Vandebron saves time and increases customer satisfaction

The Challenge: A Chatbot That 'Got Stuck'

Vandebron used a traditional chatbot but ran into limitations. Mirjam from Vandebron explains: "Our current chatbot worked well, but with an intent model you run into limitations in terms of customer experience."

An 'intent model' works like a large decision tree. This is rigid and requires a lot of manual work. "Also, an intent model requires a lot of maintenance work," says Mirjam. Willem from DataSpeak, who led the project, explains the limitations: "While most customer questions were covered in the chatbot, an intent bot runs into certain limitations. It can't help with very complex questions, it doesn't recognize context, and it struggles with multiple topics at once. This can cause it to get stuck in loops, fail to understand, or quickly escalate to human agents, which negatively impacts the customer experience."

When the old chatbot vendor announced they would stop supporting the integration with Vandebron's CRM system, Vandebron saw this as an opportunity to switch to a smarter solution.

The Solution: Trust and Expertise

The choice for DataSpeak was made quickly. "Willem had worked with Vandebron before, so we quickly got in touch with him and already knew his qualities in advance," Mirjam explains.

This background knowledge was worth gold. "Willem's background knowledge of energy, the way of working within Vandebron and Salesforce gave an advantage. This meant everything went very smoothly from the start."

The Collaboration: 'Efficient, Goal-Oriented, Skilled'

If Mirjam had to summarize the project, she uses three words: "Efficient, Goal-Oriented, Skilled." She explains: "We were always able to coordinate quickly with each other, which works very well and ensures an efficient way of working. We encountered a few technical obstacles, but we were able to tackle and solve them together. DataSpeak is a very expert party with a lot of knowledge about the content. That gives a lot of confidence."

According to Willem, DataSpeak perfectly fits Vandebron's needs: "The complexity of the questions perfectly aligns with what the DataSpeak platform offers. We make the difference by providing very good answers even to complex questions."

The Results: Improved KPIs and Happy Customers

The switch to DataSpeak's AI assistant had an immediate impact. "Our most important KPIs have improved," says Mirjam. "The escalation rate has decreased by 46% and our CSAT score has increased by 17%."

In addition to improved service for customers, the new chat assistant also delivers concrete time savings: Vandebron estimates that content management alone "saves us about 24 hours per month." This gives the digital content team more time for other important work. Equally important are the insights the chatbot provides, Vandebron states: "These insights are useful for optimizing our chatbot, but also for improving the rest of the information provision on our touchpoints."

But the best result? For Willem from DataSpeak, there are two things: the reactions of end users and the collaboration itself. Willem explains: "It's really nice to read comments like 'This is the first time in my life I've had a pleasant conversation with a chatbot!'. In addition, I'm especially proud of how we work together and the speed at which we respond to Vandebron's requests to make the DataSpeak platform even better."

Conclusion

For Vandebron, the switch was a great success. A quick delivery, significant improvement on important KPIs, and an ongoing collaboration in which the service to Vandebron's customers continues to improve.