Having frequently experienced buzzwords as first time resolution, customer journey, UX and many others while working on contact center solutions, the time had apparently come for me to actually experience contact centers and customer service as a common user.
Due to my current circumstances, I´ve been through a process of wading knee-deep in a swamp of user creation tasks, changes to current user and subscription information, filling out electronic forms and whatnot. What a relief it has been to experience that in most cases Danish digitalization actually works. Even in the summer holiday period where things tend to grind to a halt in Denmark.
Here’s my scorecard:
The bank: Changing and creating account information, applying for a new mortgage worked effortlessly through my phone app and subsequently involved videoconferencing, digital contract signature and only few and short phone calls. Grade = A
NemID: Changing to a new phone was unfortunately done without thinking everything through. My old phone had a special app, that is used to verify my credentials when conducting digital communications. That app was lost before transfer to my new phone. I waited in their voice queue for 45 minutes where after the helpful agent told me that they frequently experienced this problem. He then enabled a new ID setup and asked me to contact citizens service to conclude the case. Due to the frequency of this problem, they should have automated the handling of this case type. Grade = C
Citizens service: After NemID prepared my new setup I logged into my municipal citizens service and booked an appointment. The booking functionality was rudimentary but did the job quickly and efficiently. I set my appointment for the earliest possible morning slot the next day. When the time came, I drove to the designated office and registered my arrival on their self-service touchscreen. Since it was in the middle of the holiday period, hardly anyone was waiting for service and I was called to the counter 10 minutes before my appointment was scheduled. The service was polite and seemed competent. Unfortunately, I was issued a non-functioning set of keys and had to repeat the process a couple of hours later. This time I stayed at the counter until I verified that the keys worked. Grade = B
CVR: After deciding to setup a small consultancy company, I explored the fascinating path to setting up a company in Denmark. I was offered tons of useful information. It turned out that the process was simple, quick and totally digitized. Grade = A
The trade union: As an atypical Dane, I saved contacting my union till the very last moment. I needed help with filling out a digitized, but complicated insurance form. I called their switchboard and was given swift and competent service. They told me how to fill out the form and told me to contact them afterwards by mail so they could verify the information and help me with the case. Unfortunately, their mail system was also on vacation and my repeated mails bounced after 36 hours no matter what mail account or whether I attached files to my mail or not. Therefore, I went to their main office with a USB stick with the necessary documents. These were promptly printed and manually delivered to their dispatch service. I expect to hear who has my case and what they are doing about it someday soon. Grade = D