Omnichannel innovation and high-quality service in critical times

Accelerated growth creates a real challenge

Universal Assistance provides comprehensive travel assistance services to customers across Latin America. For over 40 years, its extensive network of providers has helped to protect people so they can travel anywhere safely.

In 2018, the company became part of the Cover-More Group, the travel insurance and assistance division of Zurich Insurance Group, a milestone that increased its operational capacity and created global opportunities. But the accelerated growth at Universal Assistance represented a real challenge for its contact center solutions.

Seeking innovation — and a trusted partner

Universal Assistance manages more than 2 million contacts per year, 24/7, with multilingual operators. And its contact center is the heart of it all. The voice channel is key because it makes travelers feel more comforted when they seek medical help.

“Without this tool, we could not assist our clients nor could we manage the network of health and logistics service providers. It is the engine of the whole process,” said Ariel Dorfman, Technology Manager at Universal Assistance.

But the company’s huge operational growth exceeded the capacity of its communications platforms.

“When we hit 40,000 calls a day — up from the 10,000 we started with — the existing platform couldn’t handle it. It wasn’t ready to deal with that volume of contacts,” Dorfman said.

This was the turning point. Universal Assistance sought a technology ally that could guarantee high-quality service in its predominant channel. It also wanted a partner that allowed the company to innovate by orchestrating multichannel capabilities — and was always ready to help.

“The product itself is not enough. The support you have behind you is the key,” said Raffaele Loiacono, Latin America CIO at Universal Assistance. “This is an aspect that goes beyond technology, and it was definitely what makes Genesys stand out from the rest and made us select them.”

Strengthening the voice channel

Each week, the technology team at Universal Assistance received a report of calls with problems. Even though the team followed up on them, it had no way to improve call quality.

“We had a high ratio of calls with audio problems — choppy calls or with poor sound quality — and that was something we couldn’t accept for our standards,” Loiacono said.

At the end of 2018, Universal Assistance solved this by migrating to the Genesys PureConnect™ application.

“Three days after the migration became effective, I remember calling the reporting team and asking them why they hadn’t sent me the problem email. They said, ‘We don’t have any issues.’ For us, the difference was day and night,” said Dorfman.

The percentage of problem calls dropped to zero. At the same time, improved audio quality reduced the average call time from 18 minutes to 15 minutes in sales interactions and from seven minutes to five minutes in support operations.

“We were looking for quality, performance and support — and we found it all in Genesys,” said Dorfman.

Achieving omnichannel engagement

A rapid rise to the cloud

On March 20, 2020, the Argentine government issued stay-at-home orders in the wake of COVID-19. This meant that new Universal Assistance offices in Buenos Aires, which opened a week earlier, had to close.

“Our new challenge was to bring a local contact center to the cloud overnight. The cloud was the only solution we found to address the challenging scenario posed by the pandemic,” said Loiacono.

Loiacono notes the process was transparent because Genesys and its partner In Motion were always with them. The companies made all the necessary resources available — technological and human — to implement the change in 48 hours without any issues.

“The infrastructure did not suffer; there was no saturation or quality problems,” said Loiacono. “Thanks to this, today we have 100% of the company working remotely, ensuring business continuity.”