SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA --(Marketwired - July 20, 2016) - Australian insurance provider, Auto & General , has selected Avaya to integrate communications into all its business processes to enable a seamless experience for its customers. Through this transformation, Auto & General will be better positioned to provide the omni-channel, anytime and anywhere expectations of consumers today and into the future.
Auto & General provides and manages insurance products on behalf of brands including Budget Direct, Australia Post, Virgin Money, Aussie and 1 st for Women.
According to professional consultancy Accenture (1), the Australian insurance industry continues to evolve on the back of changes to consumer and behaviour and a competitive landscape. Well-established insurance providers are under significant pressure from new entrants to the market, subsequently empowering consumers with an increasing number of easy-to-access options.
Having expanded from a four-person team in 1999 to 1,300 employees with an 800-strong contact center today, Auto & General has constantly evolved its services to suit the contact preferences of consumers. While telephony remains core to Auto & General's business, there has been a significant increase in volume of email, web chat and social media-based engagements as customers demand an omni-channel experience on their own terms. Amid the contact center transformation, Auto & General foresees smart chat bots and artificial intelligence (AI) complementing the services its team provides.
As a result, Auto & General is using Avaya Breeze to build communications applications that integrate with its core contact center platform based on Avaya IP Office. Breeze is a collaboration environment and app development platform that allows Auto & General to design and develop bespoke communications applications within Avaya's cloud-based developer sandbox. It also provides a series of pre-built Snap-in applications which can be customised so the insurance provider can take its services to market much faster.
The transformation will see Auto & General equip its team with advanced tools to resolve enquiries more quickly and effectively. Auto & General expects the tools will help increase first call resolution rates, allow staff to resolve more queries per day, generate a higher return on investment, and may improve brand loyalty from consumers. It will also help prepare Auto & General to adapt more quickly to emerging trends, including AI.
For example, Auto & General recently identified that many customers were regularly calling the contact center to confirm insurance payments were received. To enable a seamless payment experience, Auto & General is using Breeze to develop a notification mechanism that automatically delivers this information to customers. This will not only save customers from having to make the calls, but allow contact center staff to focus on more complex interactions that require personalised human engagement.
Breeze will also be used in conjunction with Auto & General's core contact center environment to further improve the quality of life for contact center agents. Avaya Proactive Outreach Manager, for example, automates outbound calls while simultaneously help eliminate the fatigue associated with listening to dial tones and voicemails throughout the day. The goal is to allow employees to focus on talking to real people in order to provide better outcomes for those customers, as well as maximising the number of enquiries that are resolved each day.
Quotes:
"Consumers are moving to an omni-channel environment where they change between channels regularly so we need to be flexible and deal with them how they choose. Because Avaya Breeze is an end-to-end environment, it allows us to very rapidly prototype applications and functionalities that easily tie into our wider communications environment. We are using the platform to build features that integrate within our contact centre protocols and processes. People's time is limited, so Breeze's ability to make interactions more efficient is critical to the value we can deliver to customers."
Paul Malt , Chief Information Officer , Auto & General
"Technology has changed the way consumers interact with brands, and as a result, organisations need to adapt their business processes to meet those demands. With Avaya Breeze, Auto & General is taking the next step in the digital transformation of its contact centre by designing and developing applications and functionalities that not only fit the specific brands it represents, but also account for its customers' preferred contact platforms. In doing so, Auto & General is empowering employees to further improve the services they provide, all the while making them more productive each day. The outcome is a valuable customer experience and improved brand loyalty."
Darren Read , General Manager, Services Australia and New Zealand , Avaya
About Avaya
Avaya is a leading provider of solutions that enable customer and team engagement across multiple channels and devices for better customer experience, increased productivity and enhanced financial performance. Its world-class contact center and unified communications technologies and services are available in a wide variety of flexible on-premises and cloud deployment options that integrate with non-Avaya applications. The Avaya Engagement Environment enables third parties to create and customize business applications for competitive advantage. Avaya's fabric-based networking solutions help simplify and accelerate the deployment of business critical applications and services. For more information please visit www.avaya.com .
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(1) Accenture, Standing Tall: How Australian Insurers Can Achieve Profitable Growth in a Challenging Market , https://www.accenture.com/ , All rights reserved © Copyright 2013 Accenture
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