Over the past six months there has been plenty of buzz about customer contact in 'the media'. Marcel Levi got excited in February ineffective technology, in the same month Guido van den Berg wrote about it in Trouw exploding customers on the phone, and in April the Flemish Knack editor Ann Peuteman asked for one man on the phone. Also in April: it file bunq exploded.

The pieces of that last blast have still not all been collected, but in the meantime customer contact professionals can prepare for the next customer contact debacle. Small consolation for those who are currently getting worked up about 'the image': every sector and industry is constantly in 'the media' in all kinds of ways. Fall Linda!, Donald Duck and Village sounds is that also included or does the definition depend on the news topic?

Pension funds

In any case, after the energy companies, the pension funds are now a candidate on the list of organizations that are difficult to reach. Because if we are to believe Nibud, more than half of Dutch people know little or nothing about the new pension system.

Those who say they do have knowledge of the new system are often unable or barely able to identify what the upcoming changes entail, Nibud concludes based on a poll. The majority of pensioners will receive a variable pension benefit in the future, but this seems to be only gradually getting through.

We have learned from bunq that people really want to call if their bank account shows a different balance than expected.

It is understandable that Nibud advocates fully focusing on information. Employers and pension funds should also practice 'expectation management'. And policyholders could take more action themselves. In the poll among 1500 policyholders, those policyholders mentioned the website mijnpensioenoverzicht.nl most often as a useful source of information. But the level of knowledge is still low, according to Nibud. That does not bode well if the pension of policyholders actually changes. After all, we learned from the bunq debacle that people really want to call if their bank account shows a different balance than expected.

Scatter

Now there is also a windfall. Although the final 'entry date' will probably be January 1, 2028, a small number of pension providers will already switch to the new system as of January 1, 2025. The rest will follow at the beginning of 2026 or the beginning of 2027. This gradual transition is good, because it spreads both the panic and the questions. If pension providers use this period to learn from each other, the volumes of requests may be reduced slightly.

But still: in the pension world too, it is expected that policyholders will contact them more often. APG not only expects more questions, but also more complex questions and has therefore been preparing for a long time. There is a good chance that reports will appear in the media (or parliamentary questions will be asked) in early January 2025 about pension providers that are difficult to reach and angry pension customers.

Of course, there is an opportunity for pension providers to anticipate, but if you don't know exactly how your customers react, it remains difficult to scale up. And even this potential queue drama has a positive element: it underlines the raison d'être of customer contact. If organizations want or need to implement changes, they can communicate and inform what they want, but if customers are not properly informed, the contact center is the lifeline. (Ziptone/Erik Bouwer)

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