How we think about Care and Product collaboration at Alan Belgium

You may have already read about why customer care is at the heart of Alan's strategy. Today, I want to share what that actually looks like in practice, day to day, within our Belgian team, and why working in Care at Alan is about so much more than answering questions.

When I joined Alan as a Care Expert, what struck me was that our ambition didn't stop at "giving the best possible answer to our members". Our goal runs deeper: making sure our members never have to contact us for the same reason twice.

At Alan, we firmly believe that every conversation with a member is an opportunity. We want to help them in the moment, but more importantly we need to understand what, in our app, our dashboard, or our reimbursement process, created a blocker in the first place. If a member contacts us because they don't know whether their specialist consultation is covered, the real question isn't just "how do we answer them well and quickly" but it's "why didn't our product already give them that answer, on their own?"

This principle, solving problems at the source, shapes everything about how we work.

In many organisations, customer care is seen as a cost centre to optimise. At Alan, it's a source of product intelligence.

Our Care Experts don't just handle requests. They are trained to identify, behind every contact, the underlying problem that led the member to reach out in the first place. It's an active posture, not a reactive one.

Here is a very concrete example:

👉 We rolled-out this improvement in November, and it reduced the number of conversations we received on this topic by almost half! That's nearly 300 monthly conversations with frustrated members we successfully prevented, and just as many members who are a lot more delighted about getting reimbursed.

Our Care Experts share these insights regularly. Not because they're asked to "collect feedback", but because they understand that their frontline experience is genuinely valuable for improving the product. It's a culture, not a top-down process.

As this feedback grew in volume, we needed someone to centralise it, turn it into concrete improvement opportunities, and ensure those opportunities are shared with the rest of the company. That's exactly the role of the Product Specialist, a role I hold today within the Belgium Care team, after having been a Care Expert myself for more than three years.

My work revolves around four key areas:

I spend a significant part of my time studying feedback from our Care Experts, but also directly reviewing samples of conversations to identify patterns. When many members ask the same question, it's usually a signal that there's a blind spot in our product, not in our answer.

Not all friction points are equal. Once problems are identified, I assess their impact: how many members are affected? How often? How much effort would it take to fix? This analysis feeds a prioritised list that I share with Product teams, because the the right problems needs to be addressed by the right team, at the right time.

And sometimes, this work uncovers quick wins: simple, low-effort improvements that can meaningfully reduce contact volume and improve the member experience, without waiting for a big project cycle. Thanks to AI, we even get to try fixing them ourselves. 😎

When a problem gets picked up by a Product team, my role doesn't end there, it shifts. I join the conversations around solutions, bring the member's perspective, and involve the Care Experts who are best placed to shed light on the issue. Our Care Experts are genuine contributors to the design of improvements.

Finally, when a new product, feature, or process rolls out in Belgium, I make sure our Care team is properly equipped to support it: the right documentation, the right tools, the right knowledge to guide our members through it. A successful launch on the Product side is only truly successful if Care can carry it through to the member experience.

This collaboration model isn't just a principle written in a deck somewhere. It translates, concretely, into our members who are more autonomous without needing to contact us. And for our Care team, it creates an environment where the work has an impact that goes far beyond any single conversation.

Joining Care at Alan Belgium means joining a team where your daily experience with members genuinely matters. Where it is listened to and used to improve the product that thousands of Belgians rely on every day.

On top of helping us create a delightful experience for all our members, it also makes the Care Expert role genuinely unique and impactful, light-years away from a traditional customer support role.

If you also believe the best Care we can ever provide goes far beyond “giving the best possible answer to our members”, we'd love to meet you! 🔗