Knowing every customer, even with seven hundred questions a week
How MijnMagazineshop.nl keeps its personal service standing as the range and customer contact keep growing.
In short
Ambition
Helping every customer personally, even as the range and the number of questions keep growing.
Approach
All channels, order information and process agreements brought together in one customer view, with AI summaries per customer.
Result
Nine out of ten customers get their answer in a single contact moment, and email is answered within four hours.
About MijnMagazineshop.nl
MijnMagazineshop.nl is the webshop for readers of MAX Magazine. The range runs from fashion and garden lighting to medical aids, smartwatches and energy contracts. These are largely products readers first see in the magazine.
That makes customer contact different from an ordinary webshop. These customers deliberately choose a trusted address, take their time, and like to pick up the phone. They phrase their question in their own words: not "order 48213", but "that reading device from last month's issue".
MijnMagazineshop.nl doesn't treat that as a nuisance, but as the starting point. Personal service isn't an extra here, it's the reason readers order there.
Industry
E-commerce: retail for magazine readers
Target group
Readers of MAX Magazine
Channels
Email, contact form and phone
Customer contact team
5 employees
Volume
Around 700 customer questions per week
Distinctive
Broad and changing range, personal service promise
The starting point
A customer calls about an order. She also emailed about it the day before, and she starts her story all over again. The employee kindly helps her along, but would rather have recognised her straight away.
That's the point MijnMagazineshop.nl looked at. Not because something went wrong, but because the bar is high. If you promise that every customer feels known, you have to be able to deliver on that as the volume grows.
And that volume is growing. For three reasons that all have to do with success:
The range grows with the magazine
Every edition brings new products, and therefore new questions. Employees now know hundreds of items that didn't exist a year ago.
Customers choose their own moment and channel
One emails in the evening, the other prefers to call. That's fine, but then the team has to see it's about the same customer.
One order, multiple contact moments
With a broad range from different distribution centres, items sometimes arrive separately, and a return happens in steps. Every moment is a chance to think along, provided you know where the customer stands.
“Our customers take their time for us. Then you also want to show that you've remembered what they told you last time.”
Teun Janissen, owner of MijnMagazineshop.nl
Why aishaa
The first thought was to expand: more hands or a ticket system to organise the messages. But a ticket system turns every message into a separate case, while MijnMagazineshop.nl wanted exactly the opposite: bringing the individual messages together around the customer.
“We didn't want to become more efficient at the expense of the personal touch. We wanted to become more personal without it taking more time.”
Teun Janissen, owner of MijnMagazineshop.nl
What was needed wasn't extra capacity but more context: one place where phone, email and form come together around the customer instead of around the message. That's why MijnMagazineshop.nl chose aishaa.
The implementation
One week from kick-off to go-live.
Step 1
Starting with the busiest moments
We started with the moments customers most often get in touch: questions about the status of an order, about partial deliveries and about returns. Those determined which information had to be in the customer view.
Step 2
Webshop and order system connected
That way an employee can find a customer by name, address or product description, and not just by order number. For this audience that was no detail but a precondition: the system adapts to how the customer talks, not the other way around.
Step 3
Process agreements in the knowledge base
How a return works per product category, which timeframes apply, what a customer can expect at which moment. That way the reply suggestions match MijnMagazineshop.nl's tone: patient, clear and suitably formal.
How it works now
The same customer, the same order. She calls and the employee who picks up immediately sees:
The conversation doesn't start with "can you give me your order number", but with: "You already emailed us yesterday about your order. That second box is on its way."
That saves time. But above all it delivers something else: the customer notices she is known.
The results
The same five people, more time for the customer.
of customers get their answer in a single contact moment. That used to be seven out of ten.
less time spent looking up previous contact. That time now goes to the customer.
2 working days → 4 hours
response time on email.
from the owner
The best part is that we haven't become more efficient at the expense of the personal touch. We've actually gained more time for it.
Teun Janissen, owner of MijnMagazineshop.nl
Looking ahead
The next step is communicating proactively instead of reacting. Because MijnMagazineshop.nl now sees which moments in an order predictably raise questions, the team can get ahead of them, for example by sending a message about an item being delivered separately, before the customer starts wondering where it is.
MijnMagazineshop.nl is also exploring how the insights from customer contact can be used to further sharpen the product information in the webshop.
Smarter customer contact here doesn't mean responding faster. It means: staying ahead of the customer.
Sound familiar?
You too want to keep delivering personal service while your volume grows. We're happy to show you how those go together.