“International award is a mission to learn from one another”
Pegamento was recently named a 'Top 10 Digital Process Automation Solutions provider' thanks to an international jury of CIO Applications Europe. CEO Serge Poppes sees the award mainly as a confirmation of Pegamento's unique thinking and an incentive to make customer communication truly target group-oriented.
The European knowledge platform of chief information officers granted the prestigious award not so much for a specific application, but for the methodologies Pegamento has developed for the implementation, execution, and continuous quality improvement of digital process automation in customer contact projects. As far as the jury is concerned, Pegamento plays a pioneering role internationally. This is extremely topical, given the many bottlenecks such as staff shortages, declining customer satisfaction, and logistical bottlenecks. An example is a project carried out during the corona pandemic to digitally determine consumers' clothing sizes. This led to a dramatic reduction in returns at the overloaded logistics sites and the customer contact centre of an online retailer.
"Customer communication has never been so complex," asserts Serge Poppes. "Organisations are used to consumers and citizens making direct contact and submitting questions, wishes, and complaints via channels managed by the organisation itself: from the phone line to online chats. But the number of channels is increasing, creating a completely unstructured digital world that no one can fully manage. On social channels, there is now more communication about the organisation than with it. It is a huge challenge to get a grip on these previously unstructured channels and to enter into dialogues where monologues used to dominate."
Customised communication
The need to make interaction with the target audience as efficient as possible for the organisation and as pleasant as possible for both the customer/citizen and the employee is universal. Whether it is a webshop, a healthcare institution or a municipal Civil Affairs department. It is not technology but human skill that is the biggest stumbling block. Everyone is different and has their own requirements when it comes to the channel through which contact is made. Sometimes this is age-related, and sometimes it is culturally inspired. For the organisation, it is important to make the limited human resources available to the target groups that require personal contact. Concrete examples: counter and call centre staff for the elderly and people with disabilities, and digital self-service for 'tech-savvy' target groups. Pegamento addresses this with innovative applications and its project methodology. These speed up and facilitate process automation and minimise error margins. As a part of this approach, interaction psychology, data analysis, artificial intelligence, and robotisation come together.
Human skills as the starting point
The award was granted on account of the versatility in implementing automation processes. The focus here is on supporting employees in carrying out everyday tasks, with the aim of bringing about business (digital) transformations to create an efficient and positive customer experience. The combination of technology and methodologies is also particularly proving its worth in substantive interactions with government bodies and financial service providers. Serge Poppes: "The number of complex applications and the quantities of data are increasing sharply in customer contact. Then it seems logical to focus on the technological side, and that is exactly what commonly used implementation techniques do: make sure that separate parts connect on time and properly and do what they promise. We add the human dimension. We conduct slightly smarter pre-testing and examination of how customers and employees interact with technology, we apply best practices from one sector to another sector, we place a major focus on communication, and we ensure sufficient flexibility to make interim adjustments, without breaching the predefined frameworks."
Unique approach
As a fully Dutch organisation, Pegamento finds itself in the exclusive company of large, global conglomerates. "I therefore see our award as a recognition of Dutch individuality", says Poppes. "Technology is easier to standardise worldwide than culture, and this is something that needs to be taken into account in process automation. You have to dare to adapt technology to the human dimension, not the other way around. The award by CIO Applications Europe is therefore also recognition for our clients. Moreover, I see it as an incentive to all user organisations to innovate both technologically and organisationally. There is an enormous wealth of experience, knowledge, warnings, and best practices hidden in our knowledge base. This is further enriched with each new project and is available to all clients in every industry. The challenge does not stop with a successful implementation. Acquiring and applying new knowledge every day brings the real profit. In revenues, in cost savings, in customer satisfaction, and in employee motivation."
Read the article by CIO Applications Europe about Pegamento here: Implementing Versatility in Automation Processes.
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