Paul Wijsen about the power of good customer service

Paul has more than 25 years of experience as a manager in the customer service profession, including 10 years as Contact Center Manager at Landal GreenParks. He now shares his knowledge and passion with large and smaller organizations on a part-time basis. Two years ago, Paul and his wife moved from Amsterdam to a beautiful place in Heiloo.

Paul: 'When I was 21, I accidentally entered the customer service world. The first personal computers were then introduced into the workplace. You can leave out the word ''personal'' here because each department got one PC, haha.

And where we first talked about punch cards and reading forms, we now talk about terms such as real time and artificial intelligence. So much has changed in 40 years, especially in the technical field and the way customers approach organizations. I have been able to move and grow with the field all these years. Now I have reached 60+ and choose not to pursue a career anymore. I no longer want to work as a director or manager, but simply share my knowledge with organizations that want to improve their customer service.'

No beauty prize for technology, but for customer focus

'At Landal GreenParks we worked with outdated systems in my early days. I'm talking about about twelve years ago. Many lists were circulated, including callback lists. It did not deserve a prize in terms of technology, but it did deserve a prize in terms of customer-oriented thinking and actions. Everyone within the organization, from management to the animation team, had to participate in the competition in the same way. Let the green blood flow. If we told customers ''we will call you back within this time slot'', we would call back. No one went home until the last customer was called back. We sent up to 1.000 emails per day across dozens of inboxes. If a problem needed to be solved for a customer, you put someone to work for 3 hours digging up old emails. There were few or no systems available at the time that could make this easier.'

'Looking back on my career in the customer service profession, I missed a system that could truly be used omnichannel.'

The lack of an omnichannel customer service system

'Looking back on my career in the customer service profession, I missed a system that could truly be used omnichannel. By this I mean a system with which you can form a 360-degree customer view. I want to be able to find everything in it. Every expression from and to a (potential) customer or 'complainant' must be approachable, selectable and analyzable. Whether that was three years ago or a few seconds ago. I'm not going to think of it myself anymore, that's what you are there for now. What I know for sure is that you can achieve a lot of efficiency with digitalization. You can handle many repetitive customer contact moments digitally, for example with a conversational chatbot.

Can you name a company with a well-functioning chatbot? I haven't yet. People in our field see it as a sport to test whether a chatbot crashes after about three questions. Chatbots undoubtedly offer opportunities, but that depends on the complexity of your product or service and the way you approach such a project in your organization.

No longer available by phone

'Around me I see that more and more organizations are choosing to no longer allow customers to come into personal contact with an employee. If you've been looking for information like crazy, personal contact with an organization can work wonders, right? Then you need to speak to someone with conversation skills; someone who knows the art of understanding you as a customer.

I think you have to look at it on a case-by-case basis when it comes to automating customer contact. Does it fit within the industry or nature of the business and what does telephone contact add to this?'

Marketing and sales over customer service

'When it comes to budgets, marketing and sales are often put above customer service, or at least that's what I think. Budgets are spent on campaigns to win new customers. While the service you offer your customers determines how the customer thinks about your organization. Which company dares to say with dry eyes: ''the customer is always our number one''? During my career at Landal GreenParks, the guest was number one. The opinions of guests were expressed in KPIs and these were leading in all meetings. I sometimes ask myself now; What if Landal GreenParks had achieved less turnover, would we have had less room to focus on customer satisfaction? Fortunately I was never in that position and we achieved good results. Even though I had to reapply budgets three or four times to improve our customer service. A matter of persevering and convincing. Ultimately, everyone understood the importance of good customer service.'

* The translations on this website are provided by G-Translate from Dutch