This article on contact reduction appeared on Dec. 21, 2021 at Customer First and was written by BBP Media. The image is from Zuiver Beeld.
Working from home proved no obstacle, but through Covid, it became clear where Talpa Network’s customer care processes could be improved. The exponential growth of e-commerce was overloading the parcel delivery service nationwide and creating challenges for the in-house team.
Thanks to the strong collaboration with proactive partner Uitblinqers, which created the Synergy Hub to more efficiently set up customer contact for its partners, the solutions were sought, found, and successfully implemented.
Talpa Network is a 100% Dutch network of solid media brands. It consists of the sections Watching (including SBS6, Net5), Listening (including Radio538, Veronica), Reading (LINDA.) and Buying (ActievandeDag, Holiday Auctions, Aladoo, VavaBid and SlajeSlag). The Customer Care department facilitates customer contact for all brands within Talpa Network that wish to use it. This is currently done for thirteen brands in three languages (Dutch, French and German). About 80% of this volume is invested with facilities partner Uitblinqers in Amsterdam.
A perfect storm
The partnership between Uitblinqers and Talpa Network will start in September 2019. At the same time, a new ticketing system will be implemented, and the transition to a new logistics partner will be made. When Cynthia Mak comes in as Director of Customer Care in January 2020, the implementations are just behind us, but the teething problems have yet to be ironed out. And then came Covid. The switch to working from home went smoothly, but soon the department faced new challenges.
“A key example of such a challenge we saw with Vakantieveilingen, which offers tickets and packages for vacations and days out, as well as physical products,” Cynthia Mak says. “The first Corona measures led to a lot of questions: everyone wanted to know what was going to happen to their arrangement. Was it canceled? Were you entitled to a refund? And in addition, with all the vacations gone, all of the Netherlands suddenly went about sprucing up their homes, gardens and balconies, causing the auctions won for these products to skyrocket. Within all of e-commerce, the same thing happened, people started shopping online en masse, with the result that the postal companies could no longer handle it. Most will remember that in April and May 2020, the system was completely overloaded with delivery drivers working day and night, sorting centers filling up and packages being delivered much too late or sometimes not at all.
“In fact, it was a ‘perfect storm’ for Vakantieveilingen,” concludes Bas Diepeveen, Co-founder of Uitblinqers. “The existing processes and working arrangements proved unable to cope with this increase in orders and thus contact numbers. We saw in practice that all ambassadors followed the process and did their work well and according to the agreements, but that the processes led to unnecessary delays and did not result in what we had in mind. This led to frustration among customers, our ambassadors and, as a result, our organizations. We then started looking together at how we could improve the process by looking for redundant and unnecessary contacts. Time for contact reduction!”
“This is really where Uitblinqers is strong and provides great added value compared to other sourcing or consulting parties. They are a partner who thinks along and proactively comes up with improvement initiatives, even if it means that the volume decreases for them, which I had not experienced before. Very strong,” thinks Cynthia Mak.
Trusting people, not always (wanting to) control them
Cynthia Mak herself started her career in customer contact as an agent. “If I want to improve something, I first need to know what is going wrong. And for me, the only way to find out is by solving tickets myself. Then you soon find out what can be done better, faster and easier. That turned out to be mainly down to the authority, which the first line had, to provide a solution. The task of the first line was to maintain contact with the customer, but the decision-making power to provide solutions lay with the internal team, in the second line. Increased volumes placed more work on them. However, the team (and processes) were not set up for this. This led to delays in response time, which in turn caused customers to keep contacting them for a solution. The frustrations and emotions ended up at the first line, at Uitblinqers, but they were unable to provide concrete solutions to the customer. This did not make things more pleasant for both the customer and the ambassadors of Uitblinqers.” In less than a month, the solution was found and rolled out: first-line decision space was widened so that they could solve problems directly, such as by sending a new product or refunding money (in part).
“That was exciting for both sides,” explained Bas Diepeveen. “Talpa Network thereby gave us the responsibility to spend their money. Wouldn’t that responsibility also mean a lot of control? And how do our ambassadors make the right trade-offs? Under our motto “what if this contact reduction does work?”, of course we were going to try it. After all, we have a smart workforce sitting around – ambitious and driven people who like to take “ownership” and also like to fix things right for the customer themselves. And that worked out well.”
This solution is based on mutual trust and delivers added value for both Talpa Network’s clients and Uitblinqers’ ambassadors. Angry customers calling more often means, purely technically speaking, more contact moments and thus more revenue for Uitblinqers. Diepeveen: “But even for us it is actually not attractive. It doesn’t help the customers and the many complaints and frustrations don’t make the ambassadors’ work any more enjoyable. That quickly leads to higher absenteeism and turnover. With the trust and responsibility that ambassadors now receive, they stay longer and grow more often. Exactly what we want.”
Channel optimization that benefits everyone
“I was honestly never a fan of using a facilities contact center, but Uitblinqers surprised me and convinced me of their added value as a specialist,” Cynthia Mak confessed. “For example, Uitblinqers has put forward improvements around channel steering on their own initiative; an initiative that would lead to contact reduction – something fundamentally conflicting with their business model and yet they are doing it.”
“A typical example is a customer who receives a defective or incomplete product and contacts customer service about it by phone. After hanging on hold for several minutes, the customer gets someone on the line who then asks to send an email and attach a photo. That wait time was unnecessary and thus literally a “waste of time” for both the customer and the ambassador who gets the customer on the line. Now, through our IVR, we automatically give the customer the option to fill out a form directly online. We ask for exactly the information we need to be able to deal with it all at once, including the desired solution. So in addition to time, this also saves frustration and unnecessary interactions, because we also ask the customer to indicate which solution he or she wants.”
“Through this solution, we were able to reduce a case, which normally requires multiple actions, to one. A big contact reduction! A win-win in other words. The mutual reward of both parties is in a gainshare model. This allows us to deploy our workforce on contacts where it adds value for the client or Talpa Network, instead of creating unnecessary frustration. Where human contact does make the difference, you also want to give your employees the confidence to come to a good solution themselves. So contact reduction is not: indiscriminately removing all contact.”
“In our industry, we often see that defensive thinking and control are the norm,” Diepeveen concludes. “We, Talpa Network and Uitblinqers, do not feel the separation between contractor and client, but consciously choose commitment and trust. That produces the best results for all involved – the consumer, the ambassador and both organizations – despite sometimes conflicting interests. And you should always go for that.”
This article on contact reduction was created in collaboration with Uitblinqers
