Even with small steps you make progress

Marie-José ten Brink, Content specialist

“After 17 years in the mortgage industry, I needed a fresh challenge. The vacancy for a content specialist matched my experience, but the pension sector was new to me. On the running side of things, you work on things like current affairs and campaigns. I chose change, where you can make your own essential contribution to improving the experience of pension members.

I'm a member of an agile, multidisciplinary team. We look at a particular life event for several pension funds, taking a close look at the members’ customer journey. We enter into a dialogue with them. What are their positive and negative experiences? What can you do to improve their experience? Each team member contributes from their own perspective. We also involve our stakeholders by giving demos and reporting on the developments in the KPIs.

The first life event I worked on was the survivor's pension. That's very satisfying work. People are in a vulnerable period of their lives. I have no influence on the amount of the survivors’ pension, because that is what the deceased member has accrued. That's why I think it's important to raise awareness long before death occurs. Your pension plan is not something that takes care of itself. It's something you should be working on now, to avoid surprises later.

Based on analyses and in-depth studies, we work on activities such as improving letters, Uniform Pension Overviews and websites. Bigger steps and process changes take more time, such as paying out the survivor's pension more quickly. It can be very problematic if a surviving relative has to wait a little longer for the surviving relatives' pension because they depend on their income. I'm result-driven and I see some things that could be done faster and better, but I focus on what I and my colleagues can achieve in such a customer journey. Even with small steps you make progress. It's great when you've worked on such a customer journey for a year and see that you've been able to turn a negative experience into a more positive one. You can't make everything right, but you can take off the sharp edges and take the customer experience to the next level.

What I like best about the communication profession is that you can show people the way in subjects they themselves know less about. Promoting toothpaste wouldn't give me the energy I need. I enjoy working on topics that make a meaningful contribution to someone's life.”

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