“The great thing about customer service is that in the morning, I don’t yet know what I’ll be doing that day”

From questions about growing vegetables and processing telephone orders to listening to stories about the ups and downs at allotment associations. There’s never a dull moment for Iris Pedonomou, who works as a customer service representative and reseller agent. “I love working with so many people and departments within our company.”

Meaningful work

Four years ago, Iris decided to change course. With a degree in Sensor Engineering, she had previously worked mainly in sales within an industry that did not align with her values. She explains: “I felt like I was working for companies that were breaking the world. I wanted to work on the solution instead of the problem. Then I saw a job opening for De Bolster on Facebook and immediately thought: I don’t care what I do there, I want to work there. I spent a morning shadowing the team and the atmosphere was immediately great. It has stayed that way ever since – it is a fantastic company to work for.”

From questions to improvement

Iris mainly gets a lot of questions from home gardeners, for example about germination problems. She says: “I always try to get the whole story clear and work together to find out what went wrong, such as the weather or pest damage, and what the customer can do differently. Sometimes it is simply a matter of patience: not every crop germinates at the same speed. If I often get the same question, I discuss it with colleagues from the marketing department. They can then, for example, adjust the growing instructions on the website or address it in our newsletter.”

Orders and delivery

In addition to answering substantive questions, Iris also handles orders and delivery issues. “There are still people who place their orders by phone or email. For example, customers who are less tech-savvy, such as the elderly, people who aren’t digitally active, visually impaired individuals, or someone standing in the middle of a field who has run out of seeds. I process those orders. Less enjoyable is dealing with lost packages. But when you ship 35,000 packages a year, things are bound to go wrong sometimes. Fortunately, that happens a lot less often than it used to.”

“The nice thing is that people who treat nature with respect often treat me as a customer service representative with respect too”

Solving problems and listening

Iris continues: “What I like is that I am allowed to solve most problems myself. So it’s not a call center like at big companies, where you mostly forward calls to other departments. I do consult with other departments, like breeding. As a result, I’ve learned an incredible amount about growing vegetables.

I also have nice conversations with people. For example, about the ups and downs at allotment associations. You often see conflicts arise between organic home gardeners and conventional growers. For instance, they sow green manure and then others complain that the “grass” is too tall. The nice thing is that people who treat nature with respect often treat me as a customer service representative with respect too. It almost never gets truly unpleasant.”

Works Council

Since the beginning of this year, Iris has also been a member of the newly established works council (OR) of De Bolster. She was one of the driving forces behind it, having experienced in her previous job how important a works council can be. Together with four other colleagues, she is now getting to know the ever-growing company in a completely different way. “You get a look behind the scenes and suddenly hear a lot more about other departments that you normally have less contact with. That is very interesting.”

New developments

Iris has no concrete plans to grow further within the company for now. She says: “By nature, I don’t necessarily feel the need to move higher or do more: I am very happy with what I have now. But if something else comes up within the company that I get excited about, I am definitely open to it.

That doesn’t mean I am standing still. When I arrived, I brought more structure to the customer service workflow, because I like that. And now we are looking into whether we can use artificial intelligence (AI) to set up an internal knowledge base, so we don’t have to ask as many questions of colleagues in the field who are busy working. We always want to maintain personal contact with customers. That is precisely the strength of our company.”