Interview Online retailer!

We were recently interviewed as an expert on customer contact by online retailer magazine. Read the entire interview here!

Customer service as a valuable marketing tool

Customer contact is generally still seen too much as a necessary evil. "A missed opportunity," thinks Floris Spangenberg of SpangenbergGroup, a specialist in customer service. "Webshops that take customer contact seriously look not only at what it costs, but at what it delivers. A well-designed customer service is a valuable marketing tool."

Webshop owners are very good at running the webshop, but often find that effectively and efficiently setting up good customer service and speaking to customers professionally is a skill in itself, Spangenberg observes. "Reachability on the right channels, preferably also outside office hours and on weekends, does not make things easier for the small business owner. Then it can be interesting to outsource your customer service. Peaks and troughs in sales and contact moments often cannot be planned for, even by large organizations. Even then it is nice if you can benefit from the economies of scale of an external customer contact center."

Sales Opportunities

A well-designed customer service system irrevocably pays for itself in the long(er) term, says Spangenberg. "On the one hand, with good customer service, you create additional sales opportunities. Many Web shops see a peak in visits in the evening and on weekends. Make sure you are available at those times for (especially doubting) customers to win them over. Being reachable gives you sales opportunities and if you have contact with your (potential) customer you can create cross-sell and upsell opportunities. Good customer contact can also contribute to optimizing your services. You can use customer questions to better tune your service to their expectations. This ultimately leads to fewer contact moments, better service and a more positive customer experience. You can quite easily align your internal business processes with customer needs based on customer feedback. That not only saves you money by reducing unnecessary customer contact, it also gives you a competitive advantage.

Perfect service

These days, there are a huge number of channels on which to set up customer service. Spangenberg recommends following a clear strategy. "Determine internally (but also partly based on customer feedback) through which channels you would like to service the customer. Many Web shops tend to embrace all channels and then provide mediocre service on those channels. It is better to choose a limited number of channels and offer perfect service on them. Because of the wide range of channels, we also see that customers often use multiple channels interchangeably, which actually increases the number of contact moments. For example, they send an email and then call after it. If you make sure that you can be reached on the channels that you can support well and on the preferred channels of your customers, you are doing well. Customers always prefer good service through a limited number of clear channels over a multitude of channels where mediocre and/or unclear service is provided."

Pain Points

SpangenbergGroup specializes in customer contact. "We are traditionally an interim management and consulting firm and optimize customer contact for small to large international organizations," Spangenberg explains. "From as little as 25 customer contacts per day, it can already be interesting to outsource customer service. Incidentally, our greatest strength lies not only in speaking to customers professionally across all possible channels, but especially in thinking along and improving processes based on the customer experience. We generally get to the bottom of those pain points quickly, so that customers end up contacting us much less. We just really enjoy helping companies optimize their services based on customer contact."

Close to the source

SpangenbergGroup's services are of interest to all organizations dealing with customer contact in both B2C and B2B. "We work with different teams. Depending on the customer profile, we work with dedicated or non-dedicated (or blended) teams. The latter is interesting for clients with low volumes, who still want to benefit from extended opening hours and thus can easily absorb peaks/downturns. A unique aspect of our service is that we log into our clients' systems whenever possible so that we do not have to do complex system integrations. In addition, we offer customer service in several languages: Dutch, English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. This is especially interesting for webshops. We have many webshops that operate in (parts of) Europe. We offer them carefree customer service in the languages and channels relevant to them all under one roof. Webshops that are primarily active nationally are therefore really much quicker to take the step beyond the national borders."

About us

Do you want really good customer service through the channels of your choice and at those times when it is desirable for your customers but can't manage to organize it yourself? Take a look at our blogs on outsource customer service, the benefits thereof also for low volumes and why your customer service is an essential part of your marketing. We can help you realize the perfect customer service. The joys, but not the burdens of good customer contact.

We can help you ensure that your customer service is good customer service. Just good customer service where the basics are in order. Where customer contacts add value to the customer experience. We relieve you in the area we are good at (customer service) so you can concentrate worry-free on what you do best. Sound good? Get in touch.

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What our customers say about our services

 5/5

As a start-up, we were looking for a scalable solution for our international customer service. We then started a partnership with SpangenbergGroep. In the years that followed, we grew rapidly and SpangenbergGroep ensured that our customer service grew nicely along with us. From a few hundred interactions per month to a few hundred interactions per day across all possible channels. In particular, its flexibility and ability to completely unburden us have enabled us to grow from start-up to multinational.

"Our collaboration has now been running for almost 2 years and I must say it has exceeded my expectations. It is always difficult to convey product content knowledge remotely and this has also forced us to look at our own documentation and training courses. Working together has taught us, at least me, that it is unnecessary and actually undesirable to transfer all knowledge in this way. For instance, we now have comprehensive lists and work instructions, where before we built on the individual knowledge of our own team. Why go it alone when we know more together? In other words, why do it the hard way when it can be done together."

In our peak season, we had to deal with a large increase in customer inquiries. Since we operate in almost all European countries, this was a challenge. We started looking for a partner who could support us in Dutch, Spanish, Italian, German, French and English. In addition, we wanted support on telephony, e-mail, chat and ticketing. In the end, we chose SpangenbergGroep. We have now been working with them for 5 years. In the high season we need a lot of staff and in the low season a lot less.

We have our own internal call center where we handle much of our customer service inquiries ourselves. SpangenbergGroup is a flexible shell for us. We have a permanent staff and SpangenbergGroup's team supports us when it's busy. In this way, we avoid a queue for our customers. The employees of SpangenbergGroep carry out almost all tasks, which means that they fully participate as the first line. This gives us the flexibility to be easily accessible even when we are busy.

With our webshop, we wanted to expand into Germany. We ourselves did not have any German-speaking employees who could answer customer service questions. SpangenbergGroup is now helping us with German customer service so that we can simply provide good accessibility for our German customers as well.