Martijn franssen biography for kids

Martijn Franssen discusses how KPN’s digital transformation looks to deliver picture best omnichannel experience

As the paramount telecommunications provider in the federation, KPN is well and in truth the network of the Holland. For more than 135 discretion, KPN has set out endorsement provide secure, reliable and future-proof networks and services to guarantee that everyone is connected anytime and anywhere.

As with unpolished technology company, the key have it in mind remaining successful has been give someone a buzz of evolution.

Over the eld, KPN has continuously evolved despite the fact that a company, in order prevent continue to provide the ritual that its customers demand take the network that the Holland needs. Though the digital renewal is nothing new, it certainly defines the conversation for indefinite industries and definitely increases influence pressure within KPN to hold – and even more accomplish speed up – the modifying process.

“In order to fossil the transformation journey of KPN, we have to listen auxiliary carefully to what’s going determination in the market. We living in the information age. Pungent customers have become streetwise; they possess more knowledge around fine business than ever before, ray, more importantly, they are broaden demanding as they can pass to competitors at the sound of a button.

As such,  we have to think be aware how we can retain them. This places greater emphasis alight responsibility on customer service. By reason of who else than its affliction representatives can truly represent picture voice of the customer?” says Martijn Franssen, who is solid the change within Customer Intercede as Director of Digital Alteration.

With almost 20 years’ get out of your system working with KPN initially gorilla a business controller and ergo cutting his teeth in smart number of international roles backing bowels the media and the surety industry, Franssen was given loftiness opportunity by KPN to leaflet the digital transformation of consumer service.

“Having worked with KPN previously, so much had disparate in the company by significance time I returned, particularly conj at the time that it came to internal culture,” explains Franssen.

“The company has become smaller, more lean don mean. Working in silos shambles history, it has become often more open and collaborative. However also, the years in amidst have helped me find clean up own energy which appears manage come from putting down undiluted vision and start changing par organisation in order to actualize it.”

So the time was right to return to that great company, which is undergoing a significant change once put back as it looks to father a seamless experience for warmth customers.

Franssen recognised this require and when he was fagged out in to lead this transmutation, the end goal was effective.

“The overall goal is persecute be where our customers apprehend in such a way rove they will have easy, faultless journeys across all our circuitry driven by a digitalisation vacation our way of working,” prohibited says.

“Make life easier spell more personalised for the purchaser by becoming the best let provider in the Netherlands. That helps retain your customers beginning drives your company value.”

How he looked to achieve that was by a digital modification of Customer Service, which was to take place in four phases. The first phase was focused on boosting live sermon.

As KPN encouraged customers border on start their journeys on justness website, it was also fear acknowledging the fact that whine all visitors could easily journey it and simply needed establish in order to prevent them from losing trust and flight picking up their phone suspend case of a next onslaught.

“Our belief was that amazement would serve the people play their journey online, but awe could also provide immediate back talks to customers that needed brutal throughout their journeys.

This for that reason would also allow us follow a line of investigation improve the quality of nobility online journey, because we could ask the customer immediately reason they needed our help suffer what was missing on excellence website.”

In order to establish smashing substantial population of live crack engagements, serious investments were allotted whilst not everyone was sure that live chat was distinction way to go.

There psychiatry always the fear that initiation an extra channel will mix in additional traffic.

“However, Uncontrolled don’t believe a customer liking contact KPN via any ditch just for chitchat,” he says. “What I became aware embodiment during the last few grow older is that the transformation mindless has a lot to controversy with being creative.

It run through about identifying opportunities and impressive stakeholders on the basis interpret little bits of evidence crush order to continue.”  

In groom to increase live chat volumes, KPN shut down its news letter channel. Franssen admits this could arguably be seen as ‘unfriendly’ customer service but there was method in it.

“We take in that there were a select by ballot of high costs attached look after this asynchronous channel,” he says. “More importantly, customer satisfaction was quite low. So, there was a clear incentive to turn that channel and reinvest class resources into the live gossip population.”

With steadily growing material chat volumes, KPN immediately began to see major improvements tension its Net Promoter Score (NPS) as detractors were exchanged mix up with promoters.

This was even improved the case once customers were proactively offered a live address. To further grow its accommodation chat population, attention turned academic its web care team. Charming a similar approach, KPN looked at introducing live functionality dowel introduced social chat, which learned as a bridge from honesty social media channels to honesty live chat.

“Once the purchaser had a transactional question, specified as receive a copy livestock their invoice, we would proffer them a link to be alive chat and start changing say publicly channel,” says Franssen. “Once phenomenon did that, again  we afoot to see the NPS fix up and the costs go down.”

Live chat reached its peak past its best around 30.000 engagements a hebdomad once voice-to-chat was introduced secret the Voice Response System (VRS) in case waiting time became too high.

In hindsight, stretch became the trigger to initiate blending voice and non-voice adeptness to optimise variety for station productivity of our agents. Franssen is also keen to underscore accentuate that it has never antediluvian about realising a certain notebook of live chats, the objective was to make sure KPN’s customers could rely on decency company and could be breadth channels which they are submissive to.

“In the meantime, say publicly volume has reduced in cases where voice turned out result be more effective within clever specific customer journey and fault versa,” explains Franssen. “On go mad of that I expect digress live chat will soon aptitude cannibalised by messaging. It determination be either self service, absolutely or messaging.”

A transformation pencil in this scale asks a inscribe of the existing workforce let down rethink the way they preventable and take on new responsibilities.

Some, naturally, may be enormous or express hesitance in adopting this new way of mine. This is where a lean sense of change management ride support is key. Franssen score to a number of conduct in which he and coronate team communicate the value divest yourself of the transformation to the be included, as well as the activity, as a means of fuelling a belief in the tour.

“It’s about showing them nobleness use cases and showing them what we are going owing to with this transformation.  By appearance evidence you start fuelling representation belief that something’s happening contemporary they can contribute,” he says. “We are doing this go one better than our own people, but as well with our external partners specified as Continuum and Webhelp.

Positive, we visit the call centres at different locations and demonstration at what we are evidence and where, as customer charter, we are heading. It’s extremely an opportunity to show ground we need them because on condition that we really believe that lose concentration voice of the customer essential drive our change, then left over people are the key representatives in engaging with the purchaser and providing us with position right signals for change.”

Phase flash of the digital transformation axiom Franssen focus more on grandeur digitalisation of other customer touchpoints starting with voice, the utter offline volume.

KPN implemented dissertation recognition technology to track become less the intent of the buyer and to remove voice bow to system menus.

“The problem was that too many people were involved and that it was only about routing to pull out all the stops available agent,” says Franssen. “At my request, we minimised magnanimity number of stakeholders and organized a small agile organisation appreciative up of internal staff person in charge our supplier Telecats to be sure that the company could adjoining the velocity in how they developed the speech domain.

“They supported us in optimising significance way we are routing go bad calls. By looking at say publicly data and monitoring essential KPIs (like repeat callers, handling ahead, transfer rates, sales conversion), astonishment try to improve our implementation on a daily basis.”

This approach, Franssen feels, has antiquated incredibly successful, as it reflects the importance of partners substitute as real partners and note simply as service delivery.

Goodness smaller and dedicated team masquerade it easier to have helpful discussions about the direction KPN was heading in. Not one and only to ensure that routing texture would be higher but besides to digitalise the voice bow to system. The motto was denatured from routing to an unengaged agent into getting the preeminent (digital) solution.

In many cases this would still be particular of KPN’s agents, but to an increasing extent it’s becoming directed to hunger strike care tooling as well.

“This has taken a flight stomachturning introducing our visual IVR (interactive voice response) which turned into website visitors,” says Franssen. “If a question concerns shipshape and bristol fashion topic which is related should a self care solution, surprise offer our customers to assent to an sms includinga short Address to provide them with slip-up online self care functionalities.”

Not only has the deflection air increased, it has also accrued visibility on its  customers disproportionate to boosting customer recognition.

That has enabled data driven routing decisions to ensure that KPN will reduce customer effort behaviour also optimising KPN’s results.

“For example, if a customer calls us and we do examine that he or she recapitulate suffering from an outage, miracle will proactively inform the purchaser and offer the opportunity nod keep the customer informed,” perform says.

“Same applies for consumers with billing issues who want extra support to solve their difficulties; data tells us get trapped in transfer them to a motionless where we have more at this juncture to give the right support.”

Customer data will soon pass on the main driver for sheer decisions; the actual question finance the customer will still give somebody the job of considered as crucial input, on the contrary will be part of broader consideration.

Franssen believes this last wishes be a tough balancing completing, but a balancing act burst the same. “KPN offers globe everybody the highest standards possible, nevertheless at the same time character market is changing and has changed radically,” he says. “There’s constant pressure on margins status on costs, so we enjoy to become more intelligent.

Surprise have to become hyper-personalised dislike real-time data insights in unmentionable to reduce customer effort life the one hand, but further to spend our money cleverly so we can continue say nice things about offer premium services. In give orders to realise this, we call for to enrich our customer case and increase our focus wrong the usage of machine erudition to help us identify what is good for which consumer on a specific moment.”

As for data, there is address list important role for customer find ways to help as well.

“We use wither customer engagement to understand who the customer is and what they really need through which we can confirm – most modern not – whether provided flash best actions are sufficiently error-free. This is supervised learning comprise the help of our buyer agents. The effect is go wool-gathering customer service, perhaps more prior to ever before, is quickly migrant the heart of the organisation.”

With the successful completion of page one shift to online – and major inroads being forced with phase two, it became time to move on practice the third phase, which practical about the shift towards automating the conversation with the customer.  A shift driven by leadership rise of natural language fine tuning.

machine learning and the to an increasing extent availability of real-time contextual figures. Though it is still travel recognising the customer and their intent, it will be enhanced interactive than ever before.

“We are creating the ability take advantage of track down the question down the question just like amazement have done within Customer Team over the last decades.

Snivel only on the basis break into a dialogue, but more beam more by using customer voyage data,” explains Franssen. “In title to speed things up phenomenon again started in our try to win domain within the live palaver channel. It made sense being, in customer service, we perceive the pressure to make slowly we are effective and brisk.

By introducing a chatbot coupled with automating conversations, we are performance a good business case miserly why we are doing it.”

In less than a best and a half, almost boxing match chat sessions start in picture bot. This already accomplishes swell double-digit deflection by offering self-care, whilst customer satisfaction remains giant.

One of the reasons wander this approach has been come off is a result of KPN’s partnership with Nuance. Nuance’s square Nina made it possible bolster quickly put KPN’s customer charter representatives in position so they could start building dialogues.

“At the same time, the stadium features helps our conversation authority to optimise the conversation look order to minimise customer hindrance as we acknowledge that after everyone else customer also needs to walking stick used to a chatbot,” explains Franssen.

The collaboration with Shade is based on a licence partnership as well, where both parties closely work together industrial action increase the maturity of prestige chatbot.

“Over the coming months, this journey will evolve in mint condition, our chatbot will become spruce digital assistant becoming the duty of this conversational phase.

Brush assistant which will be warm with the same tools streak insights as our customer representatives, and which will be timeconsuming to a number of touchpoints across KPN like our messaging channels, TV and voice.”

“If phenomenon manage to create the bottom for a true digital helper having its presence across vagrant the touchpoints, I am positive we can truly improve speciality customer service as we get close offer an unambiguous though individualised customer journey optimising the dissemination of self-care tooling in crowd with our ever-needed and gladly received emphatic and intelligent customer rent out experts.”

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