Tilburg and Sittard

In 1994, in response to changes in Dutch legislation on paratransit services, Transit authorities introduced a system of shared taxis.

Following an international tender, Veolia Transport was awarded the contract.

Veolia Transport won the contract and decided to establish a dedicated professional call center to manage the door-to-door travel reservation and after-sales services, in accordance with the contractual framework.

In 1998, Veolia Transport Holland made the strategic decision to transfer all its public transit customer services to this single structured organization.

PZN is designed to act as the single dedicated customer service center for all services provided by Veolia Transport Benelux.

Its objectives are:

• combine a multitude of tasks including a high volume of calls for: shared taxi reservations and trip dispatches to subcontractors,
• comply with contractual quality standards;
• maintain the highest standards of customer service.

Two principles guided the creation of the PZN call center:
a multidisciplinary approach to managing customer relations, and satisfaction of its institutional customers, internal customers and passengers.

• Fair quality: the service cost is assessed by PZN and defined in a contract with the Transit Authorities or negotiated annually with the internal customers.
• Transparency: a level of service quality is offered by PZN in accordance with the market standards and approved with each authority.
• Performance: shared indicators are used to manage costs and quality.
• Partnership: regular joint reviews by PZN and its corporate customers are used to identify areas for improvement in order to provide better services.

• Professionalism: all new recruits attend an initial two-week training, followed by two months of coaching. In accordance with a career path rationale, customer service staff generally start in the reservation department before progressing to the customer relations department.
• Customer knowledge: an off-the-shelf system has been adapted to suit PZN's needs. It is used to manage activity and information flows, as well as to store all customer data in order to build up better customer knowledge.