François Vluggen (Moneyou): “Working from home is now also an option for us”

When we heard that all of our colleagues had to work at home, we fully furnished our home workplaces with the necessary capacity to support customer engagement within five days. In addition, forty additional laptops and headsets were purchased and handbooks were made for the team. Because we already worked from the cloud, we were able to quickly set up the workplaces together with Content Guru. This made the switch a lot easier which was a great advantage for the customer advisors.

We are a digital financial service provider and our architecture is already completely in the cloud. A small crisis team still works in the office, but all customer advisors work from home. They can help customers in the same way that they would were they working in the office. Call routing, IVR, client software; everything works exactly as before the crisis and our customer advisors have access to all information.

They think that there are a number of advantages, such as the greatly reduced travel time, and the fact that everyone is present during team meetings. However, they miss the social aspect, and having lunch or dinner at the office. As far as I am concerned, I miss the ease of communication in the workplace. That is difficult at this time. It is not yet possible to sit down with a colleague to discuss something.

First of all, I find it more difficult gauge the emotional atmosphere within the team, and I don’t know if someone is comfortable. This is easier if you actually walk around the customer service department. Compliance is also an important point. How do you handle customer data and customer conversations? Because we already worked from the cloud, we had already arranged this properly and safely. Thirdly, a decent workplace is a challenge for a number of employees. Everyone must ensure that they have a quiet workplace where they can work undisturbed and where no one can listen in. I have every confidence in my team that this is all right.