Contact Centre

NobleOak balances People, Customer and AI with winning results

Laurence Fonsdituri spearheads growth at award-winning Australian life insurer, Noble Oak. He reveals the secrets behind the company’s high-performance operations, and how AI is changing the game – but not at the expense of customers or employees.

NobleOak recently won the Auscontact Contact Centre of the Year award for NSW. What are the secrets to building such a high-performance culture?

For me, a high-performance culture is built on three things: empowerment, enablement and accountability. What brings them together at NobleOak is our High Performing Routines, or HPRs. They turn culture and strategy into consistent actions from leaders and teams.

Empowerment starts with making it easier for people to perform at their best. A strong personal focus of mine is going directly to the people closest to the work and involving them in designing solutions. Frontline teams understand the bottlenecks, what frustrates customers and employees, and where small changes can make a meaningful difference. We then combine their insights with internal expertise, external perspectives and technology to solve the right problems.

The second element is enablement. I see AI as an opportunity to remove low-value effort, support better decisions and create more capacity for work that delivers value to customers. Used well, technology should help people feel more capable, confident and effective.

The third element is accountability. We translate our agreed ways of working into clear expectations and measures, supported by practical coaching, regular performance conversations and recognition.

This is where HPRs are a key differentiator. They are the operating discipline I have introduced to help us manage performance consistently. They give leaders a clear rhythm for reviewing results, understanding what is driving them, agreeing actions and following through. They are not about adding meetings. They are about making each conversation purposeful and ensuring our people receive consistent support.

HPRs provide the structure, but the insight and improvement come from our people. That combination helps us identify issues earlier, share good practice faster and maintain high standards.

Great results should be celebrated, but so should the people who bring energy to the team, support others and improve the workplace through the way they show up.

There is no single secret to building a high-performance culture. It comes from listening to your people, making it easier for them to do their best work, being clear about success and celebrating those who make a difference. For us, HPRs are the discipline that holds those elements together. They help us do the important things consistently, not only when performance needs attention.

When that discipline is combined with great people who care about their customers and each other, high performance becomes part of who you are as a team, not simply a target.

Life insurance is a competitive space. Is the contact centre your competitive weapon for customer acquisition?

Absolutely. We see our people as a key competitive advantage. Many businesses have focused on digitising customer interactions to reduce cost. We have taken a slightly different approach. While customers increasingly want digital convenience, they also want access to a real person when they need help.

Life insurance is an important financial decision and, for many people, it can be complex. Our role is to make that process easier by combining digital convenience with human expertise.

Customers can engage with us in the way that suits them, whether that is online, by email, via text or over the phone. The difference is that when a customer wants guidance or reassurance, there is always someone available to help.

We believe that balance of technology and human connection is a genuine differentiator for NobleOak and an important part of the experience we offer customers.

What practical applications of AI are you seeing the most success with across sales and service?

The biggest success we have seen with AI is not replacing people. It is removing the work that gets in their way. Across sales and service, we have focused on practical applications, such as automatically summarising customer calls, reducing administration, helping leaders identify coaching opportunities and using data to better prioritise customer interactions.

These are practical applications where we are already seeing value, alongside further opportunities we are actively exploring.

The benefit is not simply the technology itself. It is that our people can spend less time on paperwork, reporting and manual tasks, and more time talking to and supporting customers.

That is where we are seeing some of the clearest benefits.

Looking ahead, the biggest opportunity is using AI to support better decisions. That includes understanding which customer to engage, when to engage them and how to create a more relevant experience. Done well, that improves outcomes for both the customer and the business.

How is AI changing the way you deliver financial advice to customers?

Traditionally, a significant amount of time in financial services is spent documenting conversations, preparing files, researching information and completing administrative tasks.

We are increasingly using AI to support those activities so our people can focus on what matters most: understanding a customer’s needs and helping them make informed decisions.

Importantly, we are not using AI to replace professional judgement or appropriate human oversight. Instead, it is helping our people to be better prepared, more efficient and more consistent, which ultimately creates a better experience for customers. For us, the opportunity is not AI giving advice. It is AI helping our people spend more time understanding and supporting customers, and less time on administration.

What is your top priority project over the coming months?

Our top priority over the coming months is making it easier for customers to do business with us. That sounds simple, but it brings together a number of initiatives across sales, service and technology. We are focused on reducing friction in the customer journey, improving how work flows through the business and giving our people better tools and information to support customers when they need us most.

A key part of that is using data and AI in practical ways to reduce administration, improve decision-making and create a more seamless experience from first enquiry through to policy ownership.

Ultimately, our goal is straightforward. We want to make every customer interaction easier, faster and more valuable, while continuing to grow efficiently and responsibly.

Which KPIs are you laser focused on?

The measure I am most focused on is customer effort: how easy we make it for customers to do business with us. Are we responding quickly? Are we removing unnecessary friction? Are we making it simple for people to get the information and support they need?

We look at the practical indicators behind customer effort, including responsiveness, avoidable hand-offs, repeat contact and how easily customers can obtain the information or support they need.

I focus on customer effort because when we improve the customer experience, other outcomes tend to improve as well. Customers are more engaged, our people can work more effectively and the business can grow responsibly. For me, that is a more meaningful measure of success than looking at any single sales metric in isolation.