At the heart of our activities is the customer. Always. We put this into practice by listening and asking, by empathising with their ambitions and needs, by doing everything we can to get to the bottom of their specific situations. We strive, at all times, to serve as a sounding board for our customers to share their ideas, to which we dare to add new angles or perspectives. Thanks to this approach, together, we search for solutions that contribute to our customers’ success.
Leveraging
our customer
experience
“Our tools and software play crucial roles in our customer processes and customer experience.”
Debra Dirickx,
Customer Experience Manager at SD Worx
Our tools and software play crucial roles in our customer processes. If we want to help our customers smoothly and efficiently around the clock, the key to doing so is in a balanced interaction of digital and human approaches. This is the core of our ambition to raise the customer experience to new heights in the coming years and to be a spark for our customers.
SD Worx Customer Experience Manager Debra Dirickx: “That, in a nutshell, is what the ‘Dear customer’ stands for in our corporate values. But, of course, it all hinges on putting that customer experience at the core of our activities every day. Even more, customers’ experiences must be consistent throughout the group, across countries, segments and departments.”
Customer experience
under pressure
“2020 was an unprecedented year for the customer experience, causing it to come under serious pressure.”
Debra Dirickx,
Customer Experience Manager at SD Worx
But it has to be said: 2020, the year that the coronavirus ravaged the world, didn’t simply make things tough for employers. It also seriously tested our teams’ ability to inform and serve customers, as a direct result of the tsunami of government support, other measures and associated legal obligations that were unrolled within a very short time frame.
Debra Dirickx: “2020 was an unprecedented year for the customer experience. It came under serious pressure – which does not, of course, alter the fact that we continued to closely follow our client community in order to develop concrete, value-adding actions to meet their needs.”
Net Promoter Score
as a benchmark
“In 2020, we introduced a fully standardised NPS survey process for the entire group.”
Debra Dirickx,
Customer Experience Manager at SD Worx
The benchmark for all of our efforts in this area is the Net Promoter Score (NPS*), which is assigned to us by our customers. We then gauge what drives their sentiments: is it our proactivity? Speed? Follow-up? Communication? And so on. SD Worx has relied on NPS surveys for some time, but in 2020, we introduced a fully standardised survey process for the entire group.
What is the Net Promotor Score (NPS) all about?
During an NPS survey, customers respond with a score between 0 and 10 to the question: “How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague?” The actual score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of critics (score 0 to 6) from the percentage of promoters (score 9 or 10).
Debra Dirickx: “The NPS survey is done annually in order to regularly take the temperature of our customers. However, the NPS is only the starting point for the full cycle that we are rolling out.”
In parallel with this NPS track – which takes place at the customer relationship level –, we are also committed to continuously improving our transactional processes. Currently, we are defining all relevant touchpoints within every single process, such as new customer onboarding and customer support. The intention is to have them evaluated by customers in a structural way.
Moving from insights
to actions
“The NPS is only the starting point of a customer experience program that we are rolling out.”
Debra Dirickx,
Customer Experience Manager at SD Worx
“After a detailed analysis of the NPS results, we organise a number of brainstorming sessions with colleagues from our various customer segments and explore the following questions: where do we need to make adjustments in order to improve? Which concrete actions do we need to take to do so?”
The conclusions reached are then fed back to the customer: do they agree with the priorities and associated improvement actions that we defined? This takes place during events called customer boards. Debra Dirickx: “The full NPS cycle of measuring, analysing and improving is completed over the course of a year, with successive scores serving as the yardsticks for evaluating our results.”
Sharing stories
to inspire
Showing the outside world that we want to be a spark for our customers was the basis for our Shared Stories series. In it, we give HR managers the opportunity to tell the stories of their HR policies in full.
“What is our purpose? It had to be more than just being the statutory HR department.”
Debra Dirickx: “We discuss our customers’ successes and ambitions, but we also explore the obstacles they had to overcome or the pitfalls they narrowly avoided. SD Worx accompanies the customer on their journey – not from the side lines, but as a fully fledged sparring partner.”
“Are you familiar with Edward de Bono’s six thinking hats? Well, SD Worx is not afraid to get out the black hat every now and then. By asking critical questions and pointing out potential pitfalls to us, they inspire us and drive our enthusiasm.”
Wim Waterschoot,
People Director for
Arcadis Belgium & Europe South
More fluidity in HR calls for more tools and digital channels. Because remote working is here to stay, even after the health crisis has finally subsided, team communication is more important than ever. But as a result, HR must manage and feed these different channels, such as different payroll platforms on the employer and employee sides, and yet others for internal communications, for training, expense management, and so on. In international companies, the same disconnected jungle of tools is seen in all countries separately. A one-stop shop for all HR-related matters would be so much more efficient and easier to use for all parties involved.
Enter mysdworx
In 2020, we designed the mysdworx web portal for both employers and employees in all countries. One single platform for all things HR is also a huge asset for international customers, since they will need only one HR admin for all countries. Employees have all the info they need at their fingertips, enabling high frequency-low complexity actions such as leave requests to be handled in the blink of an eye. Next to operational features involving payroll and HR, other more commercial features from third parties, such as group insurance, can be added. All of these functionalities are centralised in one place, all for an enhanced employee and user experience.
The design is not final yet, but for an employee, it would look similar to this:
And for an employer, like this:
Users can submit questions via this always-learning platform:
At the core: the SD Worx Digital Assistant
Our new mysdworx web portal is the natural continuation of the SD Worx Digital Assistant, an app we launched at the end of 2019. It was initially intended to allow employees to stay up to date and manage their own time, expenses, payslips, etc. However, we have added features for internal communications so that HR and other departments can share company news, personal messages, polls, etc. The app is the mobile version of what mysdworx will be. Almost 210,000 users used the app in 2020, and payslip checking was and is the most popular feature by far. The number of users exceeded our expectations; in 2021, we are aiming for 1 million users. By the end of 2020, 26 customers had tried out the internal communications feature, with 300 messages sent to +/- 90,000 recipients.
Proof of concept: FAQ knowledge base
We developed the proof-of-concept for a FAQ Knowledge Base, that enables employers to respond to questions that visitors ask. Employers can see which questions are still unanswered and can follow up accordingly, and other metrics are also available. This gives employers great insights into the concerns of their employees, such as how many of them are looking for a specific answer, and so on. Four customers were involved in our pilot project – and then coronavirus hit.
Thanks to this technology, we had our interactive Corona FAQ up and running within the first week, which our customers clearly appreciated: in 2020, we counted nearly 176,500 users and almost 340,000 sessions.
Next up: rollout in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands. The UK kicked off with the first population migration at the start of 2021. To be continued!
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