Before Xelion
Steven van de Meent's responsibilities at COKZ include the facilities organization, ICT and materials, the telephone system and security around the premises. COKZ currently has 75 employees, more than half of whom work in the field service. The field staff visit the entrepreneurs on the shop floor and carry out inspections. The inspections vary from short visits to the so-called “self-dairy farmers”, to large inspections at the factories where the inspections can take several days. Van de Meent explains, "Together with fellow NPOs, COKZ is responsible for supervision within the food chain. COKZ has an important role within the protection of public health. Naturally, it is important here that there are short lines of communication and quick consultation between employees if they run into certain issues."
Why Xelion?
How did the COKZ choose Xelion? Van de Meent answers, "Because of a move of the COKZ in 2019 to its current premises, the demand also arose for a new telephone system that could handle both mobile and fixed telephony. There was also a need for knowledge and input on telephony. During the search, I came across the company Sollie. This company monitors the telephone system for COKZ from a distance." At the time, Sollie recommended the Xelion app to COKZ for the optimization of telephone accessibility. There were several reasons for Van de Meent to choose Xelion. The combination of the Dutch product, the functional offering with the Xelion App and the neat pricing was decisive for Van de Meent to get started with Xelion. “It is a Dutch product, works in the Cloud and has a good reputation in the Netherlands,” Van de Meent said.
'COKZ is a service organization for dairy and egg produce in The Netherlands. We want to optimize our services. We achieve this partially through maximum accessibility.'
The experiences with Xelion
The entire outdoors staff have the Xelion App installed on their business phones. COKZ has set up a series of group numbers for each field. Van de Meent notes that more and more calls are being made from the employees through the Xelion App instead of the regular line. "This is also because all contact information is in the Xelion App. So you no longer have to enter your contacts manually yourself, but the contacts are automatically available and the list is kept up-to-date by the front office at COKZ. This makes it possible for the inside and outside sales staff to be available anytime and anywhere. It is also much easier for the employees to search the address book within the Xelion App by names and images than via the regular line."
Van de Meent explains that the reporting tool from Xelion is also used within COKZ. Here necessary information is shared about (the results of) the inspections. The reports are then shared with the departments internally so that action can be taken if necessary. We are currently examining whether the reports can be further expanded so that the service to customers can be further optimized. This so that the entrepreneurs can concentrate on what they enjoy most: producing beautiful Dutch products for domestic and foreign consumers.
The future for COKZ
To develop further, COKZ has bright plans for the future. For example, Van der Meent wants to further optimize COKZ's accessibility. Not only between employees, but also between entrepreneurs and employees.
"Employees obviously need to be easily accessible to entrepreneurs. The idea is to pass on to the entrepreneur via the Xelion app the phone number at which the employee can be reached. At the time the employee is not on duty, he or she can indicate in the Xelion App that he or she is 'not available.' If the employee is still called, the employee's business number is immediately switched to voicemail at this time."
Van de Meent concludes, "This final step is still under development. Of course, COKZ will continue to be accessible via the general office number. The great thing about this new development is that the organization will be more connected with each other and with the customer. Admittedly at a distance, but digitally connected and accessible."
