Service first

The PruHealth contact centre in Johannesburg provides operations support for UK-based PruHealth (a joint venture between Discovery Health and Prudential), launched in 2004. PruHealth provides health insurance for approximately 175 000 UK lives.

Says PruHealth COO Trent Rossini: “We have a good business proposition, our insurance product has been well accepted and differentiated in the market and we've leveraged the [Prudential] brand. The UK market is heavily brokered, which means you need a great, cost-effective product. Vitality helps [differentiate the product], but in the UK, service really has to be the competitive factor.

“Discovery has done well establishing itself as a brand, and is a great place to work,” says Rossini. “People who join, progress rapidly here. In that context, it means we attract high quality people.”

Four-hundred-and-twenty people are exclusively involved in supporting the UK operation. One-hundred-and-twenty of those are involved in systems and such, and the rest with the call centre, back-office operations, nurses offering expert advice to callers and data capturers.

We attract high quality people.

Trent Rossini, COO, PruHealth

As all call centre agents deal with UK-based callers, the company's induction process focuses heavily on sensitising agents to UK culture and norms.

“The dynamic is interesting,” says Rossini. “A South African caller will call with a problem, get angry, scream and shout 'till the problem is solved. A UK caller, when they get annoyed, will ask questions, then they get to sarcasm, then become rude. There's no screaming. By the time you get to rude, you've lost the client. The call centre agent needs to understand the cue when the person starts questioning.

“We go through a rigorous recruitment and induction process, including sensitisation, and we focus a huge amount on feedback dynamics. After the call, we get members [callers] to rate the call, and agents are remunerated appropriately, as per the Discovery model. We use a different platform, but the same approach.”

Agents are also trained to be accent neutral. This doesn't mean changing accents, but rather eradicating South African expressions and flattening accent peculiarities.

PruHealth's approach is obviously working. According to Rossini, research from Synovate shows that average satisfaction scores in the UK are around 65% to 70%. PruHealth scores between 80% and 85%.

“This talks to how we handle calls,” says Rossini. “We provide relevant information and know our products... even just being pleasant is very important. Obviously, this is backed up by a lot of system support - agents need to have the right and most up-to-date information.”

Rossini admits that skills are still a challenge, particularly on the technical side. “Part of the business deals with clients and intermediaries. At that level, it's a challenge, but the schools are improving, universities are improving and we can leverage Discovery. The other side of the business builds technology, processes and systems, and skills are far more of a challenge here. Worldwide, there is incredible demand for these skills.”

PruHealth ensures it attracts and retains such skills by making the working environment pleasant (Discovery Health in Johannesburg has a wellness centre, canteens, adequate parking and such).

“The next part,” says Rossini (himself something of a techie), “is that technical people want to feel like they're making a difference and doing quality work, and working on up-to-date technology. The UK market is very Internet-centric, so the guys get to work on technology that wouldn't work in South Africa due to bandwidth issues.”

UK brokers are frequently more than a little nervous about being serviced offshore. Rossini says those who visit South Africa, without fail, are amazed at what they see. “They say we're more sophisticated than what they see in the UK. The reason,” he adds, “is that the costs here are half what they are in the UK, so we can put more into infrastructure. Also, being a new entrant, we've leveraged Discovery and leapfrogged environments. We're not running 50-year old systems.”

Looks like there are some advantages to being a young, developing nation after all.