Het land van Ooit takes a giant step towards professionalising its customer service

Het land van Ooit is a Kontich-based business for children’s and babies’ clothes and other products for the very young. New parents and those with a baby on the way will find everything for their little ones both online and in the physical store. Friends and family can visit the store to choose a suitable gift from a birth list. Since its foundation in 1997, the family business has grown into a thriving company. Every day, 35 employees go the extra mile to make the most beautiful time in the lives of mums and dads even more beautiful.

The challenge: getting an overview of the different channels to ensure a better customer experience

The company had grown in all respects: turnover, number of customers and number of employees. As a result, it had become increasingly difficult to provide optimal help to each customer with every single question they have. For the birth lists, for example, which account for 60–70% of the retail activities, customers turn up with very different questions and requests, says Dieter Ceulemans, Omnichannel Manager at Het land van Ooit: “Requests to add products, practical questions about when they can come and pick up a paid gift… All these questions were sent to our info@ mailbox, and all our employees had access to them. This led to a confusing tangle. Nobody knew which questions had already been dealt with and by whom.”

The company urgently needed a tool to manage all of these queries. This tool was designed to give them insight into who was doing what, or if a customer had asked the same question on three different channels. “We also wanted to make sure that anyone who makes a birth list today will be recognised as the same customer next year, even if their birth list has already been closed,” adds Dieter Ceulemans, “and that someone with a defective product can also be linked to a birth list, even if they get in touch using another email address or channel.”

“We knew what potential this platform had, so we had every confidence in it. But we didn't have the right people to set it up and integrate it with our existing communication channels. A good implementation partner was crucial and Premium Plus immediately proved to be the right choice: their approach and expertise were perfect for what we needed.”

— Dieter Ceulemans, Omnichannel Manager

The solution: Zendesk and Premium Plus as the perfect combination

Dieter Ceulemans was convinced that Zendesk as a platform could fully meet the needs of Het land van Ooit: “We knew what potential this platform had, so we had every confidence in it. But we didn’t have the right people to set it up and integrate it with our existing communication channels. So a good implementation partner was crucial.” Thanks to some contacts from the past, and because Dieter had already heard a lot about their projects, they decided to contact Premium Plus for help: “They immediately proved to be the right choice: their approach and expertise were perfect for what we needed.”

The implementation: professional technology deserves a dedicated service team

The implementation of Zendesk at the end of 2020 was accompanied by many other changes, recounts Dieter Ceulemans: “Around that time, we also started using our new Shopify e-commerce platform. So we had the opportunity to integrate the two environments with each other right away.” But perhaps more importantly, a dedicated service team was set up at the same time: “With the introduction of this professional platform and the support of Premium Plus during the implementation, we wanted to embrace a more professional approach as a team. We began to realise that the only way to achieve total success was to set up a dedicated team for the purpose.”

Premium Plus ensured flawless integration with the required channels. But they also worked on creating the right flows and processes for every possible scenario. For example: what should happen if a customer has not received a response after x number of hours? “They added a satisfaction survey when closing a ticket, too,” adds Dieter Ceulemans. “We thought this was very important, even if only to increase our motivation when we see the high scores.”

Het land van Ooit was immediately won over by the new platform, which is why they decided to use Zendesk as an internal ticketing system and to set up a FAQ section for their internal services. “And that too has already borne fruit,” notes Dieter Ceulemans with satisfaction.

Customer satisfaction

1 %

One-touch tickets

1 %

Processing time

1 h

The result? Fast and efficient processing and attractive and reliable FAQ pages

Today, the processes for handling questions and requests are much faster and more systematic, states Dieter Ceulemans: “Visitors with questions are first guided to the FAQ pages, often even after contact with the chatbot. No less than 80% of visitors find an answer on these pages. Anyone who still has a question can fill out a form on our website. This ends up centrally in Zendesk, where every question is converted into a ticket. And those tickets are almost always picked up by someone from the team within four hours, and usually within two, compared to an average of six hours in the past. This is entirely thanks to the better overview and control that Premium Plus offers us.”

For further follow-up, everyone can see who has handled a particular ticket so far, and what has already been done. This overview ensures much faster and more systematic processing than before. In addition, 89% of the tickets created are resolved ‘one-touch’, i.e. the first time they are looked at. “We work much more efficiently because we have established a dedicated team, within which there is a good division of roles,” says Dieter Ceulemans. “This also saves time and, above all, ensures high customer satisfaction. And that’s what we’re always striving for.” Successfully, it turns out: the satisfaction score has now risen to 94.2%.

Furthermore, as Dieter Ceulemans points out, visitors do not feel that they are being shunted onto a sideline when they are directed to the FAQ pages: “These pages really feel like an integral part of our shopping experience. Premium Plus ensured this by giving the FAQ section the same recognisable look and feel as the rest of the site.

The future: Zendesk as a central element of an integrated, customer-oriented environment

The customer experience has already increased enormously thanks to Zendesk and Premium Plus. All the same, Het land van Ooit is already considering the next steps to provide customers with an even better overall experience, explains Dieter Ceulemans: “In the long term, we want to align all our communication channels, both physical and digital. This will mean that customers can get a satisfactory answer to their questions at any time and on any channel – also in store.”

Here, too, the company sees a central role for the Zendesk platform and for Premium Plus: “We know that it will do exactly what we want – no more and no less. Zendesk will become ‘the place to be’ for the entire support team. After all, we know that it will work well, and without overkill, unlike some other systems. If we could consult the sales history from Zendesk, for example, that would be of great help. Then we could help most customers quickly, without having to leave our familiar Zendesk environment.”