Success Stories
FNV automates with Randy
- By Nidaros
At FNV, new member registrations are now partially processed automatically, without human intervention. A software robot checks all relevant data before the registration is fully processed. How different this was in the past!
For FNV, the largest trade union in the Netherlands, processing new member registrations is a substantial operation. Each week, around twelve hundred new members sign up via the website. Until recently, this was a major administrative task: every registration had to be checked and processed manually. Are the details correct? Is the employer linked? Has the person been a member before? Necessary checks, but time-consuming.
Fifty to sixty mouse clicks
Mirjam Jordan, team leader of the Contact Center at FNV, saw her team struggling with dull, repetitive work. One and a half FTE, between forty and fifty hours per week, was entirely spent on processing new registrations. And when data had to be adjusted, it quickly added up to fifty to sixty mouse clicks per registration.
“Some employees almost literally developed a mouse arm because of it,” Jordan explains. “We knew that this process could largely be automated. But within the CRM team, there was insufficient capacity for that. That’s why we contacted Nidaros.”
Careful and iterative
Nidaros and FNV worked together to determine which tasks could be robotised – in other words, to remove the pebble from the shoe. In several sessions, the trade union demonstrated step by step how employees handled registrations.
“Nidaros worked very carefully,” says Jordan. “With every action, the question was asked: can this be automated, or are human eyes still required?” Once everything was mapped out, the development of the software robot began. This process was iterative: deliver, test, adjust, and further develop. Repeated until the robot performed exactly the same steps as an employee would.
Expectations exceeded
The goal was ambitious: automatically checking seventy percent of new registrations. The robot that Nidaros built for this was given the internal name Randy at FNV. At go-live, expectations were cautious: initially, Randy was expected to handle about twenty percent of the registrations independently. “In practice, those expectations were exceeded by far,” Jordan states. “Very quickly, Randy was handling more than half of all registrations on its own.”
Due to circumstances, the Contact Center had built up a significant backlog. “Before Randy, it went down in small steps each week,” Jordan explains. “Now it’s going much faster.” The result: her team can now focus on work where their expertise truly makes a difference. Handling emails, resolving complex member questions, and telephone customer contact – work that challenges them, as opposed to the repetitive clicking of the past. Exactly what FNV was looking for: not fewer people, but freeing up existing employees for valuable work.
Sparring at an equal level
Jordan describes the collaboration with Nidaros as more than a classic supplier–client relationship. “It’s a partner that constantly thinks along with us,” she says. “Not ‘you ask, we deliver’, but truly searching for the best solution together. After testing, we would regularly hear: ‘We’re running into this – how do you see it?’ That approach kept us closely involved in the development. Sparring at an equal level.”
That approach also helped to set realistic expectations. In live demos, the FNV team saw Randy at work and then checked in the CRM system exactly what it had done. “That gave us a clear picture of what it can do,” says Jordan. “What it does now fully meets my expectations. Logically so, because we built it together and knew exactly what we were working towards.”
