Becoming the most customer-friendly service provider in the market

KidsLife is a Belgian child benefit fund. In 2018 they underwent a radical change from a B2B  to a B2C  market. None of the players in the industry can differentiate on a product or price level. Experience and quality of service are the key drivers to increasing market share.

Their challenges:

1. KidsLife wants to differentiate itself based on its services. They want their employees evolve from legal experts to customer advisors who help the customer in a correct and understandable way.
2. KidsLife wants to improve the availability of information. Customers did not always find the right information, or it was sometimes presented too technically.
3. KidsLife wants to optimize the help desk. Due to a lack of clear information for customers, the helpdesk had to handle many calls. This led to long waiting times and difficult accessibility.
4. KidsLife changed from B2B to B2C. The entire organization now focuses on an end customer who was previously out of the picture. All internal and external operational processes therefore had to be aligned with that customer.

1. Increase simplicity and ease of use 

“Within the industry, customer experience is the only differentiating factor because we are all required to pay out the same amount. We can make the difference through service excellence. Is the customer getting all the information in an easy, and understandable way? And secondly, convenience: how easy is KidsLife’s onboarding? What we learned from Hello Customer is that we did not always give a clear answer, often it was still formulated too technically. Therefore, we have now implemented a small quick win. At the end of a conversation, the case manager asks, “Was this an answer to your question?”. This allows the customer to confirm for themselves whether it was, or say no and get further help.”

“In addition, we also placed a contact form on the website. The most frequently asked questions are prefilled, redirecting the customer to a number of FAQ pages. We see that in many cases the form is not even submitted anymore, because the customer has found the right information in the meantime. That has greatly increased convenience, but also accessibility.”

2. Improve accessibility

“Being quick and accessible is a measure for many customers to choose or change child support funds. In the feedback we discovered that accessibility and long waiting times were the biggest pain points with customers. We changed our organization for a part based on that. We now work at team level and cross-teams. In the past, customers at KidsLife knew who they would get on the line when they entered a phone number, but that naturally caused delays in the process. Now if one team is too busy, we adjust the schedule. As a result, we now have an average answering rate of 87% in 2021, up from 75% in 2020.”

“In addition, it’s also important that everyone can actually handle a customer’s file seamlessly. Thanks to Hello Customer and customer input, it has become clear how important it is for our customer advisors to take notes to keep track of how far along a file is. As part of that, we are investing in a CRM system starting this year.”

3. Feedback to create a customer-centric mindset 

“Three years ago we had the very specific challenge: how do we go from B2B to B2C? Suddenly the customer had to become much more central to our organization. The end customer was mainly using e-mail and telephony to reach us, but we had no visibility into the quality of our service. Hello Customer is a measure to achieve that on two levels. On the one hand, we measure the CSAT score to determine pure satisfaction. On the other hand, we can really get to work with the feedback. Because of the simplicity of the survey, a score and open feedback, many people fill out the survey, and you get a lot of return.” 

“In practice, the scores are shared with the teams. There is an overall Kidslife satisfaction score of 84 and that serves as a benchmark for all teams. There is also a team of customer ambassadors made up of team members from 20 different operational teams.

Every two months they dive into the feedback and define improvement actions. These can be quick wins, but can just as easily be process improvements such as changing the online portal.”

1. Process improvements based on feedback. Customer advisors no longer work individually but in team configurations to better accommodate and distribute the workload. There is also cross-teams working when a team is too busy. This also leads to the implementation of a CRM system to follow up files more easily.
2. 12% increase in telephone answering rate. Thanks to the introduction of a contact form and a FAQ section on the website, KidsLife makes information more readily available to customers. This led to a decrease in the number of calls and an increase in answering rates.
3. Significantly decreased waiting times at the helpdesk. Thanks to the revamped team structure, KidsLife can improve the scheduling of its contact centre and deploy more people when necessary. Thus, customers are helped faster by a KidsLife customer advisor.
4. Coaching of advisors. “Based on customer feedback, KidsLife made a number of improvements in terms of attitude and customer-oriented mindset. On the other hand, KidsLife is committed to the standardization of information. Every manager must have access to the right information to help the customer in a focused way.”