UWV
The Client
UWV, the Dutch government organization for social security, helps more than 1 million people that are unemployed or (temporarily) unable to work (sick, pregnant, disabled, etc). Additionally, UWV maintains close relationships with more than 400,000 employers. One of the main goals of UWV is to be transparent and easily accessible for all these customers. Not surprisingly, a main initiative to improve customer satisfaction was started in 2004. UWV defined three main challenges in this initiative: putting the customer first, making procedures more transparent and at the same time reducing operational costs. In all areas, internet and customer interaction were main focus points.
The Challenge
Already in 2002, UWV has defined that the Internet would be their primary channel for customer contact in the future. The main starting point is that the customer himself is responsible for retrieving information; UWV has merely a facilitating role in the process. The goals: the customer can help himself and the cost efficiency needs to be increased. UWV was looking for an intelligent solution to help fullfilling those goals. A system that provides the correct answers, but also allows the customers to type their question in full sentences. Typos must be automatically corrected and must not block the user from getting the answers he was looking for.
The Solution
"We soon realized the importance of the Internet as customer communication channel and the potential of self service on the web", according to Erwin Schaapman, program manager "Uniek" of the department Customer Service and Communication at UWV. "The website search solution based on natural language could realize our goal. The solution of Q-go does not only provide self service facilities to the customer but also an always up to date insight into user questions and information needs."
The Successes
Q-go's website search solution clearly met the requirements of UWV. The self service facilities really work, since the interaction based on human behavior and natural language is the key element of the software. The intelligent software also recognizes typos and syntactically incorrect sentences. The user question is anyway always understood and the user gets relevant answers. Besides that, Q-go provides the important management information that UWV was looking for. The result? Millions of questions have already been answered successfully. The organization has become more transparent, has better understanding of the informatin that customers are looking for and realizes a significant cost reduction through the use of Q-go's technology and products.
