Van Leeuwen
Even more customer focus through digitalization

Even more customer focus through digitalization

Even more customer focus through digitalization

Our need for interaction remains strong, but the ways in which we communicate keep changing. The availability of new digital communication tools, as well as our growing need for quicker and smarter interactions, contribute to this constant change.

What does digitalization in our market mean and how does it influence our customer connection? What does Van Leeuwen have to offer in this respect? My name is Joost Koning, manager Marketing and Business Development for Van Leeuwen in the Netherlands. In this blog you will read my answers. I will also show that digitalization is not replacing personal customer contact, but as a matter of fact offers more room for it.

Efficiency and ease of use are key

Digitalization is abroad concept, which is adopted in business strategies in various ways. For us, there is one question at the heart of digitalization: how can we offer our customers as much efficiency and convenience? In other words, how can we further improve our customer dedication by offering digital solutions?

First of all, this means digitalizing our internal processes. Secondly, it means offering various digital solutions to our customers. Next to a webshop and a certificates portal, we regularly connect our software system to the system of our customer through EDI. This can be done in many different ways.

EDI tailor made for you

EDI is not a new technology. As a matter of fact, the concept for electronic data exchange has been invented in the sixties of last century. The digital data exchange with our customers and suppliers helps us to improve our service and is very beneficial for our customers. Therefore, we have invested a lot in extending and improving our EDI connections. In some situations, the full ordering process is covered, in others EDI is only used for sending and receiving orders or invoices. Companies that connect certain processes through EDI reduce the risk of errors and improve the reliability in the supply chain. Obviously, this way of working saves a lot of time and cost too.

Digitalization of internal processes

We also digitalize internal, time-consuming processes, resulting in more efficiency and a higher quality of our work. An example is the registration of material certificates we receive from our suppliers. By using intelligent software, we are fully digitalizing this process. We are also working on feeding orders we receive as PDF automatically into our system. This means we don’t have to copy data manually anymore.

Digital instead of personal contact?

In our branch, direct and personal contact still is very important. The fear that this will disappear because of digitalization, is unjustified. On the contrary! By digitalizing time-consuming, tasks such as order entry and packing list processing, capacity is created for further qualitative, personal customer contact.

Customer need is leading

The choice to use digital solutions or connections is always up to the customer. We adjust our offer to the customer’s need. In our business we observe an ongoing need for contact by phone, for which we are prepared as always. However, the need for digital interaction is growing, especially for the younger generations. Ahead of us lies the interesting challenge to identify new ways of digital customer contact in time, and then, enabling them. Because the digital developments are expected to continuously accelerate in the years ahead.

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