Edward van Wingerden was brought in by Renewi almost a year ago to professionalize customer contact in the Netherlands. His roadmap consists of a number of logical phases and the use of new technology.
Most of his career has Edward van Wingerden spent in the insurance sector: including at Aegon, De Goudse and Coöperatie DELA, often in commercial and business development roles. It was only in his last role at DELA that he was given responsibility for customer contact. This is also his area of work at the international waste-to-product company Renewi, which handles approximately 350.000 contacts (BtB and BtC) annually.
From insurance to 'commercial waste'
Van Wingerden gained extensive experience with customer contact at DELA. The funeral service provider and insurer strove for excellent customer contact: instead of saving costs, there was plenty of room for experimenting. During pilots for new business initiatives, DELA developed end-to-end, Van Wingerden explains, including front and back office services.
Only when it was completely successful could it be embedded in the existing organization – the 'two speed' idea of innovation. “After working for insurers for twenty years, I thought: if I don't switch to another sector now, I will never get out. “The choice for Renewi was quickly made, because making a positive impact on people or the environment is one of my motivations.”
Many insurers rely on rationalization of processes and good customer contact at the moment of truth. To what extent is the waste sector actually customer-oriented?
“I work for the division commercial waste, so the customer contact is largely BtB. Insurers have already made further progress in thinking about customer focus in many areas – for example how they can remove friction from their customers. Many of Renewi's processes come down to complex logistics operations. To illustrate: we have one of the largest truck fleets in the Netherlands with more than 1200 trucks. The drivers need to know not only their routes, but also their customers. If, exceptionally, a pizzeria does not have the roll container ready, the driver will really investigate. But of course that is not possible at all 120 addresses.”
How well can Renewi help its customers to ensure that all processes run smoothly?
“Logistics service providers that can use near-real-time track and trace to let us know what time they will arrive, I think that is a great application that our sector can still learn something from. We also deliver to private individuals, such as a container that you order when you are renovating your house. Much of our customer contact concerns logistics: you were supposed to come, but you didn't come. The trick is to enable your customer contact employees to organize an appointment independently. The next step we still have to take is that the customer can arrange it themselves in our portal or app. On the other hand: if the service has unexpectedly not been good, the customer will be disappointed. Sometimes you have to make amends and human contact is very important. In short, especially when problems arise, you have to be very careful not to say to your customer 'good luck in our portal'. We really have a relationship with our customers. The contracts we conclude are almost always for the long term.”
Increase mandate
“In any case, Renewi has chosen to increase the mandate of our front-line employees, so that employees can immediately implement a solution. The customer is not interested in consultation between the customer contact employee and the planner - for safety reasons, we prefer not to approach the drivers.”
Historically, there are four regional locations where customer contact – especially the 350.000 calls per year are relevant – is handled. That calls for a virtual contact center?
“Of course it is an advantage if the local branch knows the local market well – for example, in Westland with many gardeners you have different challenges than in the city center of Amsterdam with many catering establishments. But the question is whether that knowledge cannot also be organized in another way. Over the past year we have done a lot to achieve greater unity in both systems and processes. Four locations can also be interesting from a WFM point of view: for example, you draw from different parts of the labor market. But at Renewi the bigger picture was missing. How accessible do you want to be and how do you spread the costs? What technology can you use?”
Harmonize processes
Within Renewi, people have started making analyzes and building models, as Van Wingerden calls them. It soon became apparent that four separate locations work better if they are turned into a virtual contact center, which creates much more peace and predictability. Van Wingerden: “Arguments that a Frisian would rather have a 'local' on the phone instead of someone from Eindhoven turned out not to be valid. The processes and working methods were also harmonized as much as possible.”
“The people side of this change is more important than the technical side.”
Renewi now has a customer contact organization of approximately 120 FTE. Windfall: the existing telephony platform was suitable for turning the four locations into a virtual contact center. “The people side of this change is more important than the technical side. The analyzes did reveal some differences in working methods and something new still surfaces from time to time. This will then be discussed and adjusted. We have also invested a lot in coaching and guidance. For many readers and podcast listeners this will be a piece of cake. But at Renewi, all this still had to be set up properly. Phase 1 was about structure, competencies and capacity in order.”
From basic order to quality
“Now that structure, competencies and capacity are in place, we arrive at phase two of the roadmap: quality. Without capacity it becomes difficult to work on your quality. We work on quality on two axes: regularly training and coaching employees so that their skills are up to date. We started that at the end of last year. We also have our customer care program with all kinds of components to ensure that we help the customer better. This also includes standards, for example: how often can a customer call for a delivery that has not taken place? On the other hand, we will not work with internal SLAs with bonus-malus rules, because we are one Renewi. You can bet that a planner will be disappointed if a trip goes wrong and he or she has to work overtime. Pointing fingers won't get you any further. But joint agreements at management team level about service provision are necessary, including an annual plan and a joint assignment with a commitment.”
Investing in services
The third phase, according to Van Wingerden, is making investments that will improve Renewi's services. For customer contact, this means, for example, improving the self-service portal and providing targeted support to employees.
“Instead of them helping the system, the system should help them. The great promise hanging over the market is of course the use of generative AI. I've seen some very promising demos in recent months. Think of agents who are pushed real-time knowledge articles during the conversation. Or next best action and automatic summaries including confirmation email to the customer. These are nice applications, but they do not yet work flawlessly for the Dutch language area. So applications of GenAI are not on Renewi's schedule for next quarter, so to speak.”
“A construction contractor doesn't spend eight hours a day behind a laptop – so good luck with your mining environment or a chatbot.”
“What do you let your customer do themselves? What does the customer like to do themselves? In my opinion, that is the tension that everyone has to deal with in customer contact. When do we let computer systems help us a little? I think that we at Renewi have to be very aware of the types of customers we serve. A construction contractor does not spend eight hours a day behind a laptop - so good luck with your mining environment or a chatbot. Schiphol, definitely one of our flagship accounts, is really different from the pizzeria we talked about at the beginning of this conversation. Although some things are of course generic, one size fits all is not going to work.”
Not all tech solutions are always applicable to everyone
“Also from the perspective of the technology push, not everything is just applicable. With our CX team we always look at the 'jobs to be done' for our customers and thus make the choice to develop new functions in the portal and app. Our company has a front and a back: we not only collect, but also make it suitable for reuse and recycling. Renewi has to deal with major differences in regulations within waste flows, which means that in some cases you have to register much more than in others, also within the chain. In addition, we and our customers must report on, for example, CO2 emissions. Our customers can already retrieve certain information from the portal. The CSRD legislation will only increase this need. Insight into waste flows helps us to process these materials into new materials together with our customers.”
Finally. Renewi also has activities in Belgium. How does this work together when it comes to further professionalizing customer contact?
“I have line responsibility in the Netherlands; my program role is intended for across countries. I have a colleague in Belgium with whom I have regular contact. The roadmap is largely similar. The ways of working are also being examined in Belgium. In Belgium, Renewi has already made quite some progress with new models for sales and operations planning, which is close to customer contact. I think that our Belgian colleagues have already made some progress in chain-based thinking. In the Netherlands, we have put a relatively large amount of energy into a 360-degree customer view in Salesforce. Why should you have to drag an email to your CRM package while you can also work with email to case? Another thing is that the divisions within Renewi will work together more, for example on ERP issues. Some of this now also falls within my scope. Yes, customer operations is a good starting point for this – this is where all the questions come together, which also gives you a good insight into how chains function.” (Ziptone/Erik Bouwer)
About Renewi - Renewic (pronounced 'new' in English) is a waste-to-product company that, with 6.500 employees, gives new life to discarded materials every day. The company has a network of 165 locations across Europe. Renewi thinks differently about waste and sees it as an opportunity to achieve less waste and pollution, smarter (re)use of scarce raw materials and a reduction in CO2 emissions. Renewi was founded in 2017 following a merger between Shanks Group and Van Gansewinkel Groep. The organization now has 8.000 employees who work from 198 offices spread across nine countries in Europe and North America.
Want to know more about Renewi's customer contact strategy? Listen to the Inspire Customer Contact Café podcast.
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