De Volksbank is the fourth bank in the Netherlands and the most idiosyncratic in the list. Not fewer but more offices and customer contact decentralized instead of centrally. Ziptone spoke with Sebastiaan Kalshoven (IT) and Ronald Pieters (retail SNS Bank) about the vision on the customer relationship and its technological consequences.

 

De Volksbank, the successor to SNS Reaal, has been state-owned since 2013, but has recently achieved good results. These are, among other things, the result of explicit choices. If you ask de Volksbank about the customer contact strategy, it turns out that it is organized per brand. The four brands of de Volksbank (head office in Utrecht, approximately three million customers) each have their own area of ​​focus.

Sebastiaan Kalshoven (left in photo), IT director at de Volksbank: “SNS has shops in the street, ASN focuses on digital services and sustainability. At RegioBank, the independent advisor arranges customer contact himself. Our mortgage provider BLG works with intermediaries. Only SNS Bank has the complete customer contact palette in-house: stores, an app, a website and a contact center. The human touch and personal attention always come first. In addition, it was decided two years ago that we wanted to move from service to advice. This also has consequences for customer contact.”

Offices

Some time ago, SNS made a conscious and different choice specifically around that contact center. The bank puts customer relationships first and as part of this, SNS has not reduced, but rather expanded the number of branches in the Netherlands. These offices – shops in SNS jargon – also play a major role in customer contact. Ronald Pieters (right in photo), director of retail and advice at SNS and responsible for the central customer team of SNS: “Customer contact must be simple: we want to connect our customers as much as possible based on recognition with the contact person from the store they last interacted with. have spoken.” To design this internal routing model and the omnichannel approach, de Volksbank mainly looked at large online retailers and, for example, at TUI, where customer contact is also partly local. The employees in the SNS stores now have an important role in customer contact - both for the telephone channel and for the walk-up to the store.

Customer contact to the branches

The result is that SNS's central contact center has been halved in the past two years. It now employs approximately 200 employees, including the second line, which includes various specializations. Most of SNS's customer contact is now carried out in its almost 200 stores. There are almost 950 employees available there, but in practice, according to Pieters, there are approximately 500 employees who, in addition to other tasks, also have structural customer contact by telephone. About 70 percent of the stores are operated by franchisees and the majority of the store employees therefore belong to those franchisees. “The system works well if the branches together handle 80 percent of the calls.”

Building customer relationship

Centralization is a typical efficiency choice. But now that SNS has connected its branches to the virtual contact center, that model appears to be even more favorable. “The savings that have been achieved should provide room for substantive discussions that no longer focus on AHT. So customer contact also provides an opportunity to get to know each other better. Routing the customer to - preferably - a permanent contact person, for this you need to know who is where and who is available. The branches indicate what they contribute to accessibility - only if everyone in the store is busy or the store is closed, the call will be forwarded to the central contact center. Because files are properly maintained, the customer can receive good help regardless of where the call originates. In this way we want to ensure that a relationship can be built up with your own contact person, who is available 24×7. If no contact is made, we want to use our chatbot as a mediator who arranges follow-up contact with this employee.”

Where do you set up a virtual contact center? – With a virtual contact center such as SNS's, there is another management challenge: you have to position your stores in the right place. In addition to the existing customer groups, SNS has started to focus more explicitly on young people. Not only do you need to know the best way to get them into your store, you also need to know their expectations. Pieters: “Young people need personal contact more than baby boomers. But they don't want an 'administrative conversation' where you ask for and enter data. They are very goal-oriented. It also appears that young people see banks as complicated institutions that are mainly there for people with a lot of money. We want to talk to them about their careers and their finances.” The bank has, among other things, the Council of the Future has been set up, with which the bank enters into dialogue with a new generation of banking customers.

Platform choices

Maintaining four brands, each with its own customer contact strategy, is easier if there is a shared platform. Or as Kalshoven says: “Single platform, multi brand. The four brands differ from each other at the front, but at the back there is a generic infrastructure. This also applies to telephony. There is one contact center platform, the brands each use this in their own way. This also applies to the apps: each of which has its own look & feel, but runs on the same platform. This allows De Volksbank to serve a wide range of customers without the need for four separate IT landscapes.”

The generic IT landscape for customer contact is housed in de Volksbank's 'customer contact hub'. Kalshoven: “In that business unit, the roadmap is determined in an agile manner; based on the wishes of the various brands, but also in combination with your own roadmap. Sometimes it's a bit tricky: what gets priority? We mainly look at the value of changes, i.e. at the desired results that a change will produce. In addition, we also have to deal with legacy; we are saying goodbye to this in phases through long-term transformation programs. Legacy does not stop us from innovating.”

Create a roadmap with Sabio

In drawing up and realizing the roadmap, de Volksbank works closely with both the Dutch and British branches of technology partners Wise. The Dutch team consists of five people; the technical implementation is provided by a team in the UK. Some time ago, Sabio was also the party that De Volksbank engaged to help set up the telephony platform. More recently, Sabio helped set up the decentralized design of customer contact. Kalshoven: “That was something they had never seen before at a bank. So they can take that with them to other customers.”

Migration to the Avaya cloud

Also current: Sabio supports de Volksbank in the migration of the on-premise contact center platform - part of the legacy - to a cloud solution. Kalshoven: “Two years ago it was decided to replace our on-premise variant of Avaya, which until then had been managed in-house by the IT organization of de Volksbank, for Avaya's cloud-based solution, based on a managed services construction. This fits within our IT policy of not managing standard IT services ourselves, but purchasing them from specialists.” That is why Sabio also provides capacity for the WFM and QM functionality of Verint that the bank uses. “Sabio is not only important to us because they provide development and implementation capacity. Sabio also provides knowledge, expertise and a network in the telecom world. For example, telecom players fall short if you want to integrate a new channel such as Telegram or WhatsApp. Sabio can help us with this from A to Z.”

And for us, cultural fit and proximity are essential for a good partnership, Kalshoven believes. “As a result, we often end up with service providers with a Dutch team.”

Avaya isn't necessarily forever

The migration to the Avaya cloud is planned for November. When choosing to retain Avaya, developments surrounding the technology company were expressly taken into account (see box below). For example, various scenarios surrounding the Chapter11 issues were considered, alternative platforms were examined and the consequences of a possible switch to a new platform were mapped out. There were several reasons to stay loyal to Avaya. The cloud migration had already been started and the decentralization of customer contact was also a factor. Or as Pieters puts it: “If you are busy internally establishing good customer contact from the branches, it is not logical that you would suddenly introduce a new software platform during such a change process.”

Avaya – It has been very restless around Avaya for a long time. After the first Chapter 11 proceedings in the US (debt restructuring within a court-protected status) in 2017 there were regular reports of possible takeovers. In 2022, the company ran into problems again and became undergo a second Chapter 11 procedure. This was successfully completed in May this year and the company decided to focus on the further development of the cloud proposition. In 2019 Sabio Group took it Avaya portfolio from KPN about.

Pega for CRM

Optimizing the cloud platform is therefore at the top of the agenda and this also includes integration with Pega, which was later added to the IT landscape to replace the underlying CRM application. “We will then evaluate whether the platform offers sufficient functionality for us and whether all connections and integrations work properly,” says Kalshoven. “Sabio has advised us well in this area and our partnership with them is not dependent on Avaya. But for now there is no reason to change.”

Other innovations

After the migration to the cloud and the integration with Pega (with which we collaborate directly), come the innovations and optimization steps. For example, de Volksbank wants to implement Next Best Action within the app, on the website and within customer contact. And during the COVID19 pandemic, 24sessions was chosen for consultations with customers, but “we are now going back to Teams, which everyone uses internally. That is an example of standardization and rationalization: fewer solutions,” says Kalshoven.

The bank also wants to make more use of data in contact with customers in order to add value, proactively where possible - also to prevent financial problems. Pieters explains: “Our 'arrears' department is called 'financial care' and it prefers to have good conversations to keep you out of misery instead of getting you out of misery. Based on the patterns we see, can we help customers prevent problems?”

Of course, AI is also on the agenda. One of the first applications that comes to mind: generating, validating and logging an automated summary. Pieters emphasizes that an isolated AI environment will be used; Kalshoven adds: “We are now looking at the environment in which we will deploy AI – for example from Verint, Pega or the OpenAI variant itself. It must be accurate and safe. DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act, comes into effect on 1-1-2025, ed.) is coming soon and we want and must comply with that.”

 

About De Volksbank – De Volksbank is the parent company of SNS, ASN Bank, RegioBank and BLG Wonen. The activities are aimed at offering mortgage, payment and savings products for private individuals. With a balance sheet total of €73 billion, De Volksbank was the fourth-largest bank in the Netherlands in 2022. The head office is in Utrecht and employs 3000 employees.

(Ziptone/Erik Bouwer)

Case, Customer Experience, Featured Wise