‘The solution is complete, flexible and innovative and the collaboration is very close’

Vattenfall needs little introduction. The Swedish energy supplier, still known as Nuon in the Netherlands until March 2019, distinguishes itself from other energy suppliers in several areas. Bas Verstraten, Campaign Manager Telemarketing Vattenfall, on the role Contact Center Live plays in this.

People’s Work

Vattenfall’s great distinctiveness lies in keeping the customer in mind. We do this first of all by ensuring that we can achieve a fossil-free life within one generation. From research shows that young people are very concerned about climate change and additional natural disasters. To address these concerns, we are developing innovative solutions to enable a fossil-free life. This puts us at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable energy system. But that eye for the customer also manifests itself in the way we look at telemarketing. Telemarketing is people work and we want to reflect that.

Living Lab

Until about ten years ago – when we were still known as Nuon in the Netherlands – we had outsourced our telemarketing to partners. To get a better feel for how we could align telemarketing with our philosophy, we decided to set up an in-house telemarketing department. A nice testing ground, but at the same time a benchmark for other parties. Then you have to look for a pleasant, efficient solution. One of our partners worked to their full satisfaction with Hermes.NET from Contact Center Live. Because the system is relatively easy to deploy, is very scalable and stable, and offers many features, it was our choice. We haven’t gone back to that since.

Nice piece of customization

Telemarketing is under pressure and highly regulated. To avoid potential customer irritation, Vattenfall uses a campaign strategy to regulate contact pressure. We therefore deploy our contact channels very carefully. If we prevent someone from receiving three emails, two phone calls and four letters from one provider, that’s much more customer-friendly. That is why we keep a central database of exactly who has been contacted, when and how. All our sales and marketing channels are also hooked up to it, so that everyone always knows what the status is and we don’t overload people. In order to properly link Contact Center Live’s solution to our central database, Contact Center Live’s team delivered a nice piece of custom work.

Right customer contact at the right time

An aggressive approach does not fit with our philosophy of meeting customer needs in the best possible way. We therefore regularly have ourselves and our systems audited by DMCC. That our efforts are successful is also reflected in the figures: we score above the market average, and the complaint rate is below the industry average.

Central dialer

About three years ago, we switched to a central dialer. With multiple parties doing telemarketing for us, we needed a piece of efficiency. Then the AVG also came around the corner. Together with Contact Center Live, we started looking for the best solution, and that was the central dialer. By using a central dialer and plugging your partners into it, you can call much more efficiently and manage the data from a central point. An additional advantage is that all calls are immediately available for quality checks. This gives you a much more objective picture of the quality of your telemarketing.

Evaluating together

Working with Contact Center Live has been very pleasant. We have also worked with other programs, but they often focus mainly on inbound traffic. Moreover, you often have to deal with larger companies that are a bit more cumbersome. Contact Center Live has remained small enough to be flexible. And of course it is nice that they are also available outside office hours. If we think a problem is important enough to call in someone outside office hours, they are there for us. We can switch quickly and they think along with new techniques. We evolve together and nowadays co-productions are a regular occurrence. If we have certain requirements from the business, Contact Center Live develops them in such a way that other clients can also benefit. Many reports and functions are ‘tailor-made’ so that both parties make progress. It does not feel like a customer-supplier relationship, but more like a partnership. Also, the application is constantly evolving, so we are constantly moving with the times. The solution is complete, flexible and innovative and the collaboration is very close. It is not for nothing that we have been a satisfied customer for so long.