jeroen-oosterbaan

Jeroen Oosterbaan (Simyo): “Service is our biggest sales driver”

Simyo is the winner of the most recent WUA! orientation study into taking out a sim-only subscription in The Netherlands (article in Dutch). There was a difference of 4 points with KPN and Telfort, and even 9 points with T-Mobile, so a lot of things are going well. Jeroen Oosterbaan is online marketing manager at Simyo, and focuses heavily on customer satisfaction.

Congratulations, Jeroen Oosterbaan. You are the winner of this study into taking out a sim-only subscription. How important is being the best with Simyo for you?
“We want to be the most customer-friendly service provider. That’s incredibly important. There has never been so much pressure on the sim-only market. Not only in marketing but also in terms of price. We are committed to service and quality, and we are truly the best in those areas! This was confirmed by the WUA! study: Quality is what gives us energy and makes customers happy. Being the best for the customer, this is what we strive for every single day.”

You don’t just score high on findability, but also the other topics of the WPS model. Your WPS score (70) is 4 points higher than that of KPN, the number 2 (66), and 9 points higher than T-Mobile who came 4th. What is going so well for you?
“Our marketing focus is entirely on online service: we try to do extremely well on one channel. For us it’s all about short lines, being together on one floor, which I think is really cool. Our call centre staff can walk up to me directly if they have a question. And vice versa, of course. That to me makes sense, but I realise it is special!”

“At Simyo we have the advantage that we do not have a very large portfolio of products. We want to be honest and open, and give the customer control over their subscription, make sure they understand the tariffs, there is no catch.”

What is the role of customer research and customer focus in your daily work?
“On average, a customer only calls us once every four years. We try to help them so well online that customers need to call us less, and we have been quite successful with that. At the same time, we try to be very approachable over the phone: on average your call will be taken within 11 seconds…”

“Everything we do here at Simyo is NPS-driven by the way, customer service is monitored and there are call-backs to ask how our customers experienced their conversation with customer service and what score they would give us. We have 9 KPIs, 3 of which are to do with NPS! We really judge ourselves based on how good our customer service is.”

What is your biggest digital challenge?
“Our digital challenge is translating 100% customer satisfaction to the individual. As a whole, our company is customer friendly, but I would like to go a step further. From one-size-fits-all customer service to one-on-one customer service. This is possible with data, and that is where my passion lies as well, in 2016 I will be working on this a lot!”

How do you view service in relation to sales? Could service eventually become the new sales in the telecom sector?
“Service is our biggest sales driver. Of course we need to continue to spend money on marketing in order to be able to tell people that we offer very good service. Simyo is not the best-known player in the land of telecom, so we have to work on that with the limited marketing resources we have, in order to get on the radar of our potential customers. Evidence must follow, which happens almost automatically. Sim-only without having to worry, being able to control your own subscription, that is our promise. We know that people find it less scary to purchase a subscription from us, precisely because we provide such good service. At Simyo you know exactly what you’re choosing.”

Unlimited calls and texts for 10 euros, plus one gigabyte of data, is that the new price level? Are you bothered by Simpel and Youfone?
“These players determine or enforce a new price level. The market is overstrained in the sim-only area, and everyone is walking over each other. Studies have shown that sim-only connections are on the rise. Many people are switching to sim-only, so there is a lot of potential. That causes a lot of marketing pressure. It seems like our competitors have endless marketing budgets. Whoever is a little familiar with the market knows that Simpel alone for example spent millions on ATL advertising in 2015. That really is a lot. We would rather spend that money on better service and better products. This pressure on the market, the increasingly lower prices, it is the order of the day. But you would think the price level in the market HAS TO hit rock bottom at some point…”

Are you doing anything else fun?
“We have a friends deal: if you suggest us to a friend who then becomes a Simyo customer, both you and your friend will get a discount. That’s a member-get-member program, but in a likeable way, I  think. We go for quality at a reasonable price, which goes completely against the More, more, more idea propagated by other brands…”

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