About CS

The team  

The Customer Service department was formed in 2021 when the Information and Promotion department and the Information Centre were merged. We are therefore a young team made up of both experienced and new colleagues. This is a good combination; you can learn a lot from each other. Open communication and a lot of appreciation for each other means that we are able to do everything together without any problem. 

Work

The tasks the CS department deals with fall under what we call ‘workstreams’. To give you an idea of what we mean by that, here is a list of the workstreams for you, with their most common tasks: 

1. Customer services: telefony, mail 
2. Customer information and promotion: information and promotion, content 
3. Customer relationship management: maintaining relations with our partners, such as the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, the Netherlands Patent Office and the Belgian Federal Economic Service
4. Customer centric program: customer experience
5. European cooperation: cooperation at European level 

Everyone has a range of duties that fall under just one or several workstream(s). In addition, we work with long-term planning and a leave schedule. That is extremely important because we have to make sure there are always staff present to respond to queries from customers. Working in this department guarantees you a varied and challenging job. 

An average working day

The duties you have in the CS team are dependent on the workstreams you fall under, so each working day is different. One thing is for sure though, you start each day with a stand-up meeting, joining remotely online or live at the office. Seeing each other every day and talking through the tasks with each other is very important we feel. That way everyone knows what they are doing. After the meeting you might have a consultation meeting at the Chamber of Commerce or a discussion meeting concerning an interesting internal project you are involved in. In the afternoon you might be working in the Information Centre. There you answer questions from customers who call, and you deal with the open tickets. Later in the day you might join a discussion meeting for a project that involves working mostly with the Communications and Operations departments. 

BOIP as a 'Great Place to Work’

So what does the CS department think about BOIP as a GPTW? The first thing they say is that the colleagues are nice, there is room to refer to management and that it is also clear who is responsible for what. That gives everyone oversight. It is also nice that there are people from different backgrounds working in the department. It’s a personal office culture with little or no hierarchy. At lunchtime you can easily pull up a chair alongside the manager. At the same time staff working at BOIP are true professionals, which means you can learn from each other and continue to develop yourself on a personal level.