The PROGEDO Client-Box

Interview

PROGEDO relocations has been offering its customer service via group chat in addition to email for some time now.

Jörg Holsten (52) is co-founder of PROGEDO and Managing Partner for Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg and North-Germany. He knows about the advantages of the new, collaborative PROGEDO Client-Box.

Question: What’s better about the group chat?

Holsten: The group chat has been developed specifically for project-oriented collaboration. We understand all the parties involved in any relocation as part of a workgroup, within which client, assignee and their relatives work with the PROGEDO-Consultant to ensure a successful relocation. Therefore, everybody involved should to be able to access the entire correspondence, as well as all documents and schedules related to the project, anywhere and anytime. This is something that conventional email cannot do. The chat is also more intuitive, clear and fun, especially for the increasing share of younger clients used to chat-based communication. The chat also enables us to deliver our PROGEDO Online-Services.

Question: How secure is it?

Holsten: One of the major disadvantages of conventional email is that it is not encrypted. Without substantial efforts to prevent it, third parties can potentially eavesdrop. And those using Google-Mail accounts are even routinely spied out by the data-giant from Mountain View, CA. The PROGEDO-Chat, which is based on Client-Box, a server by Hamburg start-up PROTONET, features up-to-date TLS encryption, and data is transferred via HTTPS. This is how we meet all security demands and effectively prevent third party access. Data protection is equally important to us: we operate two redundant servers, one in Hamburg and the other in Düsseldorf, to ensure operability and data security at any time. As a relocation company, we therefore are among the most modern and secure providers of IT-services.

Question: How does it work?

Holsten: The assignee gets an invitation to the chat, which is everything they need to log in and get started. They typically won’t have any trouble getting their head around the intuitive browser interface. Nothing needs to be installed. The consultant in charge will already have created a schedule for the booked services and uploaded all relevant documents and information, e.g. the preference-questionnaire for the apartment search. If the HR department wants it, it gets invited to the chat so that it can monitor the progress at any time and see what those involved are doing – and even intervene if necessary. The entire chat history is accessible and comprehensible for everybody involved at any point in time. The messenger and the WebDAV Nav-app for mobile devices ensure that the Client-Box is accessible anywhere and anytime, and that documents can be exchanged in all directions. As an assignee, I can take a photo of anything I’ve just seen, post it to the chat and ask the consultant what it’s about. This is a better and faster way of staying in touch than email could ever be.