State-of-the-Art IAG Centre Goes Live

State-of-the-Art IAG Centre Goes Live

New Zealand’s largest general insurance company, IAG New Zealand Limited (IAG NZ), has more than 500 staff based at its new purpose built Business and Call Centre located in Show Place, Christchurch. The premise includes a 260-seat state-of-the-art contact centre.

TelstraClear Chief Operating Officer, Luigi Sorbello says the IAG NZ (trading under State and NZI insurance brands) and TelstraClear partnership has created an environment where today’s technology investment has set IAG NZ up for the future.

“We’ve worked with IAG NZ to deliver leading edge telecommunications services - we’ve provided completely diverse gigabit infrastructure access to the site via our Private IP fibre-optic platform,” says Mr Sorbello.

“The architecture of the site is gigabit switching through a powerful Cisco Ethernet chassis with multiple points of redundancy. The call centre is part of a nationwide IP virtual Avaya Contact Centre solution.”

“We’ve provided data, voice and video capacity and we’ve future proofed the centre so it not only delivers to IAG’s business requirements today, but allows for new technologies, services and applications to be added at a later date,” he says.

IAG NZ Chief Information Officer James Dring says the Business and Call Centre is impressive and forward thinking, with a focus on using environmentally friendly building materials and sustainable technology that will cope with increased capacity as demand increases. Currently the Christchurch Contact Centre is the most advanced in IAG’s Australasian group.

“TelstraClear’s expertise has supplied our staff with much improved telecommunications resources. The Contact Centre, taking inbound and outbound calls from direct claims customers, has large LCD screens to monitor performance, including call answering and response times. This allows us to closely monitor our queue performance and provide staff with immediate feedback on how the centre is performing. This is invaluable in situations such as a major weather event where demand escalates to many times the usual levels,” said Mr Dring.

One of the key objectives in selecting TelstraClear’s solution was to future proof the environment as far as possible. As part of this, IAG NZ required gigabit to desktop capacity be a component of the solution, which TelstraClear was able to provide.

“The fully converged IP data network makes it easy to communicate to the rest of IAG’s Australasian group, including quality and performance of tools such as provision of common financial systems and the delivery of video conferencing over IP,” he said.

The complex, combining two three-story buildings, has its Contact Centre on the top floor of the east and west wings. The rest of IAG NZ’s Christchurch staff are located around the outside of the building, with the building’s core housing lifts, utility service areas, meeting and training rooms and kitchen areas.

TelstraClear is half way through its four-year $40 million contract providing voice, video, mobile and data services over a single converged IP network, underpinned by carrier grade Quality of Service, to IAG NZ’s nationwide network of three call centres, 30 sales centres, nine branches, and four district offices.

IAG NZ underwrites general insurance for some of the country’s leading financial institutions. IAG NZ is New Zealand’s largest general insurer, with a 36% share of the insurance market. IAG NZ is a wholly owned subsidiary of Insurance Australia Group (IAG), Australasia’s largest general insurer.

ENDS

© Scoop Media