Company: Suncorp New Zealand
Title: Executive General Manager, Consumer

Suncorp New Zealand’s Jane Brewer remembers the first call she ever made as a contact centre consultant.

She had returned to New Zealand completely broke from a gap year in Canada and the United Kingdom, having finished her Bachelor of Arts in classical studies and art history at Dunedin’s Otago University. 

It was the early 1990s and, with a recession setting in, it was hard to find employment. Brewer found herself either overqualified or too inexperienced for corporate roles. Luckily, AMI Insurance was looking for people with potential.

Brewer became one of 15 people hired for the company’s first contact centre in Manukau, in south Auckland. 

The opportunity to travel to Christchurch for eight weeks of extensive customer service and product training was an exciting prospect as it was her first time travelling for work. But even with all the preparatory build-up, taking that first call was a little nerve-racking.

“The first query I got was about the New Zealand Automobile Association, with whom AMI was in partnership at the time,” recalls Brewer. “I didn’t know the answer and the customer said to me, ‘Well, you’re no good, are you?’”

Undeterred but still nervous about what to expect, Brewer was able to help her second customer — and the company turned her initial experience into a learning opportunity.
“New responses such as ‘I’m really sorry, but it’s actually my first day’ and ‘that’s a different area, but I’ll get the answer for you’ were built into our scripts and incorporated into ongoing training for handling customers,” she says.

New industry experiences 

It wasn’t too long before Brewer was looking for new challenges. She took up a role with ERGO Financial Services selling home loans and financial products, which quickly led to an opportunity in the operational side of the organisation.

There was, however, an issue that required some serious consideration: the new role would mean a pay cut.

Enter Brewer’s father, who had always been her mentor and supporter. He explained that careers can’t always be laid out nicely and that sometimes you have to go backwards or sideways to advance.

“He was confident that within six months I’d be earning more than I did at that time,” she says. “I’d also have more skills and a wider experience to build on for the future.”

Brewer took the role and, sure enough, within two months had moved into leading a specialised team to handle the customer side of a systems migration implementation.

It was her first introduction to leadership — and she discovered she really enjoyed it. 

“Throughout my career,” she says, “I’ve moved between leadership and technical specialist roles because I always like to keep a broad view and take opportunities when they come up.”  

Surrounded by culture

Brewer’s father was a university student in Canada and her mother a nurse from New Zealand when they met in Russia. 

They ended up back in New Zealand, where Brewer’s father had landed a job running operations at a steel mill located in Glenbrook. 

The family moved to be near the source of the iron sands in the small Māori community of Tahora, on the west coast of the country’s North Island.

“For me, as a very young kid, being surrounded by the amazing Māori culture was very influential,” says Brewer. “I have great memories of all my time there, including being part of the formal greetings as my dad and members of NZ Steel were welcomed to the marae.”

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