Career Minor - Bachelor Placement Report

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Career Minor - Bachelor Placement Report

Jane van der Bor (S3205398)

Communication and Information Sciences

j.van.der.bor@student.rug.nl

Placement lecturer: W. Vuijk

ABOUT YOU GmbH

Hamburg, Germany

Placement supervisor: R. Wijnsma

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Hamburg, Germany (November 2018 - January 2019)

Making myself heard at ABOUT YOU, one of Europe’s fastest growing online companies. Creating content and improving customer support by applying the

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1 Introduction

What do I want to do after University? As the youngest of three siblings I grew up in a protected environment where my brother and sister were my biggest role models. They made things easy for me. I saw what I liked and I saw their mistakes and they helped me out when I had a problem. But after a certain age, you have to speak up for yourself. Eventually, your role models can’t guide you anymore. You have to find out what you want and express your true self. With the announcement of the Career Minor, I immediately knew that this was my chance to take the initiative.

The Career Minor gives students the opportunity to explore the working life and to apply theoretical knowledge in a practical environment. A whole semester you get the chance to learn more about yourself. In the first block of the minor, I learned about working outside of academia (e.g. improving my LinkedIn profile and attending mock job interviews). In the second block, I had the chance to do an internship. Luckily, I found an internship at ABOUT YOU GmbH, a fast-growing E-commerce company in Hamburg, Germany. And as the company name already suggests, About You is about the customer, finding ways to express themselves. A good fit for my quest to find out and express what I want.

At the start of the Career Minor, we did some tests, to find out what your

competences are and where you want to improve yourself. My learning objectives for this minor sounded as follows:

- discover what I want

- take more initiative and make myself heard

Both these learning goals started by finding the right placement. Due to personal reasons I wanted to go to Hamburg for this internship and I realized that there was one thing not working in my favour: My lack of fluent German. Thus, I had to do something that made me stand out among the other people. I designed an email and sent it to over twenty companies. Not knowing if the companies were looking for someone. That meant writing a lot of emails, because you can not expect to be lucky and I wanted to know what the response rate of my email would be. From those emails more than half (12) replied and in the end, eight companies asked me to come by. I decided to go to three job interviews and was offered job placements in all of them. But in the end, I actually got my placement at ABOUT YOU via the link from the University: Going Global. They were looking for a Dutch intern, able to translate German. I choose for ABOUT YOU because the company is well known in Germany and it made me enthusiastic to work for the Dutch market. I knew that this internship fit my interests and that I could learn a lot.

By searching for an internship, I took the initiative to do something else than staying in my comfort zone of studying. When I wrote down my learning goal to take more initiative, I actually meant that I should let myself be heard more. Because sometimes I hold back when I actually want to say something. At ABOUT YOU, I got the chance to show what was on my mind and to create content that would excite people.

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The three months at About You were instructive, a challenge and a great experience. In this Placement Report I will give you more insights in the company About You, my tasks during this internship, how these three months increased my certainty of what I want and how I was able to take the initiative and get my voice heard.

2 A profile of the company ABOUT YOU

It’s all About You. That is the short description for the online fashion store About You. The e-commerce company launched in May 2014 in Hamburg, Germany, as a subsidiary of the Otto Group, a large and well known German e-commerce company. The idea behind About You is to make the online shopping experience more personal and dedicated to the customer. The start-up grew fast and was even awarded as the ‘Start-up of the year’ in its first year. Today, About You is the second largest online fashion retailer in Germany. The company is currently selling in seven countries: Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Poland and in the Czech Republic. For 2019, the plan is to expand to three more countries. These extensions makes About You one of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in Europe. In the head office in Hamburg, over 600 people are employed (About You, 2018). About You wants to tell real stories and create unique events that trigger

emotions in people. For Tarek Müller, the companies CEO, this concept even lead to the title ‘Man of the Year 2018’ (HORIZONT AWARD, 2018).

Everything what the company wants is said in the name. About You focuses on the customer. Personalization and inspiration are the main differentiators the company focuses on: _‘online shopping should be much more than only clicking on items which end up in your basket, it should be personal and inspirational’ (About You, 2018). While they do offer a vast selection of merchandise via their website and app, they seek to inspire shoppers with engaging content and to personalize the shopping experience.

About You is known for its pioneering marketing strategy. The goal is to become more independent of classic advertising and existing marketing channels and to increasingly focus on direct channels for customer communication. Therefore, About You communicates via their website, app and social media using so-called ‘Idols’. Idols are social media

influencers who are wearing About You clothes. The influencers are mostly Germans, but within each country, About You aims to work with local influencers. For example, in the Netherlands, they have Negin Mirsalehi (‘Influencer of the Year’, Revolve Awards 2018) under contract.

The company found out that some brands wants to have special influencers and they make sure that the faces do not repeat constantly. There has to be a fit with the brand and the customers. A post with an influencer concludes a short description of the outfit and a background of the influencers hometown or holiday destination. In this way About You utilizes influencers as content creators that authentically wear/sell their clothes. They leave the creative space to the influencers, so they can choose their clothes and style an outfit that

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they like. The post on social media is their personal story and About You amplifies the story for their customers. One of the biggest differences between traditional TV-advertising and social media/influencer marketing, is the dynamic nature of the brand consumer relationship. The customer can read a post and immediately engage. This gives the company the

opportunity to interact with the customer and become a more important part in their lives.

That is why About You is different. The company does not only show the customer their products, About You always aims to become part of people’s lives, by delivering engaging content, featuring their products. Delivering fashion tips and tricks to customers using a tone of voice as if your best friend is talking to you (A guide to Words, About You; 2018). For example, they always produce content for special occasions like Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and also for a casual Sunday. By doing this, the company aims to become part of the personal conversations customers have in their lives.

Another example is the personalization on the website and the app. It starts when a new customer installs the About You app. Depending on the customer's name, the phrase ‘About You’ will change to e.g. _{About Jane}(About You, 2018).

Figure 1: About You personalization, website / app (2018)

To summarize, a charismatic CEO, an aggressive expansion into neighbouring countries and the innovative use of personalized content and influencer marketing has proven a lucrative approach for About You. Their revenue in 2017 was €275 million, more than double the revenue from the previous year (€135 million).

2.1 Working at About You

The company is very young, with an average age of 29 among the employees, and they are coming from more than thirty different countries. Every month About You sends out an anonymous employee satisfaction survey to measure how happy the employees are with their work status and work pressure. The results confirm that employees work hard at About You, but they also feel rewarded due to the team spirit, novel challenges and the diverse projects they can join. Nevertheless, there is high staff turnover, and a big demand for interns.

The leadership style at About You is bottom-up. All the employees have their say and are free to share their ideas. This means that the work ambience is informal and casual,

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people can dress how they want and can express who they are. The employee satisfaction survey, company events (e.g. Christmas Party, football and volleyball events) and the fact that ideas and remarks are really taken into account, keep the employees motivated to work hard. Everyday there are new goals and every employee have to work hard to achieve these goals. It is important to act fast and get tasks done.

2.2 Brand identity, Brand image and Customers

The communication between a company and its consumers can be tested in terms of brand identity and brand image (Nandan et al., 2005). Both are crucial to develop a strong brand loyalty. Brand identity is created by managerial activities and the brand image is reflected by the customer perception of the brand. The ideal situation is that the brand identity is in line with the brand image. Otherwise, customers can become disappointed.

A brand image_{express the customer’s perception of the brand (Van Riel, 2010,} p.10). The customer has certain associations where About You stands for, such as price, assortment and service. In addition to this 'inner', the appearance of About You also

contributes to this brand image (Van Riel, 2010, p.10). About You is a young company, but is already recognizable through (1) the bold logo, (2) the stories to inspire and (3) the About You Idols.

Figure 2: Logo About You.

(1) The bold logo is recognizable from a big distance and, as mentioned before, gives About You the opportunity to personalize the website for the customer. To communicate your personal aim already in the the logo is a feature that makes About You stand out among its competitors (e.g. Zalando).

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(2) Stories are a new way of communicating with the customer. Stories do not only show products, they also consist of advice to the customer about the latest trends. Figure 3 shows a story where the trend color yellow is introduced. The customers should be inspired by the stories, giving them new ideas for their next outfit. The stories at the website are always up to date. Translating seasonal content, e.g. autumn colors and Christmas sweaters, was a big part of my daily activities. Figure 3 shows the beginning of a story, by scrolling you will see also the items that belong to the story (Appendix 1). These items are carefully sorted out, to give the customer the optimal experience and inspiration about the outfit.

Figure 4: Instagram post from influencer Negin Mirsalehi in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

(3) The About You Idols belong to some of the stories, where they show their outfits, the city where they live or love to travel to. For example, Figure 4 shows a picture of the famous influencer Negin Mirsalehi in Amsterdam. People from the Netherlands will immediately recognise the characteristic buildings of the city, the bridges and the

houseboats in the canals. Next to the picture is a description that suits the picture. The line ‘It’s a match’ regards to the complete jogging outfit from the brand Adidas that Negin is wearing. After tagging the influencer, the products that About You is selling in the shop are mentioned.

The customers have to buy the products, otherwise the existence of About You was not possible. _{On average, the customers are between 25-45 years old and this group covers} the generation Millennials (21-35 years) and generation X (36-55 years). Millennials grew up with the fast-developing technology. This generation has the most online shoppers and Millennials prefer to use their smartphone when shopping online (53%). Not surprisingly, About You is therefore focused on improving the shopping experience on the smartphone. At this moment, more than seven million people installed the About You app and there are three million active users who use the app at least once per week (Corporate, About You).

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To know your customers and what devices they are using is important, but: age is not important to About You. The company wants that everyone can find his / her personal style. The online shop concludes more than a 1000 brands and 200.000 products.

Customers have to love shopping at About You because they get inspiration at the website and can quietly look around for items that really suit them. About You focuses on

personalisation in style so the customer will know that he or she will see products that have their preference.

Interesting facts about the About You customers (About You, 2018): - Customers are ladies and gentlemen between the age

of 25 - 45

- The average age is 36 years - 70% ladies and 30% men

- Customers come not only to buy quickly, but they also want to be inspired. For example by their favorite (Dutch) Idols such as Rafael van der Vaart or Negin Mirsalehi.

Figure 5: Chart, customers at About You. An interesting fact is that among the Millennials the social media app Instagram becomes more and more popular and the use of Facebook is slowly decreasing. Generation X has experienced the introduction and the rise of the internet. Sometimes they have

difficulties with staying up-to-date with all the newest technologies, but once they are familiar with the devices they also like to use them. Influenced by the younger generations, we can find generation X more and more on the social media channels. In terms of customer service, the Millennial generation prefers to get support via email or telephone, but with the upcoming services as the live chat on, for example, Facebook and WhatsApp, they are open towards this new way of assistance (Ruigrok Netpanel, 2017).

The Customer Service Guide from About You (2018) states the following: "ABOUT YOU is the online shop where it's all about YOU. ABOUT YOU wants to inspire you and offer the most personal online shopping experience by only showing products based on your style and also inspiring you with the outfits of famous influencers - so-called ABOUT YOU idols. This also includes: the most personal Customer Service."

This quote shows how About You wants to be seen by the customer. To get the customer familiar with this unique shopping experience, the company use branding

strategies to communicate its identity to customers and stakeholders. Not only via television commercials, but especially via the online platforms where the company is active (Facebook and Instagram) and using influencers.

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3 Description of the placement

About You needed an additional content creator for the Dutch market. The internship was provided to improve the Dutch market at the Existing Markets team and to create content for the Fashion Content team. Three days per week I was at the Existing Markets office and the other two days at the Fashion Content office. Working at these two

departments ensured that I had to be flexible and that there were a lot of different tasks, from creating content to analysing the biggest competitors of the company in the Netherlands. 3.1 Team: Existing Markets

At Existing Markets are all the Country Managers from the seven countries where About You is active. They work together with their interns to make About You better known and successful in all other countries. About You is relative new in countries outside Germany and people have to get familiar with the brand. In Existing Markets, About You is trying to learn from their competitors, who’s performance and brand image is continuously monitored. Existing Markets is also responsible for finding the right places to advertise, finding

collaborations with other brands and taking over the Customer Service when they are not answering as wanted in important situations (e.g. sale campaigns). The Existing Markets team is occupied with checking the amount of orders, the turnovers, logistics, handling the bigger complaints from customers and checking the website for bugs.

My supervisor and the Country Manager for the Netherlands was Rinske Wijma. Every Tuesday we had a meeting from 10.30 until 11.00. During these meetings we

discussed how everything was going, the priorities for the upcoming days or week and there was always room to talk about improvements. These meetings were important to me,

because we evaluated how my tasks were going, what I needed to improve and what ideas I had for better content. Rinske always gave me practical feedback and advice on how to deal with certain tasks.

3.2 Team: Fashion Content

The Fashion Content team is a big team and they are responsible for the website content. The team creates stories (Appendix 1) for the website and cards (Appendix 2). Stories are the there to inspire the customer. Cards are the thirst thing you will see on the homepage when visiting the website.

Every week the Fashion Content team comes together to attend the presentation about last week’s Content Performance. This is a report presented by the Content Analyst and shows which stories were visited the most, called the ‘Top Categories’, and the revenue according to this stories. Once per month there is a bigger presentation, where the Directors of Content are revealing their plans for the upcoming months.

Richenny Felicia, the Dutch Content Manager, is responsible for the Dutch content on the website and during this internship I was his second hand for creating content for the

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Dutch market. His creative background and years of experience in the fashion and content industry, made it interesting and instructive to work with him.

4 Description of the tasks

My tasks as an intern were varied, extensive and sometimes with time pressure. Everyday there was something new to learn and working at two offices required a lot of mental flexibility. While working on my tasks I considered my main interests. Producing content was the creative part of the internship. I was free to create my own translations, as long as they were in line with the tone of voice from About You. The assignments at the Existing Markets office, where analyzing played a bigger role, were more time consuming. Here you got a clear result and ideas to improve. The following tasks, not always the task itself but everything that played a role around it, for example consultations and feedback moments, gave me more insights in my learning goals.

4.1 Tasks at the Fashion Content office

At the Fashion Content office most of the tasks concerned creating content for the Dutch market. For these tasks, I was able to apply a lot of theoretical knowledge from my study, because it was about combining texts and images into an engaging piece of content, optimized for various marketing channels. To work in a creative environment like this was inspiring and gave me new insights into my possible future career.

4.1.1 Translating

At Fashion Content it was all about the content production for the (mobile) website and the app. The content was often created in German, then translated for the other countries via a software called CrowdIn (Appendix 3). This was a main job for the interns. Before an intern was sufficiently trained in translating content, everything was proofread by senior staff before it was published,

4.1.2 Creating stories

All the stories on the website were created in the Content Management System (CMS), see Appendix 4. CMS is used to create and manage digital content and makes it possible to see if a story is live (on the website), hidden (can only be viewed internally) or outdated (not available for the website anymore, e.g. after a season or holiday is over). The system offered the opportunity to check a story before it went online (option: hidden). The status of all these stories was kept in one overview Excel file (Appendix 5). By keeping this overview file up to date, About You knew exactly which stories were live and which were outdated. This was very useful, because one could see if there were, for example, still Christmas stories online when the holidays were over.

After translating a text, it was uploaded into the CMS. Here the pictures and setting were chosen for the upcoming story. The products that the customer would see when reading a story were chosen and the date to put the story live was set.

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The stories are very important for About You, because these stories differentiate the company from the competitors. The stories allow About You to make contact with the

customer. With a tone of voice that gives you the feeling as if you are talking to a friend. The stories were made to inspire and convince the customer about buying items. It should be mentioned, that About You would never say: ‘You have to buy this, otherwise…’, About You does not want to give any customer the feeling that he or she is not belonging to a certain group. Not for nothing the phenomenon ‘Fear of missing out’ was invited by a marketing strategist, Dr. Dan Herman, who published the first academic paper about the the topic (The Journal of Brand Management, 2000)_.The company wants to give their customers the feeling that they can be themself and that they are not missing out when they decide to express themself by their own taste of clothes. To accomplish this, About You sells a wide range of products in all kind of colors and sizes. Stories are created to show the customer how they can wear a certain item and how to style this item with different products (Appendix 6). About You also gives advice, about the latest trends and gives you the option to get inspired by these items. In this way the company hopes that the customer feels at ease when visiting the webshop (Figure 6).

Figuur 6: Tone of Voice: Communicative Positioning.

4.1.3 Photoshoot - Spring / Summer 2019

Two of the most interesting days during this internship were the days I attended photoshoots. The days were organized very well. The day before the shooting took place, the crew received a ‘Callsheet’ (Appendix 7), with the basic information about the

photoshoot: the crew that will be present, the models, the location and the time schedule. The shoots were for the upcoming Spring / Summer season and I attended the days as the assistant of Richenny Felicia, who was also the main stylist of the photoshoots.

The first day was a shoot with a male model and a female model and took place at the studio of About You. The second day, the shoot took place at another photo studio in the city, called PlayStudios, with two male models. By attending a photoshoot, you were seeing

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one of the first stages of a story on the website. First, the models were chosen, than the setting was discussed (e.g. what kind of light should be used, what kind of associations should be triggered by the picture, etc.). Then, the shoot could take place. After the shooting the best pictures were chosen and the stories for the website were designed in the CMS before it went live on About You.

Figure 7: About You, Photoshoot Spring / Summer 2019. Left to right: Photo studio of About You, outfits for the photoshoots and the photoshoot at PlayStudios.

As an assistant, I was steaming the clothes for the models and I kept the credit list up to date. This credit list (Appendix 8) contained all the outfits that the models were wearing during the shoots. Sometimes the stylist changed something about an outfit and it was important that after the photoshoot the Fashion Content team knew exactly what the models were wearing.

It was a great experience to attend the photoshoots. It helped me understand how content is being created in real life. As a customer you are often unaware, how much work lies behind a single picture of a shirt. After these two days I realized that it is really important to take every opportunity you have to find out if a certain job suits you. Before starting this internship I did not know that I had the chance to attend these photoshoots, but it was a great addition to all the other tasks I had.

4.2 Tasks at the Existing Markets office

At the Existing Markets office most of the tasks concerned analyzing projects that resulted in a report to share with the whole team. Some tasks were weekly, like the NPS (Net Promoter Score) analysis. Every Monday I checked the comments from the customers. This analysis aimed to assess customers loyalty and the service perception during the order process.

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Next to those weekly assignments, my main projects were (1) Competitor and Social Media analysis, (2) Customer Service and (3) the ‘Crazy Christmas Sale’.

4.2.1 Competitor and Social Media analysis

The competitor analysis was a good task to start the internship and to get more familiar with About You and the biggest competitors in the Netherlands. This analysis concerned the social media channels of About You. The goal was to see where About You can improve to be better than the competitors.

For this analysis I compared the Facebook and Instagram pages from ten

competitors (Appendix 9). The results were valuable to the whole team, so I put the results into a shareable presentation (see http://bit.ly/SoMe-Jane) and presented it to two members of the Social Media team. My recommendations to add certain features to the social media pages, were adopted as ‘change-worthy’ and I had a follow up meeting to discuss what the Social Media team can do to improve the social media pages.

Right now the planning is to add a new highlighted story to the Dutch page of

Instagram, where the Dutch influencers are presented to the followers. This is an initiative to fill the Dutch Instagram page from About You with more Dutch influencers. Right now there are a lot of German influencers on every country’s Instagram page. To attract more people, the country specific pages should have the opportunity to show more country specific

influencers, who are well known among the (future) customers. The main goal from this idea is that more people will get familiar with the company, inspired by their favorite influencers. This can lead to more followers and more likes on the Dutch Instagram account.

4.2.2 Customer service

Just as for a ‘real’ shop, customers are the most important component of an e-commerce company. The people will not find you in the shopping streets, you have to reach them on the internet. They have to get familiar with you, and start trusting you. In the age of fake-news, people are more aware that not everything on the internet is real and people have to be careful. Therefore being transparent is very important for an online company. People must be able to find the address, a telephone number and an e-mail address of the company. This kind of information reassures customers that the company is real and is also mandatory by German law. But, people are not only interested in the shop itself, they are also interested in what other people think of the shop and service.Therefore, customers must be able to find your company on Customer Service platforms.

For About You the most important Customer Service platform is Trustpilot. At

Trustpilot, customers leave comments about their experience with companies. They can rank a company with a maximum of 5 stars (Appendix 11). The stars are labeled as followed: red (very bad, 1 star), orange (bad, 2 stars), yellow (average, 3 stars), light green (good, 4 stars) and dark green (excellent, 5 stars). All the stars combined results in an average grade for the company on Trustpilot. When people visit Trustpilot and search for a certain shop, they will see this average grade and the number of total comments (Appendix 11). People can choose to write a comment anonymously or with their real name. All messages are visible to

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everyone.

About You wants to give a personal service experience to the customer. When things go smoothly and when things are rough. It is the responsibility from the Customer Service to help the customers as good as possible. However, About You’s Customer Service is

currently not answering comments on Trustpilot, due to negative experiences in the past. The Customer Service is still responsible for the incoming emails and calls from customers and for the live chat on Facebook, which are all only visible for the customer and the Customer Service employee. Right now, the Dutch Country Manager and interns take care of answering the comments on the public platform Trustpilot.

Answering on comments with a personal tone of voice is labour intensive. Therefore, it is important that there are appropriate text blocks available, so the Customer Service is able to answer these comments and questions again. This way, the Customer Service can take care of a lot of comments when an event is going on, for example, a sale event. The customers are the most important component of a competitive company and therefore they must be satisfied with the shop and the service during the whole order process. When a customer comment with a complaint about an order, the Customer Service can make a difference by answering with a personal tone of voice and a solution to the problem. A customer satisfied answer to the problem can even cause a customer to change his or her comment from 1 star to, for example, 4 or even 5 stars at Trustpilot (Appendix 12).

Figure 8: Rules ‘Tone of Voice’ (About You, 2018).

At About You, all the Customer Service staff get an introduction on how to respond to comments / complaints. Questions as ‘When to answer with ‘U’ (formal) or ‘jij’ (informal)?’ and ‘How to show empathy?’ are discussed (A guide to Words, About You; 2018).

These rules are followed as much as possible, but About You went live in June 2017 in the Netherlands and not everything can be perfect right from the beginning. After the launch, attention was mostly focused on the user experience of the website and the questions from the customers at Trustpilot were forwarded to the Customer Service.

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suboptimal in the Netherlands. The reviews are not as good as the company would like them to be. Customers have more and more power and nowadays it can be a threat to have below average reviews. People can spread the negative feedback, which can lead to customers turning away and a lower growth trajectory. Therefore, it is important to keep an close eye to pages like Trustpilot and to help the customer as good as possible.

Allowing the Country Manager and interns time for other tasks, I was interested in improving the answers from the Customer Service. As a project I wanted to analyse the answers from About You at Trustpilot, with the goal to enable the Customer Service to answer the comments on Trustpilot again. As a dataset, I looked at comments with one or two stars. These comments contained problems and a helpful answer was needed, to change the negative experience into a positive solution and opinion about the shop. In this project all the comments from September - November from the year 2017 and 2018 were analysed (Table 1). By analyzing the same period from both years, seasonal effects were minimized and it became possible to compare the answers.

The answers from About You on Trustpilot were analysed on four dimensions (1) response time, whether an answer was provided within twenty four hours, (2) personal response, whether the response was personalized to the customer, (3) dealt with

complaints, whether the answer addressed the problem and (4) solution provided, whether the answer provided a solution.

(1) Response time indicates whether answers were given in a timely manner. When the customer receives a quick answer, the customer will get the feeling that About You is responsive and trying to help the customer as fast as possible (Gr

égoire, Tripp & Legoux,

2009

). (2) A personal response is important to create a bond with the customer. If a

response was personal (2) has been analyzed by looking if the (first) name of the customer is used in the message and if About You ends the message with a name of the helping employee, instead of using the text ‘The About You Team’. To see if there is dealt with the complaint of the customer (3), there is checked if the problem of the customer is repeated by the About You employee, to show that the message was read and that About You is aware of the problem. If the customer received a solution to the problem (4) is viewed on the basis on the answer of the customer to the message and if there is a clear call to action if the customer needs to provide the Customer Service with more information.

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Table 1: Response metrics at Trustpilot (September - November 2017 and 2018). Higher values are marked in bold.

About You’s customer support is outsourced, employing Dutch speaking agents. In 2017, they handled all the Customer Service interactions, including Trustpilot comments. This was changed in 2018, when the Country Manager and her intern took over this

responsibility for Trustpilot. Why? As Table 1 shows, on all metrics except response time, the outsourced Customer Service performance was bad. They often did not provide personal answers, used the informal ‘jij’ instead of the formal ‘U’ and offered almost no solutions to customer problems, see Figure 9 for an exemplary response. In 2018, most metrics were improved, but the response time became longer. The challenge to answering quickly is the sheer volume of comments. Customers leave about 10-30 comments on Trustpilot every day. The outsourced Customer Service agency on the other hand has many employees, which in principle can ensure faster answers to customer comments. Thus, to deal with the response quality, I suggested to use text blocks, for the most frequent complaints. By analyzing the answers provided by the County Manager and the interns in 2018 (example, Figure 10), I created responses that were in line with the guideline from About You.

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Figure 9: Trustpilot answer from Customer Service, 8th of November 2017.

Figure 9 illustrates a standard response from the outsourced Customer Service agency. They address the customer by name, which is a personal approach, in line with the ‘Tone of Voice’ rules from About You. But, contrary to the personal greeting, the closing of the message is ‘The About You team’. This creates a distance between the customer and the company. Alfred, the customer, is furthermore formally addressed with ‘U’. This formal approach is not in line with the personal greeting.

The problem Alfred is having, is not repeated in the message. The Customer Service is only thanking the customer for his feedback. This indicates that the customer is not helped as an individual, there is no adaptation to the context from the customer. The advice from the Customer Service is to write an email to the Customer Service, which is a cumbersome solution. Customers likely expect to be helped at Trustpilot, not to be referred to the

Customer Service via email, where the customer has to repeat their complaint in the email. About You aims to be flexible for the customers, giving them the feeling that they are heard and that there will be a solution to the problem. Clearly, this example, Figure 9, is not

following the tone of voice rules from About You. In addition, this standard answer was used repeatedly on Trustpilot. ‘Copy pasting’ is a feature About You do not want to use too much.

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Figure 10: Trustpilot answer from Customer Service, 9th of November 2018.

One of the responses I created is addressing the flaws in the previous customer service replies. In this example, see Figure 10, the customer is given a (_{personal greeting),} which is a more personal tone of voice. In accordance to the greeting, the end of the

message features a (_{personal goodbye). Instead of using ‘The About You team’ the name} of the (fictional) employee, ‘Sophie’, is mentioned. Because a personal name is mentioned, the message should be perceived as more trustworthy. The customer is formally addresses with ‘je’, this is in line with the personal greeting and using someone’s first name. After the greeting, Sophie is (_{giving thanks) to the customer for writing a review at Trustpilot. This} shows, that About You is caring about the opinion of the customers. Sophie also offers an (_{apology) for the delay of reimbursement. This apology expresses empathy and by}

mentioning the specific problem, she demonstrates deeper understanding of the customer’s problem. After (_{mentioning the problem), she also states how the return process works} ‘normally’. By doing this, she confirms that the customer is right to be upset and that the return process was not properly executed. Sophie is (_{giving thanks for her feedback) and} mentions that every feedback is welcome. To help the customer, Sophie is _{(giving advice)} in the second paragraph of the message. Here she tells the customer to use the option ‘Pay by invoice’ for her next purchase, where the customer is allowed to pay for the order after receiving it. This advice shows that Sophie is listening to the customer and adapting to the personal preferences of the customer. By giving this option, the customer should feel that About You is taking the comment serious, but is also thinking about an immediate solution. At the end of the message, Sophie offers a (_{promise for compensation) in the form of a} small gift, which she will send in a private message. Such private messages usually contain a voucher code, which gives 10-25% discount on the customers next purchase. By giving this voucher code, Sophie shows compassion. If something goes wrong, the customer needs something that makes everything right again. One more time, Sophie stresses that the customers should feel free to ask more questions or add more feedback. Sophie is wishing the customer a nice Friday and is closing the message with kind regards.

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The optimized response text was a major contribution to the Customer Service process at About You. Following the About You guidelines and what I’ve learned during my studies, I created a whole series of text blocks to respond to customer comments in a better way, see Appendix 14.

For further research, it would be interesting to check if the people who posted a one or two stars rated comment, ordered again at About You. By doing this, About You can check if the customers who received an answer following the more personal and solution driven rules, ordered more or sooner after having a bad experience than the customers who were not helped good enough.

4.1.2 The Crazy Christmas Sale

The Crazy Christmas Sale was a heavily discounted sales event, held in the three countries where About You is expanding into: Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The sale was announced on Facebook and was described as a bet between the CEO’s and the employees of About You. The event was organized on a separate Facebook page named: ‘33.333 participants = 50% discount in the About You app’. The initial announcement used the following text:

"We have a Crazy Christmas bet with our CEOs of ABOUT YOU: With 33,333 participants at our event, you will get a 50% discount in the app! Now click on go or interested and invite your friends!”

As the text shows: When About You reaches 33.333 likes for the Facebook event, the CEO’s lost the bet. None knew beforehand how quickly 33.333 likes would be reached, but the Dutch customers were excited and within three days the amount of 33.333 likes was reached and the employees won the bet.

After winning the bet, the customers received 50% discount at all the products in the About You app for three days (25. - 27.12). The following text was posted by About You after reaching their like goal:

“WTF, WE MADE IT! 💥 Because we have achieved 33,333

participants you will receive 50% DISCOUNT in the app. 😱🎉 Tell your friends & SHOP NOW ”

Achieving the required amount of likes was announced on Facebook and in a special video. This video was recorded two weeks before the sale went live. For Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands, there was one person who was going to promote this action. Richenny Felicia, the Dutch Content Manager, announced the bet in a video on YouTube (Link to Phase 1) and I was the face for the Netherlands after winning the bet (Link to Phase 2).

The sale was a big success, more than 200.000 orders were placed during the Christmas days. This was exactly the reason why the action was introduced, to get more people familiar with the company. People were excited and happy with their orders, following the comments on the Facebook page.

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After the sale, a technical problem arose and a lot of orders were cancelled. The complaints came in and About You found out that the app was not showing the correct delivery date. Only the Track & Trace code from the Dutch delivery service, PostNL, gave the customers the right information about the status of their orders. This was confusing for the customers and this problem resulted in the most asked questions at Trustpilot so far. Even though the report after the sales event showed that a lot more orders were handled well and without problems, I learned that even a fraction of 200.000 people can be a very vocal crowd.

Every customer had to deal with the delayed delivery times. About You announced this at the Facebook page, but not everyone was paying attention to this page anymore after the sales event was over. Afterwards, you can say that About You should have sent this message to every customer per email instead of posting it on social media. People want to be kept up to date, as a company you need to keep the customers in the loop (Grégoire, Tripp & Legoux, 2009).

After the sales event, many more questions were asked on Trustpilot. The Customer Service was not able to answer the phone anymore, too many people were calling. About You chose to install an automated response and asked the customer to write an email. At the peak, Customer Service had to deal with over 12.000 emails. A lot of customers were not satisfied with their delivery time and went online to express their anger. The Dutch page of About You never received so many bad reviews in such a short time period. As a result, About You’s Trustpilot score went down by 14%, from 6,7 to 5,7.

The Dutch Country Manager and I handled the comments on Trustpilot and kept a file with every customer we had to check and inform about their order (Appendix 13). Here I learned that you must take initiative when you think that there is something wrong. During the first block I wrote down my learning goal (to take more initiative) with the idea that I needed to do this more in discussions and classes. But here it meant to take initiative in reacting to people who were not helped properly. I had to decide what kind of message can please customers the most, make them less angry and (hopefully) satisfied with the service. All in the hope that the customers would remove their negative review or change the amount of stars they gave the company.

Ultimately, this Crazy Christmas Sale brought a lot of learning experiences. I liked to be involved in setting up a campaign. At this Crazy Christmas Sale I only played a major role in the announcement video and in dealing with the customer complaints. At a later time, I would love to be involved in the whole setup of such an event. To determine exactly how the event looks like, when it should go live and how to get customers excited about About You. I also found out that the Customer Service is a very important department, especially for an online webshop. Customers can not physically talk to a person life. An online company always needs to consider every virtual touchpoint with their customers and ensure that their communication is on point, in line with the desired tone of voice and eliciting positive

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5 Reflection Career Minor

In the first block of the Career Minor all the students wrote down two learning goals, mine were:

- discover what I want

- take more initiative and make myself heard

During the first years of my studies, I wondered ‘What should I do after my

graduation?’. The course ‘Humanities at Work’ gave me the opportunity to take a closer look at my own competences and how to use them. Taking initiative shows that you are involved and care about a subject. My second learning goal was, taking more initiative and getting myself heard. To find out what you want, you have to show initiative. Not only to other people, but also to yourself. Make sure you look up information about the things that interest you, where you have questions about and dare to call in the help of others when you can not figure something out by yourself. You can show more initiative online, by working more actively with LinkedIn, but we must also remember that a personal conversation is still the most effective way of communicating. During this course I focused on approaching people who might be of value for my career. At my internship I met many people who gave me more inspiration for the future.

5.1 Applicability of the degree programme to the work in question

Working at a growing e-commerce company fits perfect with my degree programme. Creating content for the Dutch market at a big company felt exciting. As a Communication and Information Sciences student, I am interested in everything that has something to do with communication and particularly in an environment where persuasive communication is utilized. At the Fashion Content office I was able to use my language and persuasive skills in writing texts for the webshop and social media platforms. Working at the Existing Markets office, I also applied my analysis skills. I analysed About You’s biggest competitors, checked if the website was working, how the user experience could be optimized and analysed surveys. In all these tasks, I enjoyed to improving the customer experience.

As an e-commerce, About You is dependent on finding customers online. To convince people on the internet, you have to grab their attention. Building websites is a profession itself and an online webshop is the ultimate website where pictures and stories convince customers to buy products. To see how texts and images are combined and reinforce each other, is something that inspires me everyday and I am curious to see this profession evolve.

5.2 Acquired competences

You can’t learn everything in a day, neither in three months. Nevertheless, I learned a lot during this internship. At the beginning I felt insecure and had to ask a lot. It felt

overwhelming to start in such a big company, like your first day at high school. Luckily, this feeling was gone after the first week and once I felt at ease, I took more initiative and became more flexible in combining different tasks. Taking initiative was one of my learning

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goals and I was happy to get the chance at About You to get myself heard and contribute to projects. Everyone is free to say what he or she thinks about a certain subject. If you think something can be better, you can show that in a meeting where you announce your request of improvement and show what you have in mind. I learned how to design a presentation, do research and present everything in a short overview that people can understand.

5.3 Impact on future career prospects

I know one thing for sure: Working at a growing company with dedicated people from different backgrounds is wonderful. The work environment is not a typical ‘nine to five job’ and the employees are truly motivated to give everything they have to the company. I really consider this placement as a great insight in how working at an online company can be. It was great to be part of a big family, working on improving the online shop, the social media accounts and the overall customer experience.

In my courses at the university I already had a preference for the courses such as ‘International Communication’, courses where culture played a major role. At About You, working with people from different cultures was likewise very rewarding. Connecting with people from all over the world gives you the opportunity to learn, to respect and to understand subjects from a different perspective. In the future, I want to work in such a diverse environment again.

Living abroad, added to the multicultural experience in the workplace. It was my first time living abroad for more than a vacation. I had to deal with the language, cultural norms and building a social life again. However, Germany is also similar to the Netherlands in many ways. Both countries are part of the European Union and they are both western liberal democracies. But it is about the people. How they talk, their humor and their peculiar habit to close all shops on Sunday. To understand this, it is very helpful to speak the language of the country. Because when you speak the language, you can interact and understand the people much better.

Even though English was the official language within About You, I think it is important to also learn the language of the country where you stay for longer. I signed up for this internship, because I had some basic German language skills and felt comfortable

translating texts. But, reading is not the same as speaking. Thus, during my internship I tried to speak as much German as possible. Reading German books and magazines, and

listening to German radio. At About You, they even offer employees and interns the opportunity to follow a C1 German course, after work every Monday evening. At first I was very uncomfortable to speak German. But people do appreciate if you try to speak ‘their’ language and I even begun thinking in German. Now, I feel much more comfortable speaking the language. It is not perfect yet, but I enjoy the fact that I can experience Germany in its native tongue. In fact, Germany, and Hamburg in particular, became a second home.

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6 Conclusion

The Career Minor placement gave me insights into working for a company and about my own competences. About You peaked my interest and turned out to be a great choice for an internship. I worked mostly independent, but also learned to be part of two different teams. Working at two offices required me to be flexible, but also allowed me to meet more people and to experience the atmosphere at different departments. It was a pleasure to be part of both teams during these three months. After finishing the internship, the placement supervisor asked me to work as a freelancer for About You. Thus, I don’t have to say goodbye to About You yet.

The multicultural working environment, learning a new language and living in Germany made me more excited to study and work abroad in the future. The whole experience gave me the feeling that I want to explore more. The world offers many possibilities for growth and knowing that I can live and work virtually anywhere has broadened my horizon.

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References

About You (2018), A guide to Words presentation by About You.

About You (2018), HR presentation by About You. Retrieved from January 26, from

https://corporate.aboutyou.de/en/presse/about-you-mitgruender-und-co-ceo-tarek-mu eller-wird-mit-dem-horizont-award-als-mann-des-jahres-2018-ausgezeichnet#

About You (2018) The Customer Service Guide by About You.

Godfrey, S. and Walsh, J (2000). The Internet: A New Era in Customer Service. European Management Journal. 18 (1): 85-92.

Gr_{égoire, Y., Tripp, T.M., & Legoux, R. (2009). When Customer Love Turns into Lasting} Hate:The Effects of Relationship Strength and Time on Customer Revenge and Avoidance_{. Journal of Marketing. 73 (6): 18-32.}

Herman, D. (2000). Introducing short-term brands: A new branding tool for a new consumer reality. _{Journal of Brand Management}. 7 (5): 330–340.

doi_{:10.1057/bm.2000.23. ISSN 1350-231X.}

Lundbeck_{, S. (2018, 21st of December). Horizont Preisträger Tarek Müller: “Privat spielen} Modetrends für mich keine große rolle”. Retrieved December 29, from

https://www.horizont.net/marketing/nachrichten/horizont-award-das-sind-die-maenner -und-frauen-des-jahres-2018-171893

Nandan, S (2005). An exploration of the brand identity–brand image linkage: A

communications perspective. Journal of Brand Management. Vol. 12 (4): 264-278.

Rogerson, R and Yaghoubi, R. (2018). How to Improve and Manage Effective and Efficient Online Customer Service. The Applied Management Review 2 85-96.

Ruigrok Net Panel (2017). What’s happening online? Retrieved January 28, from

https://www.ruigroknetpanel.nl/ruigrok-netpanel/vers-van-de-pers-whats-happening- online-2017/

Vos, M. & Schoemaker, H. (2011). _{Geïntegreerde communicatie. Concern-, interne en}

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Appendices

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Appendix 3: CrowdIn, program to translate

First image: original text, German

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Appendix 11: Trustpilot

Average score and amount of reviews:

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Appendix 14: Template delayed refund

ABOUT YOU

Templates for delayed refunds

Template 1 (Trustpilot + e-mail)

Beste XXX,

Bedankt voor je bericht. De terugbetaling van jouw retourzending laat helaas op zich wachten door een technisch probleem in de overdracht. Hier zijn wij ons van bewust en we proberen het probleem zo snel mogelijk op te lossen, maar dit is natuurlijk ontzettend vervelend.

Wij begrijpen dat vragen om nog een beetje geduld niet is waar je op zit te wachten, maar we hopen dat je begrip hebt voor de situatie en erop vertrouwt dat wij er alles aan doen om het geld zo snel mogelijk op je rekening terug te storten. We houden je op de hoogte, zodra we meer weten komen we bij je terug.

Vriendelijke groeten, Anna van ABOUT YOU

Beste XXX,

Het spijt ons dat je hebt moeten wachten op onze reactie. Door een technisch probleem zijn de terugbetalingen niet goed verwerkt en dat is natuurlijk ontzettend vervelend, daarvoor bieden wij dan ook onze excuses. Wij proberen dit probleem zo snel mogelijk op te lossen. Je hoeft je geen zorgen te maken of het geld wel terugbetaald zal worden. Bij ABOUT YOU werken we iedere dag hard om het shoppen en retourneren iedere dag beter en

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gemakkelijker te maken voor onze klanten. Een technisch probleem zoals dit werkt daar natuurlijk niet aan mee, maar problemen zijn er om opgelost te worden.

We houden je op de hoogte, zodra we meer weten komen we bij je terug. Hopelijk hoef je niet meer lang te wachten.

Beste XXX,

We vinden het ontzettend vervelend dat de terugbetaling van je bestelling zo lang op zich laat wachten. Onze oprechte excuses. Wij hebben momenteel te maken met een technisch probleem, waardoor de terugbetalingen die wij hebben uitgevoerd, niet goed zijn verwerkt. Dit is natuurlijk ontzettend vervelend. We willen je laten weten dat we het probleem zo snel mogelijk proberen op te lossen, ons tech-team werkt hard om jouw terugbetaling weer juist uit te kunnen voeren.

We vragen om nog een beetje geduld, maar we houden je natuurlijk op de hoogte van de stand van zaken. Zodra we meer weten, komen we bij je terug.

Template 4 (Trustpilot)

Beste XXX,

Bedankt voor je bericht op Trustpilot.

Onze excuses voor het ongemak! Dit is natuurlijk niet onze bedoeling. Helaas hebben we te maken met een technisch probleem waarbij de terugbetalingen niet goed zijn doorgevoerd.

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Wij werken er heel hard aan om dit op te lossen zodat je jouw geld zo snel mogelijk terug krijgt.

We gaan je op de hoogte houden over de status van jouw terugbetaling. Zodra we meer informatie hebben, komen we bij je terug.

Vriendelijke groeten, Anna van ABOUT YOU

Template 5 - Private message Trustpilot

Beste XXX,

Zou je me via deze weg je ordernummer en een emailadres waar we je op kunnen bereiken toe kunnen sturen? Alvast bedankt!

Groeten,

Anna van ABOUT YOU

Template 6 - Refunds successful

Beste XXX,

Het spijt ons dat je hebt moeten wachten op onze reactie. Door een technisch probleem tussen ABOUT YOU en onze betaalprovider waren de terugbetalingen niet helemaal goed verwerkt. Dat is natuurlijk ontzettend vervelend, zowel voor jou als klant, maar ook voor ons: wij proberen iedere dag onze shop en service te verbeteren en dan werkt een technisch probleem natuurlijk niet mee. Het probleem is ondertussen opgelost en wij bieden onze excuses voor het wachten. Binnen enkele werkdagen zul je het geld op je rekening zien staan.

Om het een beetje goed te maken geven we jou graag een vouchercode van XXX % op een volgende bestelling. Jouw persoonlijke vouchercode: ...

We werken iedere dag hard om alle bestellingen vlekkeloos te laten verlopen, maar er kan altijd een foutje voorkomen. Dat was dit keer helaas bij jouw terugbetaling het geval.

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Problemen lossen we graag op en leren we van, om ons vervolgens te verbeteren. Daarom zien we jou graag bij ons terug in de shop en hopen we dat je met deze voucher weer wat leuke items kunt vinden!

Nogmaals excuses en mocht je nog vragen hebben, stel deze dan gerust. Ik wens je nog een hele fijne dag!

Career Minor - Bachelor Placement Report ​