Robeco is an international asset management firm founded and headquartered in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The company has over 90 years of experience in investment banking for both corporations and individuals. It is renowned for its expertise in quantitative investment strategies and strong focus on sustainability.
The customer base of Robeco varies from high net-worth individuals to pension fund participants to institutional investors. The customer service department consists of highly skilled employees with a diverse range of deep expertise in all Robeco’s products and services.
Freedom and responsibilities
During the pilot, one of the main considerations at Robeco was the need of the team members to have a high degree of freedom to choose when and what to work on﹘as to avoid too much routine and keep the job engaging﹘versus the departments need to maintain the service level goals and keep all positions occupied. We deduced communication around the scheduling of shifts and tasks were going to be key.
In the following weeks, we took our time to further understand the situation at Robeco’s customer service centre and obtain a better profile of the people working there. We soon discovered that extending our events feature by allowing the events to be open for ‘sign-ins’ would make a lot of sense. Inspired by this idea, we worked hard on getting the right implementation.
Setting the limits
It was important that just ‘opening up’ the events would not be sufficient to make this idea work. Events needed to be open for the team to sign up to, but also limited to the amount of people who could sign up for certain roles. And on top of that a minimum was needed to make sure enough people sign up for the roles available.
Challenged by these needs and bound by our philosophy to make features work not just for one specific scenario, but many different scenarios, we finally settled on a final implementation that would allow events to be as flexible as possible. Any group within an event could be open, and could optionally contain a minimum limit and/or a maximum limit.
This new feature allowed for a simple yet very effective method to create a schedule framework which gives everyone the freedom to pick up the shifts they want and thereby immediately communicating this within the group.
Key aspects for Robeco's customer support
- Freedom of choice – Open events enable self-scheduling to keep the day diverse and interesting.
- Ease of use – A desire for powerful functionality that works without "reading the manual". Accessible from home, the office or on the go. A modern look was also a requirement for selecting Soon as the scheduling software.
- Low maintenance – The most important job of the managers at the customer service department is to provide excellent service to the customers. Sharing the responsibilities for the schedule within the team fits well with the overal culture.
- Service levels – Being able to set not just a fixed number but a range of required people fits will with the need for freedom and Flexibility. The minimum makes sure there are enough people around, while the maximum allows for more people to join yet prevent oversubscription.
- Short events – To accommodate for the flexibility Shifts needed to be shorter than day. This as easily done with Soon's unique interface and enabled everyone to build their own intra-day work schedules quickly.
"Our department is always in motion, we've seen a lot of change the past few years and even had a merger since we started using Soon. We're happy with the system and feel we finally have a partner that can keep up with our changing needs."
Creating an open feedback loop
We stay in touch with Rénard, Rick and Carla via Whatsapp, email, phone-calls and the occasional good-old office visit. This makes our collaboration fast and effortless. It helps us make sure the product functions as expected while at the same time provides a great channel for continuous feedback to how Soon works as a high level concept.
This is invaluable for us, Robeco and all other end users who eventually all benefit for a scheduling tool that is never static and continues to push forward and improve upon what is already good as we always seek to make things even better.
Robust structure
- Systematic and streamlined – We’ve created the foundation for a self-scheduling system that is easy to use, modify and adapt to ever changing external factors.
- Quality is king – Rather than having a lot of bells and whistles, we always aim to reach the goal with the least amount of steps and features. This keeps the product clean and the processes simple, which in the long run are the basis for success.
"I must say that I'm equally impressed with the customer service at Soon. I like to think that we have high standards and they live up to them. So far it's been a pleasure working with them."
The next success story
Soon is borne of our belief and commitment to “make better experiences”. We have vast experience with customer support centres, web care teams, order desks and conferences.
We are always looking for new opportunities to make a true impact. Do you work at, or run a forward thinking company and want to level up your team experience through the way you are scheduling and managing your workforce? Let’s talk!
