Company Profile: Argos Assistance
ITIJ spoke to Argos Assistance S.r.l.'s Diego Aldana, Operation Director, and Marco Rinalducci, Administration & Claims Director, about the company's efforts to continue serving customers throughout the global Covid-19 pandemic
Argos Assistance is an independent company that offers medical, technical and legal assistance services. We work with insurance companies, D.M.C., incentive agencies, tour operators and for companies operating in the travel and event organization sector, including sports.
We have a widespread network of over 5,000 suppliers, including hospitals, clinics, freelancers and technical and legal partners who, even during the Covid-19 emergency period, remained at the forefront in responding to customer requests with a level of professionalism and humanity that has always distinguished our company.
Where do you operate and what are your main areas of focus?
We are present in Italy, France and Spain, where we mainly deal with medical and technical assistance. We cater exclusively to business customers: insurance companies as well as incentive and travel agencies make up the majority of our customers.
To what extent has your business been affected by the lockdown and how have you adapted?
We too, like many companies in the sector, experienced a drop in volume during April. Activities have fortunately increased since May, and as of June have returned to our normal levels.
What were the main operational challenges during the emergency and how did you overcome them?
Ours is a digital native company that believes in smart working, so much so that in the last four years we’ve made around € 300,000 of investments in digitization and development of our cloud services. This allowed us to be agile and become immediately operational following the move to 100% smart working. In Italy, we have adopted the smart working method starting from February 25th when the fi rst red areas in the province of Lodi were declared, while the Spanish office adopted this process since March 7th. As such, all through the emergency period we never stopped operations. In addition to providing assistance through the medical desk and telemedicine, our operations center made the switch to our new IT platform which is now open to our customers.
During the emergency period, we have also managed to expand the network of contacts worldwide in countries where we were not directly present.
What special measures or procedures did you take to ensure business continuity when the Covid-19 pandemic was declared?
Our agile and smart organization has allowed us to continue operating and expand the network of services in our internal and external markets, additionally with the Myconcierge 24h (B2C), and TailUs (B2B) brand for veterinary assistance.
Argos Assistance is also active in branch 18 (Assistance), which offers home and roadside assistance services.
What are the objectives of Argos Assistance in the near future?
On the one hand we will continue to focus on the foreign insurance market which has always been our source of inspiration, and on the other we will position ourselves as a serious and reliable interlocutor for Italian companies that need medical and technical assistance abroad.
We will increasingly focus on research and development and technological innovation in order to improve processes and our levels of assistance.
In 2020 we celebrate our tenth anniversary and, as always, we look beyond this crisis period to the long term future. We are continuing to grow and expand the range of our services, to satisfy the needs of customers and clients, without ever losing sight of our identity.
We will keep you updated!
Does your company operate in the insurance, travel or incentive sector?
All of the above. Our service areas guarantee the highest of standards.
- Healthcare - a widespread network of doctors, outpatient clinics, dental clinics, affi liated private hospitals and public hospitals.
- Technical Assistance - roadside assistance and recovery of complex vehicles, rental cars and taxis, money advance, hotel booking, air, sea and railway tickets.
- Legal Assistance - professionals experienced in civil, criminal, administrative and insurance experts.