A perfect tandem between developer and contractor

Ambition, Architecture, and an A-team: for CAAAP, a developer from Ghent, these three pillars are not only intertwined throughout their projects but also through their way of working. Add to that a digital approach, and you get a business philosophy strong enough to build a house on. “Those values are very important to us, and we look for them in our collaborations with others,” CEO Stefanie Vanden Broucke says. “We see that same work ethic at Ziggu.”

Customer experience is not just a buzz word in the world of project development, Stefanie thinks. “On the contrary, it’s here to stay. Customer support has become more and more important because the customer today is more demanding, and rightfully so.” CAAAP’s vision is that not only the project, but even more so, the customer should get more attention. “It’s up to us to hire enough people to make sure we can help all our clients in the right way.”

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‘The right way’ for CAAAP is a combination of ‘the old and the new.’ “At CAAAP, everything still starts with a regular face-to-face meeting,” Stefanie explains. “Buyers get to know their customer support representative when they sign the sales contract. We notice that people still like to put a face to the person that will help them down the line. So that first moment of personal contact is important. But after that? Clients are actually very happy to communicate digitally. We at CAAAP think the combination of both personal and digital is crucial.”

“Before we implemented Ziggu, we had been struggling with the abundance of information shared between customer and developer”

Abundance of information

The digital aspect Stefanie mentions goes via Ziggu. CAAAP has been working with Ziggu since September 2018. “We had been struggling with the abundance of information shared between customer and developer,” the CEO says. Sometimes it was like looking for a needle in a haystack to find a document for a client, for example. Other times it was a puzzle to map all the information about a particular project when a customer support employee left the team. “Our customer support was often busy with various administrative tasks.”

For Stefanie, it was essential to have a digital tool that would make things easier for her team, but offering some sort of administrative salvation for customers was equally important. “With Ziggu, everything is centralized. We can trace back the history of a project whenever we want or need it. And our customer gets a user-friendly overview.

Creating stories

CAAAP uses Ziggu’s platform for more than a ‘user-friendly overview.’ “For us, it’s not just about customer satisfaction; it’s also about customer experience. We can put more emphasis on this aspect thanks to the platform”, Stefanie says. Updates about the building location, ‘get to know the team’ posts or fun places near the site: these are all small elements that create a bigger story around the project. “Our customers respond really well to that sort of thing. Some people become great ambassadors. Now and then, we like to put those people in the picture by creating a blog post about them. So we use it for a wide range of goals, but these are the kind of things that would be difficult to capture without the platform.”

CAAAP’s digital story will keep evolving in the coming months, with Ziggu as an important tool. “On the one hand, we want to be able to make the customer the focal point, even more than before. On the other hand, we want our business to run more efficiently than ever,” Stefanie explains. An example of that last one is the new CRM that CAAAP will be introducing internally very shortly. “It was crucial to me that Ziggu’s platform would be able to integrate well with the CRM tool. Luckily that’s the case. For me, the added value of Ziggu doesn’t end with its handy tools or ability to create stories. The added value is also in the fact that Ziggu’s team can connect their system to other systems. This can give us a lot more efficiency gain in different departments.”

“We noticed from the beginning that Ziggu kept developing and improving, that the team fulfilled its promises. Now we put every new project on the platform.”

Shared values

Stefanie has seen how CAAAP’s way of working has evolved alongside the platform. But she has also seen up close how Ziggu grew bigger. “When we started with Ziggu, the platform was still quite new. Our attitude was:  “okay, let’s try this.” We started with just two projects on the platform, but we quickly realized that things were going really well”, Stefanie says. “We noticed from the beginning that  Ziggu kept developing and improving, that the team fulfilled its promises and that we were being heard. We have seen the product ‘grow up.’” Now, CAAAP uses Ziggu for every project.

Ziggu’s ambition to grow is something that pleases Stefanie because it’s a part of CAAAP’s DNA as well. It’s important to share certain values to have a smooth collaboration, she says. “We attach great importance to our company culture, for example. It’s not just doing your job and earning money. It should have a purpose in my opinion. That human aspect is so important to us, internally and externally”, the CEO emphasizes. “Making a deal with a business partner is easy. But what counts is the next day: do you get a response to your questions, or are you left out in the cold? Ziggu does not leave you out in the cold.

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