivery model from the ground up.

IAG NZ needed a fully managed service based on a converged voice, data and video capable network, as well as a full refresh of the application platforms supporting their 900-plus call centre agents and 50 sites nationwide. Avaya Multivantage was chosen to deliver a highly featured seamless voice solution, provided by TelstraClear, to IAG NZ’s Enterprise network.

Since implementing the solution the company has reduced annual costs, increased service levels, and enhanced customer experience.

The challenge
The merger between IAG NZ and NZI signalled the need for the company to upgrade its telecommunications platform to enhance customer experience, grow the business in a sustainable manner, and cater for the ever-changing demands of the business, the environment and customers.

“Telecommunications in IAG NZ is focused on connecting the customer whenever and however they choose, with the right IAG resource, with the right skills and the right information to cost effectively exceed the customer’s expectations,” said Catherine Rusby, IAG NZ's chief information officer.

IAG NZ transacts 85 per cent of sales and service and claims business through the NZI and State brands over the telephone. The company deploys eight separate call centres across six locations in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch, with 900 call centre agents and over 1,800 staff nationwide.

With an increasing company-wide drive to slowly channel customer contact towards the 0800 numbers, it was imperative for IAG NZ to facilitate this growth in call volumes and the resulting impact on the network. In a market where there is increasing fragmentation of insurance options available to the consumer, IAG NZ needed the ability to provide the most efficient and customer focused telecommunications solution possible.

The need for an upgraded telecommunications platform was therefore an essential and critical business application for IAG NZ. The project was called ‘Project Converge’. iSolutions managed the project, with implementation and voice solutions design provided by Avaya business partner Agile.

Complete upgrade
IAG NZ’s call centres were operated on an aging Meridian Symposium platform with most sites operating stand-alone. The platform had become problematical in terms of functional capability, particularly in the area of management reporting and support. Real-time performance management, in particular, was not well supported.

The 300-seat Auckland sales and service call centre employed an overflow queue to nominated sales sites in the nationwide network. However, limitations in the functionality of the platform meant that call centre management immediately lost all visibility of customer calls overflowing from the call centre.

“Empirical analysis prior to the inception of Project Converge revealed a high level of call abandonment from this overflow queue and difficulty within the call centre to achieve the targeted service level of at least 80/20,” said Brenton Hall, IAG NZ's national sales support manager.

IAG NZ researched the implications and opportunities of converged networking for its heavily call-centric channel model. IAG NZ required a seamless telecommunications solution that enabled integration of all business units belonging to IAG NZ, including NZI. A level of service supporting the telecommunications solution was also required that ensured end user and business process requirements could be delivered effectively as part of a seamlessly managed IT&T infrastructure.

The Avaya solution
Avaya MultiVantage, with contact centre management and reporting provided by Avaya Enterprise Class IP Solutions (ECLIPS), and Avaya IP softphones, delivered a single highly featured seamless contact centre solution to the IAG Enterprise network, including remote and mobile agents.

As a general insurer, IAG NZ’s business must be continuously responsive to specific events that give rise to personal loss. This requires flexibility in the operating model – the ability to swing into action when the floodwaters start to rise.

The Avaya contact centre provides the flexibility required to create a ‘virtual’ contact centre for IAG NZ. It enables the movement of people to where they need to be without the traditionally complex and time-consuming moves, adds and changes.

It also allows people to access their full functionality wherever they access the company via the network, through a roaming personal profile.

Staff across the business can be instantly deployed to answer calls in IAG NZ’s telephony channels, should the need arise.

As a single ‘virtual’ contact centre, all call management and voice-processing operations for any point on the network can be managed from any supervisory terminal on the network. Personnel with the appropriate permissions can make operational adjustments to the call flows and call management. From any point on the network, supervisory staff can get full performance statistics and, in real time, see which customer service representatives (CSRs) are logged-on, available, and attending calls.

Benefits: reduced costs and enhanced customer experience
The new converged telecommunications environment provided substantial business benefits for IAG NZ:

Substantial cost reduction
The cost savings were substantial, with a contracted reduction in annual costs in excess of 25 per cent and contracted price/performance improvements over the four-year term. “The project had a compelling financial business case and a payback in just over one year,” said Hall.

Dramatic improvement in customer experience
“The benefit realisation in the call centres has been dramatic. On the day of cut-over of the first centre (the large Auckland facility) including the integrated overflow queues, service levels immediately jumped from the previous variable 40-80 per cent to consistently over the 80/20 target,” said Hall.

“This translated immediately into improved customer experience with shorter wait times, and dramatically reduced abandonment rates as the sales site network became part of the virtual call centre configuration,” he said.

“Adherence has improved within the call centres with agents now able to better manage their own performance with targeted information at their fingertips.”

Increased visibility
“From a business perspective, one of the main benefits is the increased visibility across all call centre queues and agents of call and agent activity,” said Hall.

This is achieved through the deployment of a common infrastructure and a centralised call management and real-time reporting.

Uniqueness and originality
The scale and scope of IAG NZ’s seamless migration to a converged telecommunications platform is substantial.

“The project is a first for deployment of end-to-end converged telecommunications in a tier-one, heavily call-centric organisation in New Zealand and represents a quantum leap in technology support to help IAG NZ’s people do their jobs,” said Rusby.

“At the same time, it delivers significantly reduced costs.” The successful deployment was also proof that migration to converged telecommunications is both feasible and yields tangible and significant business benefits.

Successful partnership
Avaya and business partner Agile have assisted in providing a platform for IAG NZ to grow their business. The focus for IAG is on sustainability, both organically and through acquisition, and on better servicing of customers, improving efficiency, and providing a consistent brand image to their customers at all times.

“IAG NZ is proud to have partnered with Avaya, and is already seeing significant benefits in the converged telecommunications solution we have adopted,” said Rusby.

For more information
Agile
E-mail: info@agile.co.nz
Phone: 09-4770550
Web: www.agile.co.nz

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