How Attentia fixes things together with its customers
When customers flagged its online platform, the Belgian HR and well-being partner invited them in to rebuild it together. When small businesses felt overwhelmed by a safety report, one team rewrote it. Both fixes started with feedback in Hello Customer.
Attentia is an HR and well-being partner for Belgian employers. It combines a social secretariat, which looks after payroll, HR administration and legal advice, with an external service for prevention and protection at work: health and safety advice, company visits and training through the Attentia Academy. Its customers range from large companies to the bakery and the dentist around the corner.
Customer experience sits with Klaartje Devreese. Many of her colleagues talk to customers every day, and her job is to bring all those voices into the organisation as one picture. She runs the feedback programme in Hello Customer, sets up the touchpoints and questionnaires, and turns what comes back into recommendations for management.
When customers feel involved, and feel that you are doing something with their feedback, that really makes the difference.
When contracts renew every year, every voice counts
Attentia works business to business, and its contracts are renewed year after year. The people who answer a survey are the payroll officers and HR professionals who work with Attentia every day, so the team wants to know how each of them feels well before renewal. Three things made that harder than it sounds.
Colleagues speak to customers daily, but each of them sees one customer at a time. Attentia wanted a common view of satisfaction, and of whether it delivers what it promises in marketing and sales.
Some feedback points at something that can't be solved in a week. While the work is under way, customers don't feel the difference yet and may conclude that nothing is happening.
Making the case to management meant screenshots, filters and slides for every touchpoint. The more hours went into showing the insights, the fewer were left to act on them.
Two kinds of survey, one owner per touchpoint
Attentia combines a yearly look at the whole relationship with short surveys right after a service. Every touchpoint has a named owner, and Klaartje keeps the overview.
All customers get a relational survey once a year, sometimes twice. It shows how the relationship is doing long before a contract comes up for renewal.
Transactional surveys follow a specific service, such as a company visit or a training at the Attentia Academy.
Each answer arrives with extra data: the company, its sector and its segment. That is how Attentia can compare groups of customers.
Things sometimes go wrong once. Klaartje looks for the feedback that keeps coming back across many customers, and for what Attentia does really well.
After every relational survey she writes up the findings with recommendations, so management can take them into the projects for the coming year.
Team leaders and their managers get a report every month. The board of directors gets one every six months.
Every touchpoint has a single point of contact. When a customer leaves a score and a reason, that person follows up.
Some fixes need a budget and a roadmap. Others sit within one team's own reach and can start right away.
A platform rebuilt with the people who use it
Feedback showed that customers expected more from the online platform they work in every day. Attentia decided to rebuild it, and to do that together with them.
Comments about the platform kept coming back in the surveys. People had grown used to fast, easy digital tools in their private lives, and expected the same at work.
This was a pattern, and solving it would take a roadmap and real investment. Attentia's IT people are experts in what they do, but they don't run a payroll. To build the right thing, they needed the users in the room.
Attentia invited customers into a community. For two years they came to the office for workshops and shaped the applications with the team, following a clear roadmap so everyone knew what to expect and when.
Payroll officers and HR professionals who use the platform every day
Regular workshops at Attentia's offices, in co-creation with the people who build the applications
The roadmap is delivered and the community still meets, now on connection days about legal updates and the content of the job
Attentia marked the community members in its survey data. Their NPS rose fastest, and it is still the highest of all customers.
We felt that this was happening. Now I could actually prove it with figures.Klaartje DevreeseCustomer Experience Manager, Attentia
Five priorities instead of one long list
Attentia's health and safety consultants visit companies to check that they are ready for an inspection. The customer receives a report afterwards, followed by a short survey.
Customers liked the consultants: friendly, thinking along, looking at things from their side. For a baker, a butcher or a dentist, though, the report itself was a lot to take in. How was anyone supposed to get all of this done?
The report listed every finding in the same way. Attentia's consultants know which points an inspection will never accept, and which ones can wait a little. That knowledge wasn't in the report.
Every report now opens with the five things to fix first. The team leader made the change within her own team, with no project and no extra budget.
What used to be the reason they gave us a 7, or even a 6, turned into a 9.
From screenshots to a question
Reporting used to take most of Klaartje's time. With Ask ISAAC she puts her question to the platform, and spends the hours she wins on improvements.
- 1
Take a screenshot of the score for one touchpoint
- 2
Set the filter again for a segment, take another screenshot
- 3
Paste it all into slides and rebuild the numbers in a spreadsheet
What are my main improvement areas for this touchpoint?
Show me the evolution over the past three years.
Two of Klaartje's own questions. The answers come from Attentia's feedback, inside the platform.The AI is part of Hello Customer, so nothing has to be set up on the side and Attentia's feedback doesn't go into an external chat tool.
Klaartje knows the business well enough to question an answer that looks odd. A quick cross-check comes before any report goes out.
Now I see this huge shift of time being freed up. It's a game changer.Klaartje DevreeseCustomer Experience Manager, Attentia
Easy for everyone who follows up feedback
For Attentia's team leaders, answering customers is one task among many. The platform has to work for them as well as for Klaartje.
Klaartje gives every new colleague a short introduction. After that they work in the platform on their own, without hour-long tutorials.
Klaartje has worked with Hello Customer for years and has seen it grow with every release. The last four years, she says, brought the biggest steps.
Results
Attentia acts on feedback at two speeds. Patterns that touch many customers become projects, with customers in the room and figures that show management the work is paying off. Smaller issues are solved by the team that owns the touchpoint. Either way, the customer hears back from a person.
More from Klaartje
You have an objective, measurable way of showing it to management. It makes the discussions easier: you don't stay in the discussion, you start acting.
In a B2B context, every piece of feedback is important. It's the voice of someone who might otherwise leave, or of someone who says: I really love you guys, you are the best.
It's provided to us in the platform, so it's safe and secure. Our data doesn't get fed into an external chat.
I want to stress how easy it is to work with the platform, even if you're a new user. I don't have to give one-hour tutorials.
I gave a presentation in our team meeting with Ask ISAAC as the example of how AI makes life more efficient.
It's really cool to see how Hello Customer evolves. It makes my work a lot easier.
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