Netherlands – Customer-care services – EA Sourcingpartner(s) NS Klantenservice

The contract concerns the handling of customer contacts for the NS Klantenservice department. In 2025, 3.4 million customer contacts were handled by NS Klantenservice and the current sourcing partner. NS Klantenservice permanently outsources a large part of the work. Currently, the outsourced volume is handled in the Netherlands and Suriname. With an eye on developments in the labor market and regulation, NS wishes to add the possibility of a Nearshore location (within the European Economic Area) in the new cooperation. With a strong management organization, NS aims to ensure flexibility, efficiency, quality, and innovation in customer contact in cooperation with two (2) specialized sourcing partners. The following elements are part of this cooperation and will be further elaborated in the Gunningsleidraad:

1. One (1) virtual organization – together with the two (2) sourcing partners and the in-house execution, NS Klantenservice forms one virtual organization. Together and transparently, they provide the best service to customers, share and discuss results, and optimize service delivery;

2. Capacity distribution – given the different channel and content skills and the limited scope in some cases, both partners will not perform exactly the same tasks. In terms of volume, each will handle approximately half of the part to be outsourced. This distribution is stable unless one of the partners cannot deliver (lack of capacity and/or quality);

3. WFM process – in the virtual organization, NS is responsible for the WFM process, the request for utilized hours to the partners, and NS thus bears the ultimate responsibility for availability and service level. To support the WFM process, schedule attainment is used as a KPI;

4. Platform – the entire virtual organization, both NS and the partners, uses the IT environment and connections facilitated by NS;

5. Quality-oriented – without losing efficiency, quality forms the basis for providing reliable service with effective solutions, and thus for customer trust. The cooperation and performance indicators are aligned with this;

6. Improvement and innovation – the expertise that partners have in the field of contact center processes and technologies, NS Klantenservice wants to apply to accelerate developments in the handling of customer contacts and to provide customer advisors with optimal support (among other things, but not limited to, by AI);

7. Location – to utilize the labor market potential and cost advantages, NS wants work to be carried out in the Netherlands and at Offshore locations with Dutch as the main language or as an official language. Potentially, work can also be carried out at so-called Nearshore locations within the European Economic Area (EEA);

8. (Financial) transparency – in the intended cooperation with sourcing partners, a fair remuneration is appropriate that is fair to the employee, sourcing partner, and NS, the structure of which is completely transparent. Sourcing partners carry out the work on the basis of a fixed amount per period for costs that are not volume-related, plus a rate for utilized hours. NS applies a transparent and proportional bonus-malus agreement. This stimulates the achievement of the desired performance.