NFU Mutual Unifies Network With Azzurri

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NFU Mutual, providers of business, personal and farming insurance services, has appointed managed communications provider Azzurri Communications to unify its entire UK-wide agency network under a centralised, hosted telephony solution. This will enable NFU Mutual and its agencies to work over a single cloud-based network, record calls for training and security purposes, provide automated payment card industry compliant options to protect its customers’ card details, and improve agencies’ productivity.

Azzurri’s ICON Communicate solution will include a fully managed suite of communications services incorporating IP telephony, call recording, core management and PCI DSS-compliant credit card payments capabilities, and will be deployed throughout NFU Mutual’s 300+ UK branches. The service also supplies NFU Mutual with “Five Nines” availability, equating to a maximum of only five minutes of unplanned downtime per year. This is the first roll-out of its kind in the country, and Azzurri was selected for its ability to provide the complete cloud-based service as a commercially and technically flexible solution.

Working with more than 900,000 customers nationwide, NFU Mutual delivers insurance, pensions and investments to rural communities. Because it is a mutual, it does not have shareholders, and policyholders are members of the company, meaning treating customers properly is central to everything they do. PCI DSS compliance within its contact centres was therefore more than just a regulatory requirement. Azzurri’s combination of communications technology and hosted solutions expertise meant that PCI DSS compliance can be assured within the core communications infrastructure. This protects customer payment details and certifies the network that is delivering the services to the NFU Mutual agencies as secure, safeguarding customers’ information. Customer call recording will protect both the customer and the company from misrepresentations or false information and ensure regulatory compliance. Azzurri’s solution also enables end-to-end encryption of all customer data for NFU Mutual.

The ICON Communicate cloud-based platform enables NFU Mutual’s entire organisation to work flexibly across a single standardised telephony network. This delivers a range of benefits and efficiencies, and also provides more detailed management information organisation-wide and to each branch.

“We needed a solution that included three core aspects – a centralised hosted telephony solution, call recording and PCI DSS capabilities – to simplify our branch-to-branch communications, improve productivity and to protect our customers and our staff. Azzurri was the clear choice,” said Tim Mann, CIO at NFU Mutual. “Azzurri’s ICON Communicate satisfied all our requirements, and because of its inherently cloud-based nature, it has ticked all the boxes for ease of deployment, visibility of performance, business continuity and overall costs.”

Mann continued, “PCI DSS compliance and call recordings are very important to us. Giving our employees the ability to take details in a reassuringly safe and concise manner gives our customers greater confidence in our systems, and by extension our wider brand. As a highly governed and regulated financial organisation, it’s a fundamental business requirement.”

“We’re delighted to be working with NFU Mutual and its agency network on an industry-first project such as this,” said Chris Jagusz, CEO of Azzurri Communications. “Internal efficiency, regulatory compliance and reliability are all watchwords at board level in any organisation, but NFU Mutual recognised the further importance of these principles – assuring and growing customer confidence. Using our cloud-first capabilities our design satisfies NFU Mutual’s needs in a way that’s suitable for the scale and distributed structure of the organisation.”

For more information, visit Azzurri’s website.

Author: Megan Jones

Published On: 5th May 2016 - Last modified: 14th Nov 2018
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