Next year, the Belgian trade association Customer Contact & CXForum wants to make choices regarding the emphasis in its activities and spread its wings in French-speaking Belgium, says director Sandra Rens.

 

Sandra Rens looks back with satisfaction on the Customer Contact & CXForum conference held last month in Grimbergen.

"It Congress is growing every year, and a close-knit community is forming. The evaluation scores are also good: on a scale of 1 to 5, our last conference scored a 4,46. The contributions made by our premium partners, together with their clients, were particularly well received.

Growth

She believes membership growth could be accelerated. "Suppliers—premium partners, as we call them—are eager to get on board. While we've gained six or seven new members from businesses (with a customer contact center, ed.), it's still a bit harder to convince them to join. Apparently, the customer contact center doesn't get the budget for this."

De federation Things are going well, says Rens, but: "The bigger we get, the more we can do for the community. The members of our board of directors, which has largely been renewed, are doing a lot of work in this regard. Not only do they play a role in member account management, they also recruit members and provided assistance during the conference – for example, by handing out badges to attendees. I'm very happy with that."

French-speaking Belgium

Next year, Customer Contact & CXForum will focus its activities on three pillars: EX, CX, and AI. Rens explains: “Each pillar has its own event, where we want to inspire visitors by featuring customers and experts. We're also investing heavily in Access All Areas, our company visits, next year. We've noticed that members are eager to participate. We also want to expand our reach in French-speaking Belgium. In short, in addition to the conference and the Access All Areas events, we'll be organizing additional events, starting with a CX event. We want to expand our reach to the market.”

The program Happy Customer Charter, which was already put on hold last year, will not be resumed for the time being. It's not currently a priority for the members, but if that changes, the federation will pick it up, according to Rens.

Furthermore, there is close cooperation with VDAB We're working with them to develop new competency profiles. We've also gathered input from various companies through our board of directors. How can we attract good people and how can we best train them?

Vision document AI

An agreement has been reached with the Dutch KSF that both federations will keep each other informed of their activities. Collaboration is also possible on content—for example, the vision document on AI.

We will also increasingly focus on supporting companies in Belgium with relevant tools and information and strengthening the network. A vision document on AI will be available by the end of this year.

While the KSF has a sister employers' organization (WFC) that focuses on collective labor agreements and employment conditions, Rens doesn't want to get involved in union negotiations. "Customer contact centers are present in all sectors; we're not a sector ourselves," says Rens.

(Ziptone/Erik Bouwer)

Customer Experience, Featured Customer Contact