Norwich Life`s new R2,5-million national call centre - implemented by National Data Systems as prime vendor - will ultimately become the life insurance giant`s focal point of service interaction with clients throughout South Africa."As part of our on-going business transformation efforts (known as `Project Beyond 2000` at Norwich), the call centre is central to our strategic moves to become even more competitive in the new millennium and offer a quantum leap in service standards," explains Derek Hershaw, Norwich senior manager, client services."As new players, including overseas competition, enter our market the need for more cost-effective products coupled with an internationally recognisable standard of service, becomes crucial to our long term survival and profitability," added Hershaw.Designed to take the company into the next century, Project Beyond 2000 incorporates a complete overhaul of existing business processes, extensive upgrading of information technology and the centralisation of all of Norwich`s administration, amongst other things."Like most life assurers we have a fairly extensive network of regional offices and branches throughout the country," says Hershaw. "Not only does this mean that there could be differences in service standards from one area to another, but it is also an expensive infrastructure to maintain, and ultimately the policyholder has to bear these costs.""In 1996 we began to take a closer look at where the Insurance Industry was heading overseas (particularly in Europe and Australia) and realised that to remain competitive locally our service levels would need to improve substantially and we would have to do all of this at lower cost to our policyholders. "The introduction of a centralised call centre was an inevitable consequence of trying to satisfy these criteria."Client Interaction"The conventional approach to call centres is to modernise a telephony system, usually in a tele-sales or outbound marketing type environment. The NDS approach was to ensure that we optimised the interaction with our clients regardless of the role that our call centre could ultimately fulfil," said Hershaw. "We were also looking for a price-competitive solution as the setting up of a new call centre can run into millions of Rands. Local expertise was obviously important as well".Hershaw says that NDS were able to meet these requirements and their proposal was flexible enough to allow Norwich to select products that were most suited to their needs not just those for which NDS were the local vendor."The NDS proposal centred around the use of Versatility call management software which is internationally established as a leading brand in this type of product. It allows us to link into our existing legacy systems and it enables us to start small but with the potential to expand when the need arises" he added.Short Timeframe"A major point in choosing our business partner was their ability to deliver a complete solution within a very short timeframe. We had a 9 month deadline to aim for which was not negotiable, and the general trend is for this type of project to take at least 18 months.""The fact that this deadline was met is more remarkable when one considers that it took place at the same time that a number of other major projects were being tackled as part of the bigger Project Beyond 2000. These included the relocation of most of our Head Office staff into new office accommodation, an upgrade to all our workstations, the introduction of Image technology and a network upgrade to high-speed Ethernet."The initial approach from NDS was to focus on the analysis and business reasons for wanting to establish a call centre. Hershaw says their focus on the IT side of the project developed at a later stage."NDS wanted to know everything about our operations and worked closely with us in planning and co-ordinating the project down to its finest detail - they were not interested in merely slotting in a technical solution at the tail-end," he said.On trackFollowing a short test phase Norwich`s new call centre went live on the 1st of October 1997. "We are already seeing a dramatic improvement in the whole telephony process. The reaction from our clients has been particularly encouraging, and their endorsement of what we are trying to achieve is shown in rapid growth in the total number of calls handled each month. The productivity levels of the operators has increased steadily and our queue times and abandoned call rates are improving noticeably, despite the increase in volume."Hershaw added that: "Call centres are more than just a group of trained operators dealing with clients on the telephone. This is our shop front to the world and we must continue to look at improving on the way that we go about servicing our business.""The development in technology alone will necessitate that we build on what has been put in place thus far. We are already integrated in terms of telephone, fax, e-mail and internet but you never know what is waiting around the next corner. In a service environment you cannot sit back and assume that you are doing the very best that you can for your clients."
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