TOWER

Our thanks to Kamini McCarthy and her team at the TOWER Contact Centre located in Auckland.


















Structure

Our “Contact Centre” is actually a combination of two separate and distinct inbound contact centres, one catering to the general insurance business and the other to the health & life division of TOWER Limited. 

The general insurance contact centre, known as TOWER Insurance Customer Services (TICS), comprises three teams in Auckland and two in Wellington and handles a variety of service enquiries mainly relating to house, car and contents insurance policies. 

The health & life contact centre, known as TOWER Health & Life Customer Services (THLCS), is smaller and consists of two Auckland-based teams that service calls associated with medical, life, income protection and trauma insurance policies.  Underwriting, claims assessing and sales are dealt with by other departments for both TICS and THLCS.

Both centres are looked after by Operational Support, which is a team in charge of workforce management, quality assurance, training, call recording and general business improvement for the contact centre.  Our total headcount is 90 staff – 68 in Auckland and 22 in Wellington and our organisational structure is as follows:

General Information

Phone System: Alcatel Platform using CCS Supervisor v 8
Call Recording: NICE Perform
WFM:               Microsoft Excel
CRM:               Combination of different customised, windows-based programs   
 

Vision and Values
Our company vision is as follows:

To enhance value to our shareholders, we proudly develop lifelong financial partnerships with our customers and their families, based on professionalism and trust.

The contact centre works towards this vision by embracing the TOWER behaviours, namely accountability, teamwork, innovation, superb service and fairness.  These behaviours are evident in our workforce management practices, quality assurance guidelines and key performance indicators, and are at the core of new initiatives to improve the customer experience.  They are supplemented with the ‘Fish’ philosophy (promoted by Charthouse Learning), which consists of four interrelated practices designed to strengthen working relationships with team members and customers.  The practices are: choose your attitude, make their day, be present and have fun. 

Acting in line with the TOWER behaviours while applying the Fish philosophy is the overriding goal for every contact centre staff member, because it is the best way to achieve the vision and fulfil the company’s primary purpose - to help our customers protect and grow the things they value.      

Challenges

The most significant challenge facing our contact centre this year is decentralisation, caused by TOWER Insurance moving to a branch business model.  The change will implement 5 small, contact centre-style branches providing end-to-end customer service in different locations around New Zealand.  The Auckland TICS office will remain centralised and provide support to the branches.   The difficulties with this initiative include:

• Workforce Management – queue visibility issues, problems associated with rostering, forecasting and reporting for small teams  
• Quality – increasingly complex interactions, effectiveness of coaching
• Telephony – call routing and recording for different sites

Strict control of costs is another challenge facing our contact centre, necessitated by the current economic climate.

Successful Initiatives
-TOWER Wiki
-Online Roster Access
-Implementation of Call Quality
-Painting the Floor and installation of plants
-Team Leader Development and coaching
-Introduction of Team budgets for Team Building
-ETITO
-ANZIIF
-Ongoing technical development