A new face, a new direction. The arrival of our CEO Max Mouwen provided a breath of fresh air within ANVA. For example, this year we introduced the customer domain: the central point for everyone who has regular contact with our customers. Last quarter Daan van der Lugt (CCO), Naomi Stol (Lead Consultancy) and Marianka Everts (Lead Customer Support) together with their teams built this renewed course. They look back and especially look ahead to the plans for 2023 and beyond.
Daan starts, "Our overall customer experience is good, but could be better. From the results of our customer satisfaction survey, we would like to improve this experience overall. Max also stated strategic directions in his social ambition to grow ANVA. This requires a different organizational approach and focal points, from which the customer domain was born."
An earlier blog written by Naomi touched on the changes that were coming. Now that the customer domain has been centralized, the teams of Daan, Naomi and Marianka are working ever more closely together. Naomi explains: "By connecting our teams even better with each other, we know what's going on with a client. For example, we make sure that our account managers are aware of what the consultants from my team are working on. A good example is the joint review, which we now hold monthly with the entire client domain. We first look back and reflect on how things have gone before we look ahead and zoom in on developments. In this way we know from each other what we are up against, but above all we can make use of everyone's qualities."
To set up the client domain, Marianka and Naomi first got to know their teams better. As a project manager, Marianka had already been supporting Naomi's team two days a week since early 2022. At the time, it was just not known that she would eventually take over Naomi's role. "We divided some tasks among ourselves and when it became known that I would fill Naomi's chair, we followed through on that. We still speak to each other weekly, so I can always learn an additional piece of information. Naomi knows an awful lot and I am very happy that she is my go-to person. On the other hand, I can help her on her way within team Consultancy, to which I belonged before," says Marianka.
Naomi also looks with satisfaction at the close cooperation: "It is definitely a win for both of us and ultimately also for our customers that we work together like this. I myself found my transition to Lead Consultancy quite exciting. First of all, I talked to my team. Where are they now, where do they want to go, what can we take into account? I also sharpened our services, so that we can position this even more clearly and the marketing and sales team can take this back to the country. In short, we want to boost our knowledge transfer in the coming period. For example, in the new year we will start the ANVA Academy to put this away and broaden it with customers as well. In addition, we will work more with our partners, including in the area of consultancy. The planning of our consultants has helped me to take stock of all the different and current work."
Daan: "It is great to be able to have two more colleagues with heart for the business grow within ANVA. This provides a new perspective on the functions, teams and interpretation of our strategy. We have gained the confidence to build on, rather than maintain well. Nice, right?"
ANVA's new customer strategy brings another refreshing development, according to Marianka. Since Marianka does not yet know all the ins and outs of product content, the team must now rely more on their own knowledge. "That sometimes takes getting used to, but actually works very well. I coach the team in the process rather than the content. It's nice to see how each person for themselves, but also the independence of the team grows," says Marianka.
For the first six months of 2023, all three have a clear goal.
Naomi: "My focus is mainly on the external deployment of team Consultancy. I will focus on establishing our ANVA Academy, a clear description of all our services and the transition to the ANVA Datawarehouse. More information on this will follow later this month. In addition, I am striving to lean the customer domain on everyone who is hard at work on that rather than just my knowledge and 'notoriety', created from all the previous blogs and communications."
Daan: "Together with my team I want to focus more on the development of our target group propositions, both service and product oriented. In addition to the ANVA Datawarehouse already mentioned by Naomi, ANVA Hub for advisors and the repositioning of our consultancy services is definitely part of this, obviously also for our international clients in the Caribbean."
Marianka: "I am using the first quarter mainly to research how we can increase our clients' self-reliance. For example, what can we (further) digitize to provide customers with information more easily? That's a bigger project that our customers won't notice yet in an immediate sense, but will later in 2023. In addition, we are also going to physically sit together. I am supervising the internal renovation, which will bring the three departments even closer together. The new interior will be very atmospheric, making it as attractive as possible for our teams to come to the office a lot. That way we can find each other well, visit each other easily and learn even more from each other. Of course, our customers are also welcome to join us here, for example when we want to delve deeper into something together."
Wondering what you as a customer will notice? We may approach you more often in the coming period to ensure that the information we have available about your ANVA usage is better recorded. This will allow us, especially for our proactive support, to better communicate about changes or disruptions on certain components. Daan concludes, "We are moving away from a one size fits all approach and in this way we are getting closer and closer to the personal approach that we ultimately strive for together."
