Wouter Engelsman

Having started in insurance operations, Wouter Engelsman now heads NN’s Customer Experience. ‘I started my career at Delta Lloyd, where I met my wife. During my 15-year career I have had different roles at Delta Lloyd, which was taken over by NN, and NN Group. These included commercial lines and life & pensions. In October 2023 I joined Customer & Digital.’ In NN’s change-oriented Future Ready programme, Wouter has taken the lead in accelerating towards frictionless and digital customer journeys. 

Frictionless journeys for millions of people
‘NN Group offers banking and insurance services to millions of people. This is a market in which customers expect highly digitised solutions. It’s up to us to make their digital journeys exceptionally user-friendly. Even for complex products such as pensions and mortgages. Not only does it improve customer experience, it also makes our operations more efficient and cost-effective.

‘The customer contact domains I’m responsible for include telephone services, chat, customer research and web care. We’re increasingly encouraging and facilitating self-service. But making journeys frictionless also means facilitating easy transfer from AI-driven solutions to human-to-human contact. If people can’t find the answers they need, or prefer human contact, we’re still enabling people to call us. Particularly when they need support with life-changing events, like at the start of their pension.’

Close collaboration across NN Group
‘It’s my ambition to accelerate this transition. To achieve a sustainable transition to customer self-service, we need to closely collaborate with the business units. A client may notify a change in our portals, but the change is processed in the back-office of the business unit.’

Using the latest technologies
‘We’re in the middle of our digital transformation and incorporate the latest technologies in AI and UX design. But what we do is based on research. It’s our philosophy to make things better for our customers. That means identifying what their issues are and testing whether our solutions do indeed resolve the issues. This Double Diamond approach makes the design process highly interactive and more valuable. 

‘If you’re in IT, you may be working with Copilot to simplify coding. In other fields too, we’re increasing productivity using human-in-the-loop solutions. We’re at the forefront of AI revolutions and have even contributed to the testing and launch of Chat GPT. 

Team commitment
‘I’ve previously worked in operations and really enjoyed it. But working at the forefront of new technologies is a game-changer. It’s my drive to improve customer journeys. And doing so with a highly-motivated team in an organisation that has the scale to drive change.

‘I manage some 50 to 60 relatively young engineering experts. And we’re part of the 300-strong team of Customer & Digital. People from over 30 nationalities share a commitment to do better for our customers.

‘We involve our people in an agile organisation that is growing continuously. Harnessing Objectives and Key Results, we translate the IT strategy to exceptional customer journeys. You know how you contribute to our goals and are involved from start to finish.’