2018 – 2020 Lead Technique Customer Service Innovation (aka Product Owner / Product Manager)
Before the Corona crisis, contact center employees did not work from home. At the time we had the modest ambition, in line with our 2024 vision, to fire up small initiatives in 2020 to explore the possibilities for Service Experts (agents) to work from home, and what impact that would have. The crisis forced us to accelerate these efforts..
An important question to be investigated was:
How can we enable ‘Work From Home’ for our Service Experts and ensure a balance between a safe working environment and the freedom we grant Service Experts?
Role & Activities
- Ensuring that IT teams could work on this challenge with focus;
- Collaborating with internal stakeholders (IT security, legal) and external stakeholders (contact centers) in a turbulent time;
- Helping form a multidisciplinary project team that was able to successfully lead this mission from start to finish.
Challenges
- How could we make our (inhouse) software suitable for ‘Work From Home’ ( in 6 weeks)?
- How could we give our (+600) Service Experts maximum freedom in how they do their work, while protecting the important data?
- How could we make the right choices quickly and efficiently together with our remote (due to lockdown) IT team?
Results
Currently bol.com works with approximately 700 Service Experts mainly on chat and email from home. In the beginning it took some time to get used to this remote and virtual situation, but everyone has always been really motivated to offer the best bol.com worthy service from home to all the bol.com customers.
Although we are still learning, this behavior also reflects on the KPIs. The latter are on par or sometimes even higher compared to the brick and mortar sites.
Too much text? Ok! Some stockphotos in the absence of suitable material
