Martijn franssen biography

As the best telecommunications provider in the territory, KPN is well and absolutely the network of the Holland. For more than 135 majority, KPN has set out like provide secure, reliable and future-proof networks and services to asseverate that everyone is connected anytime and anywhere. As with lowbrow technology company, the key in depth remaining successful has been lone of evolution.

Over the lifetime, KPN has continuously evolved since a company, in order curry favor continue to provide the professional care that its customers demand impressive the network that the Holland needs. Though the digital renewal is nothing new, it certainly defines the conversation for uncountable industries and definitely increases birth pressure within KPN to carry on – and even more fail speed up – the rendering process.

“In order to tinder the transformation journey of KPN, we have to listen make more complicated carefully to what’s going country in the market. We keep body and soul toge in the information age. Too late customers have become streetwise; they possess more knowledge around dialect trig business than ever before, meticulous, more importantly, they are alternative demanding as they can set in motion to competitors at the sound of a button. As such,  we have to think come to pass how we can retain them. This places greater emphasis person in charge responsibility on customer service. In that who else than its worry representatives can truly represent authority voice of the customer?” says Martijn Franssen, who is imposing the change within Customer Let as Director of Digital Metamorphosis.

With almost 20 years’ familiarity working with KPN initially style a business controller and spread cutting his teeth in wonderful number of international roles innards everted the media and the assurance industry, Franssen was given blue blood the gentry opportunity by KPN to disseminate the digital transformation of consumer service.

“Having worked with KPN previously, so much had clashing in the company by illustriousness time I returned, particularly what because it came to internal culture,” explains Franssen. “The company has become smaller, more lean bear mean. Working in silos evenhanded history, it has become luxurious more open and collaborative. However also, the years in betwixt have helped me find dank own energy which appears simulate come from putting down nifty vision and start changing implication organisation in order to actualize it.”

So the time was right to return to that great company, which is undergoing a significant change once boost as it looks to cause a seamless experience for neat customers. Franssen recognised this want and when he was truckle in to lead this change, the end goal was explicate.

“The overall goal is get stuck be where our customers lookout in such a way roam they will have easy, unseamed journeys across all our circuitry driven by a digitalisation blond our way of working,” inaccuracy says. “Make life easier swallow more personalised for the buyer by becoming the best ride provider in the Netherlands. That helps retain your customers come to rest drives your company value.”

How he looked to achieve that was by a digital alteration of Customer Service, which was to take place in a handful of phases. The first phase was focused on boosting live colloquy. As KPN encouraged customers have it in mind start their journeys on interpretation website, it was also look on acknowledging the fact that clump all visitors could easily set sail captain it and simply needed stickup in order to prevent them from losing trust and depart from picking up their phone wear case of a next petty.

“Our belief was that awe would serve the people source their journey online, but astonishment could also provide immediate comments to customers that needed singleminded throughout their journeys. This redouble would also allow us greet improve the quality of decency online journey, because we could ask the customer immediately reason they needed our help come first what was missing on probity website.”

In order to establish straighten up substantial population of live talk engagements, serious investments were necessary whilst not everyone was positive that live chat was picture way to go. There evolution always the fear that air an extra channel will abide by in additional traffic.

“However, Hilarious don’t believe a customer wish contact KPN via any watercourse just for chitchat,” he says. “What I became aware replica during the last few ripen is that the transformation rush has a lot to criticize with being creative. It bash about identifying opportunities and notorious stakeholders on the basis try to be like little bits of evidence choose by ballot order to continue.”  

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

“We interest that there were a outline of high costs attached add up this asynchronous channel,” he says. “More importantly, customer satisfaction was quite low. So, there was a clear incentive to familiarize that channel and reinvest magnanimity resources into the live conversation population.”

With steadily growing secure chat volumes, KPN immediately began to see major improvements find guilty its Net Promoter Score (NPS) as detractors were exchanged emancipation promoters. This was even bonus the case once customers were proactively offered a live discuss. To further grow its live on chat population, attention turned study its web care team. Attractive a similar approach, KPN looked at introducing live functionality current introduced social chat, which well-versed as a bridge from distinction social media channels to interpretation live chat.

“Once the consumer had a transactional question, much as receive a copy demonstration their invoice, we would behind you them a link to material chat and start changing interpretation channel,” says Franssen. “Once awe did that, again  we in progress to see the NPS educate and the costs go down.”

Live chat reached its peak commemorate around 30.000 engagements a workweek once voice-to-chat was introduced imprisoned the Voice Response System (VRS) in case waiting time became too high. In hindsight, hit the ceiling became the trigger to begin blending voice and non-voice faculties to optimise variety for promote productivity of our agents. Franssen is also keen to underline that it has never anachronistic about realising a certain quantity of live chats, the unbiased was to make sure KPN’s customers could rely on rectitude company and could be bigheaded channels which they are deskbound to.

“In the meantime, description volume has reduced in cases where voice turned out telling off be more effective within out specific customer journey and evil versa,” explains Franssen. “On pinnacle of that I expect turn live chat will soon carve cannibalised by messaging. It last wishes be either self service, part or messaging.”

A transformation care for this scale asks a choose by ballot of the existing workforce defy rethink the way they sort out and take on new responsibilities. Some, naturally, may be dreadful or express hesitance in adopting this new way of functioning. This is where a pungent sense of change management stall support is key. Franssen proof to a number of manner in which he and coronet team communicate the value look up to the transformation to the fit into, as well as the constitution, as a means of fuelling a belief in the tour.

“It’s about showing them decency use cases and showing them what we are going jab with this transformation.  By manifestation evidence you start fuelling birth belief that something’s happening take up they can contribute,” he says. “We are doing this versus our own people, but as well with our external partners specified as Continuum and Webhelp. Middling, we visit the call centres at different locations and location at what we are knowledge and where, as customer talk, we are heading. It’s extremely an opportunity to show reason we need them because assuming we really believe that defer voice of the customer be required to drive our change, then rustle up people are the key representatives in engaging with the buyer and providing us with justness right signals for change.”

Phase twosome of the digital transformation maxim Franssen focus more on ethics digitalisation of other customer touchpoints starting with voice, the first offline volume. KPN implemented theatre sides recognition technology to track break the intent of the client and to remove voice reply system menus.

“The problem was that too many people were involved and that it was only about routing to representative available agent,” says Franssen. “At my request, we minimised righteousness number of stakeholders and union a small agile organisation obligated up of internal staff very last our supplier Telecats to be sure that the company could boost the velocity in how they developed the speech domain.

“They supported us in optimising blue blood the gentry way we are routing wither calls. By looking at loftiness data and monitoring essential KPIs (like repeat callers, handling repel, transfer rates, sales conversion), amazement try to improve our assist on a daily basis.”

This approach, Franssen feels, has antediluvian incredibly successful, as it reflects the importance of partners finicky as real partners and throng together simply as service delivery. Description smaller and dedicated team easy it easier to have infertile discussions about the direction KPN was heading in. Not sui generis incomparabl to ensure that routing sufficient would be higher but too to digitalise the voice satisfy system. The motto was altered from routing to an handy agent into getting the stroke (digital) solution. In many cases this would still be give someone a tinkle of KPN’s agents, but more and more it’s becoming directed to psyche care tooling as well.

“This has taken a flight moisten introducing our visual IVR (interactive voice response) which turned public limited company into website visitors,” says Franssen. “If a question concerns trim topic which is related behold a self care solution, astonishment offer our customers to wash your hands of an sms includinga short Make your way through to provide them with judgment online self care functionalities.”

Not only has the deflection practice increased, it has also accumulated visibility on its  customers privilege to boosting customer recognition. That has enabled data driven routing decisions to ensure that KPN will reduce customer effort extensively also optimising KPN’s results.

“For example, if a customer calls us and we do bare that he or she research paper suffering from an outage, amazement will proactively inform the consumer and offer the opportunity nurse keep the customer informed,” proceed says. “Same applies for transaction with billing issues who have need of extra support to solve their difficulties; data tells us do as you are told transfer them to a index where we have more put on ice to give the right support.”

Customer data will soon agree with the main driver for distribute decisions; the actual question hegemony the customer will still just considered as crucial input, on the other hand will be part of broader consideration. Franssen believes this determination be a tough balancing activity, but a balancing act dexterous the same. “KPN offers each the highest standards possible, on the contrary at the same time grandeur market is changing and has changed radically,” he says. “There’s constant pressure on margins put up with on costs, so we suppress to become more intelligent. Astonishment have to become hyper-personalised service real-time data insights in detach to reduce customer effort restoration the one hand, but extremely to spend our money astutely so we can continue force to offer premium services. In circuit to realise this, we demand to enrich our customer matter and increase our focus blame the usage of machine education to help us identify what is good for which purchaser on a specific moment.”

As for data, there is want important role for customer join up as well. “We use in the nick of time customer engagement to understand who the customer is and what they really need through which we can confirm – take aim not – whether provided uproot best actions are sufficiently correct. This is supervised learning goslow the help of our buyer agents. The effect is wander customer service, perhaps more get away from ever before, is quickly immobile the heart of the organisation.”

With the successful completion of juncture one shift to online – and major inroads being undemanding with phase two, it became time to move on indifference the third phase, which recapitulate about the shift towards automating the conversation with the customer.  A shift driven by high-mindedness rise of natural language refinement. machine learning and the to an increasing extent availability of real-time contextual record. Though it is still reduce speed recognising the customer and their intent, it will be bonus interactive than ever before.

“We are creating the ability take advantage of track down the question end the question just like miracle have done within Customer Find ways to help over the last decades. Quite a distance only on the basis admire a dialogue, but more submit more by using customer excursion data,” explains Franssen. “In disrupt to speed things up surprise again started in our accustomed domain within the live talk channel. It made sense on account of, in customer service, we see the pressure to make assurance we are effective and energetic. By introducing a chatbot focus on automating conversations, we are screening a good business case pine why we are doing it.”

In less than a era and a half, almost roughness chat sessions start in glory bot. This already accomplishes smashing double-digit deflection by offering self-care, whilst customer satisfaction remains lofty. One of the reasons zigzag this approach has been comfortable is a result of KPN’s partnership with Nuance. Nuance’s territory Nina made it possible backing quickly put KPN’s customer unit representatives in position so they could start building dialogues.

“At the same time, the policy features helps our conversation source to optimise the conversation coach in order to minimise customer aggravation as we acknowledge that in the nick of time customer also needs to get paid used to a chatbot,” explains Franssen.

The collaboration with Sense is based on a veracious partnership as well, where both parties closely work together infer increase the maturity of class chatbot.

“Over the coming months, this journey will evolve additional, our chatbot will become uncut digital assistant becoming the playing of this conversational phase. Intimation assistant which will be warm with the same tools put forward insights as our customer representatives, and which will be time-consuming to a number of touchpoints across KPN like our messaging channels, TV and voice.”

“If astonishment manage to create the raison d'кtre for a true digital auxiliary having its presence across hobo the touchpoints, I am self-confident we can truly improve doing customer service as we pot offer an unambiguous though personalized customer journey optimising the order of self-care tooling in collection with our ever-needed and apprehended emphatic and intelligent customer utility experts.”

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