Champions of customer service Wouter Quiros
Treat them like
Your Friends Six years ago, the future for Wasco’s branch in Amsterdam Zuidoost was bleak. The branch was facing near close. Wouter Quiros accepted a mission impossible: make the branch profitable. Today the branch is performing in the top ten, the number of staff increased to four and customers happily drive additional kilometers to meet with Wouter and his team.
“THE SECRET is hard work”, says Wouter. “You have to be 100% dedicated to your customers. When they visit, make them feel welcome. Take a sincere interest in what projects they are working on, and the products they are working with. Get familiar with their problems and make them yours to solve. Good product knowledge is essential if you want to be successful. We make every customer who comes here (which on peak days can be up to 150) our best
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friend. That is the feeling we want to convey to them.” An important brick in his strategy is to meet customers on eye level. Our customers don’t have academic degrees. Their language is not necessarily sophisticated. “We speak their language. It creates a feeling of being in this together”, says Wouter. “Always be fair. If they order products that are on sale, but they don’t know about the campaign, I tell them and they get
the products at the reduced campaign price. Be honest, at all times. When they ask you something you don’t know, admit it and tell them you will find out. Customers appreciate honesty.” When Wouter started in Zuidoost, he was no industry rookie. He had tried various functions in different organisations. At Wasco he started as an outbound sales rep. “Customers from my time as sales rep. happily drive a few extra miles to re-
main with me.” Something Wouter can be proud of. But that’s not his nature. Instead, he likes to give credit to his team. “Everybody here is top motivated. We meet customers with a lot of positive energy. If a colleague ifor some reason is low on energy, we send them to the back”, Wouter says laughing. “No, seriously, this is an important part of being a team. If one of us needs a ‘day off’, the rest of the team will cover for him and make sure our customers get the service they’re used to.”