Customer case

Shuttel: Example of the ultimate guest experience

More efficient services, more channels, and separation between certain customers: Shuttel’s vision for the future of its customer service was clear. Nextview was asked to help this provider of Mobility as a Service to make it happen. Joëlle Stokkel and Rens Greven explain how the partnership with Nextview made them ready for the future. “We have gotten better at what we do. And we couldn’t have done that alone.”

As the Team Leader Customer Services at the Dutch market leader in mobility cards, Rens Greven knows the importance of knowing your customers. Knowing where they come from and usually have to go. That one user likes to combine the train with a public transport bicycle, and the other works from home two days a week. That this one user just became a triplets’ dad, and has to put three Maxi Cosi in the back seat of his lease car. When customers call with a question, it’s nice if they don’t have to tell their story over and over again. But instead get connected to someone who understands their needs, and simply solves the issue.

‘Exceeding customer’s expectation’, his colleague Joëlle Stokkel calls this. As Operations & Development Manager, she has been involved with the optimization of the CRM system for some time, just like Rens and many of their co-workers. It was necessary, for a fast-growing company like Shuttel cannot accommodate the increase in customers with more staff alone. And so they went looking for a partner that would make great customer service possible by designing an ever smarter system, adding new channels such as phone and chat, making the user more self-reliant, and anticipating new developments.

From user to consumer

After all, there are plenty of developments at Shuttel. Since it started in 2014, the company has been working on the mobility of tomorrow every day, initially in line with the mobility policy of the top 500 companies in the Netherlands. With more services and new forms of subscription, the focus soon shifted from the (lease) car to ‘what does it take to get from A to B?’, and ‘last mile solutions’ became part of the service. Due to the expansion with adjacent services - such as refuelling, charging, and the link with HR - the range has been expanded even further.

Now Shuttel is on the eve of yet another new phase, in which the user, first and foremost, is a consumer who wants a good mobility product, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. This is, after all, high on the wish list of most employees. Preferably as personal and flexible as possible, because today’s professional wants to take the train to the office one day, and work from home or go to an appointment by car the other.

Excellent service

For most employers, this is not a core business. For Shuttel, it is. Every day, nearly 3,500 unique Shuttel customers and over 150,000 users make more than 300,000 travel movements. Since the company took on the task of organizing mobility for employees for FrieslandCampina, more users use their Shuttel card to board the train, car or lease bicycle every year. “We arrange this in such a way that it is fully in line with a company's policy and its image to the outside world,” says Joëlle, “because it must be in line with a company's philosophy on this subject.”

One customer chooses Shuttel because of its sustainable character, and the other because of the extensive reporting options. Or because of good employment practice, since a subscription to Shuttel gives employees freedom of choice. An excellent customer experience - a well-working system, quick solutions to any problems - is essential. “Rens’ team only gets more relevant in our services”, says Joëlle. “If they offer excellent service and help people get on the road, it makes our sales a lot easier. And developments too, because then we know the needs of our users.”

Not your typical consultant

The coming years will be all about interaction with users. And for that, technology is incredibly important. Shuttel was already very satisfied with Salesforce. “From the start, we could push so many buttons that it suited our day-to-day work well,” says Rens. To optimize the system and prepare it for further growth, the company entered into discussions with several parties, looking for the best partner and the best match.

“We found the mutual contact, the informal, very important. We wanted a partner who understood well what we were doing and who wanted to think along with us, so that we could arrive at a product that fits our vision and how we work.” What makes Nextview unique is that the company can be a very natural match for both smaller and larger companies. Joëlle: “You won't find your typical consultants there, but a partner with whom you can work together to the next dot on the horizon for a longer period of time.”

A solid foundation

Shuttel has been quite demanding in this regard because one consultant can have a huge impact on a team of 30 people. “Without a good fit, the team would not have adopted the trajectory. We thought it was important to take that into account.” With Stef van den Oever and Ignace Kozica, Customer Practice Manager and Senior Salesforce Consultant at Nextview, respectively, they found just the right match. Shuttel also wanted one of its own people to be trained as a Salesforce administrator. The request turned out to be self-evident at Nextview, but complicated for many other parties.

Despite the convincing choice, the first phase of the project, in which Nextview visualized the organization with all its challenges and ambitions for 4 weeks, took some getting used to. “We thought: are we going to talk for four weeks?!” Rens laughs. In retrospect, however, Joëlle and he think it is precisely this 'Creating the context' phase that was decisive for success. “Until then, we were looking for a solution to our problem. Only now do we understand what unburdening means. Because Nextview has taken us through the different stages of their approach, we know for sure that our problem is really addressed,” says Joëlle. “The foundation is now so robust, we can move on to the next stage of maturity.”

Going forward side by side

By times, it could be confrontational, though. Rens: “Sometimes the project was further along than we were. In such cases, we had to make choices that we hadn't thought about before. But these were open conversations.” Nextview sometimes saw problems coming before Shuttel did, Joëlle also noticed. “Because we are a small organization, it can be difficult to conduct the strategic, tactical and operational discussion at the right level. That, in combination with our ambition, is a risk that Nextview certainly identified. Those are painful moments in the discussion. It is annoying when an outsider has to tell you where your problem is. But they did that well, and we appreciate it.”

At those moments, it is important to adjust to each other’s speed, Stef emphasizes. “Often, the moments when you notice that you are walking in different rhythms can hurt. But openness to each other can rectify that.” Ignace agrees that it never got in the way of the project. “I see that as a compliment to Shuttel. It is not self-evident that a customer approaches our findings in this way. So the match works both ways.”

Super successful

So far, the partners have run four projects together. In the first, the emphasis was on 'fit for purpose'. Where are the risks in our handling of the system? How do we make better use of its potential? In the second, efficiency was paramount. In a third project, an extra layer was added in the form of telephony and Omnichannel, the Salesforce variant of multichannel services. In the fourth, the same trajectory was taken for Shuttel’s financial department. The fact that the number of mobility solutions and the scope of Shuttel has grown, as has the number of users, has been continuously taken into account.

According to Joëlle, all four projects have been 'super successful’. And she does not point to achieved objectives or completion within budget. “Those are hygiene factors. Super successful means we finished as excited as we started. It must be fun to do a project, for only then will it be embraced by the organization. The best part, however, is that we have learned more about ourselves and our services with every step. This means we not only got a solution to our problems, but we also improved as professionals. Which is only possible if you have a good dynamic with the partner you are doing such a project with.”

Lasting partnership

Nextview will remain Shuttel's partner in this file for the foreseeable future. “When I get a strategic issue on my plate, I regularly ask Stef to think along about the direction we should take. Sometimes this results in a new project, sometimes it doesn’t. That is the bond of trust we have. I can, however, say that we will start a new project soon. We will simply continue with our ambition to deliver the best customer service while developing Shuttel for the future.”

For shareholders, Shuttel is now the prime example of how to take the next step. In the first year after going live, the mobility provider had a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 38: a very good result in this industry.  According to Joëlle, the excellent score “says a lot about Rens’ team, but also - indirectly - about how we can serve our customers. Yes, the quality of our answers must be good. But if our system doesn't ensure that questions get to the right person, our team can't function either. We've gotten better at what we do. More professional too. And we couldn't have done that alone.”