25 Years of DSaF – The Digital Service Company
25 Years DSaF – The Digital Service Company
A journey with 1000 friends
A journey with 1000 friends
DSaF today stands for state-of-the-art service solutions, combining highly advanced teams, smart tools, and artificial intelligence. But how did the Digital Service Company get to this point? Let’s take a look at the most significant events and developments in the company’s 25-year history.
DSaF stands today for the most advanced service solutions, combining highly developed teams, smart tools, and artificial intelligence. But how did the Digital Service Company get to this point? Let’s take a look at the most significant events and developments in the company’s 25-year history.
There is much to tell…
On our journey through a quarter century of constant change, we will gradually focus on specific themes that have paved the way to where we are today.
What innovations and challenges marked the development of the company? What were the greatest successes, and which visions perhaps never made it into the spotlight?
We will accompany the course of history with original images from the very beginning, insights from long-past customer projects, as well as current activities to celebrate the anniversary together with you.
So sit back and dive with us into a past that holds more of the future than you might initially think.
There is much to tell…
On our journey through a quarter century of constant change, we will gradually focus on specific themes that have paved the way to today.
Which innovations and challenges shaped the company’s development? What were the greatest successes, and which visions perhaps never made it into the spotlight?
We will accompany the course of history with original images from the very beginning, insights from long-past customer projects, and current activities to celebrate the anniversary together with you appropriately.
So sit back and dive with us into a past that holds more of the future than one might initially think.
Part I – How It All Began
We want to start, how could it be otherwise, right at the beginning. At a time when the scope of today’s Digital Service Company was neither foreseeable nor planned. Let’s travel back 25 years to a university campus in Münster.
A Publishing House for Brief Information
As the original company name suggests, the Digital Service Company was still a distant vision in 1999. Company founder Ralf Schengber had a different idea in mind: the simplest possible delivery of all relevant teaching content—visually prepared and condensed to the essentials.
A publisher for brief information.
As the original company name suggests, the Digital Service Company was still a distant vision in 1999. Company founder Ralf Schengber had something else in mind: the simplest possible way of conveying all relevant teaching content—clearly presented and compressed to the essentials.
With the “Keyfacts,” he did exactly that. The A4-sized learning cards presented all the important information from business administration, economics, and law in a concise and organized manner. This idea quickly led to the founding of the company: Dr. Schengber & Friends – Publishing House for Brief Information.
With the “Keyfacts,” he achieved exactly this. The A4-sized learning cards summarized all the important information from business administration, economics, and law in a concise and clear manner. This idea quickly led to the founding of the company: Dr. Schengber & Friends – Publisher for Brief Information.
The first step into digital communication, building on “Keyfacts,” was the idea to deliver the brief information via SMS to mobile phones. This foray into mobile communication led to the first major community project.
The first step into digital communication was building on “Keyfacts” with the idea of delivering brief information via SMS to mobile phones. This entry into mobile communication led to the first major community project.
The Know-It-All
But that was just the beginning. Why only answer questions from specific fields of study when you could answer ANY question instead? While this might sound less challenging from today’s perspective of smartphones, Google, and ChatGPT, it was a true mammoth project in the year 2000. And for such a project, an appropriate team was needed. Thus, in that year, the first service agents came together under the new company “Dr. Schengber & Friends Informationsgesellschaft mbH.”
The “Know-It-All” wasn’t a smart web crawler or an intelligent algorithm, but a team of some of the fastest typists available at that time. The principle was as simple as it was efficient: through the Know-It-All phone number, any question could be asked via SMS. The agent team would then research the answer as quickly as possible and send it back via SMS.
An Eternal Companion
The RTL Teletext Chat was launched in 2001. DSaF developed the concept for community management, moderation, and content monitoring of the platform and has been responsible for it since day one. Just a year later, it became the largest and most successful teletext chat in all of Europe. In numbers, this meant up to 180,000 SMS messages displayed on the screen every day.
Such a rush naturally requires professional handling, and that’s where DSaF’s first community management team came into play. Over the 23 years of the project, the eyes of our community agents have reviewed and approved millions of short messages. The project is still active today, making it almost as old as DSaF itself!
A constant companion
The RTL Teletext Chat was launched in 2001. DSaF developed the concept for community management, moderation, and content monitoring of the platform and has been responsible for it since day one. Just a year later, it became the largest and most successful Teletext Chat in all of Europe. In numbers, this means: up to 180,000 SMS messages displayed on the screen – every day.
Such a rush naturally needs to be handled professionally, and that’s exactly where DSaF’s first community management team came into play. Over the 23-year project duration, the eyes of our community agents have reviewed and approved millions of short messages for their content. The project is still active today and is almost as old as DSaF itself!
Just the Beginning
Today, RTL is just one of many active projects in our digital customer communication portfolio. While the volume has significantly decreased over the last 23 years due to the wide array of alternative communication options, the project’s longevity demonstrates our dedication to achieving long-lasting and positive customer relationships.
The massive upswing did not go unnoticed by other broadcasters either, and in 2002, community chat projects from MTV and VOX were added to the references of the then-nascent Digital Service Company. This success also caught the attention of Ingo Wostbrock, who joined Dr. Schengber & Friends GmbH as Managing Director in 2002 and has since been instrumental in steering the company towards digital customer engagement.
To this day, the vision of providing the best digital customer service has not changed, even though the internet and our way of communicating have evolved dramatically over the past 25 years. Whether it’s online forums, chat platforms, mobile messengers, social media, or the latest in service AI development from our Botcamp, no innovation has escaped the service experts from Münster since the company’s founding in 1999.
How the journey continues, you’ll discover in the next part of Journey with 1000 Friends!
Just the beginning
RTL is now just one of many active projects in our digital customer communication. While the volume has significantly decreased over the past 23 years due to the enormous array of communication alternatives, the project’s longevity demonstrates our commitment to establishing long-lasting and positive customer relationships.
The massive surge did not go unnoticed by other broadcasters either, and so, in 2002, the community chat projects of MTV and VOX were added to the references of the still fledgling Digital Service Company. This success also caught the attention of Ingo Wostbrock, who joined Dr. Schengber & Friends GmbH as Managing Director in 2002 and has been setting a pioneering course for digital customer engagement ever since.
To this day, the vision of providing the best digital customer service has not changed, even though the internet and our way of communicating could not have evolved more over the past 25 years. Whether it’s online forums, chat platforms, mobile messengers, social media, or the latest service AI developments from our Botcamp – no innovation has escaped the service experts from Münster since the company’s founding in 1999.
Part II – The First Milestones
The foundation of the Digital Service Company was laid, and many new paths began to open up for the Friends from Münster. As DSaF grew, so did the opportunities presented by the still-young internet in the new millennium. Numerous communities formed on various platforms, and for the first time, people exchanged ideas in real-time with thousands of others in public spaces.
Of course, companies also recognized these new opportunities and shifted their presence to the digital world. This is where Dr. Schengber & Friends came into play, as the newly formed communities needed to be managed, analyzed, and developed. Thus, in 2004, the first web project came to life: I-Screening, or as we would call it today, Web Monitoring!
Web, Web, Web!
After the initial steps into online customer communication, there was no holding back. Nearly every brand of note sought to establish relevance in the new digital landscape.
The first video portals, the first content platforms, the first community forums—suddenly, the possibilities for entertaining and promotional communication were limitless.
Thus, within just a few years, the still-young Digital Service Company found itself facing a multitude of new projects, all revolving around community interaction on the internet.
Web, Web, Web!
After the first steps into online customer communication, there was no turning back. Almost every brand of note tried to establish relevance in the new digital landscape.
The first video portals, the first content platforms, the first community forums. From one day to the next, the possibilities for entertaining and/or promotional communication were limitless.
Thus, within just a few years, the still-young Digital Service Company faced a multitude of new projects, all revolving around community interaction on the internet.
Service, Service, Service!
While the early days of community building were characterized by the goal of maximum reach and high engagement rates, the first major turning point came in 2008: genuine customer service in the public space, beyond hotlines, emails, and personal contact in physical stores.
The mobile service provider congstar, still regarded today as a pioneer of modern customer service, laid the foundation for a service strategy that has since become indispensable. The first customer service forum was created, and DSaF had the honor of providing the new community support.
Just a year later, congstar launched its first live chat, giving birth to what remains the most popular customer service channel to this day.
Service, Service, Service!
While the early days of the community were characterized by the goal of maximum reach and high engagement rates, the first major turning point came in 2008: real customer service in the public space, away from hotlines, emails, and personal contact in brick-and-mortar stores.
The mobile network operator congstar, still considered a pioneer of modern customer service today, laid the foundation for a service strategy that has since become indispensable. The first customer service forum was established, and DSaF had the honor of providing the new community support.
Just a year later, the first live chat was launched at congstar, and the most popular customer service channel to this day was born.
Social, Social, Social!
While web portals, forums, and chats were slowly becoming established among the general population, giants were emerging in the background, the scale of which was not yet foreseeable at the time.
We enter a new decade, and the golden era of social media has begun. The pioneer Facebook was the place to be, and that included companies.
Thus began the great rise of social media management projects at Dr. Schengber & Friends. Creating fan pages, advertising, content, customer service, and community interaction—all bundled in one place, for every conceivable industry and target audience.
Social, Social, Social!
While web portals, forums, and chats slowly established themselves among the general population, giants were growing in the background, whose scale was not yet foreseeable at that time.
We enter a new decade, and the golden age of social media has begun. The pioneer, Facebook, was the place to be, and this was true for businesses as well.
Thus began the great rise of social media management projects at Dr. Schengber & Friends. Creating fan pages, advertising, content, customer service, and community interaction – all bundled in one place, for every conceivable industry and target group.
New Teams, New Tools
The number of messages coming to the Service Friends in Münster across all channels quickly reached into the millions. New strategies and, above all, new technical capabilities were needed. Thus, alongside operational service, DSaF also began developing intelligent tools for modern customer communication.
The first success: Faboom—DSaF’s proprietary monitoring system developed for Facebook—significantly increased the processing rate of incoming messages. Since its implementation, service agents have manually handled over 30 million comments through the system.
Then a new challenge in digital communication emerged: automation. As early as 2016, DSaF developed its first chatbots for Facebook Messenger, with congstar once again leading the way.
AI has since become one of the most important focus areas in communication. In 2019, the Botcamp was launched. Here, programmers and language experts at Dr. Schengber & Friends have been developing state-of-the-art chatbots for every form of corporate communication: from service to recruiting.
New teams, new tools.
The number of messages coming to the Service Friends in Münster across all channels quickly reached the millions. New strategies and, above all, new technical solutions were needed. Thus, alongside operational service, DSaF also began developing intelligent tools for modern customer communication.
The first success: Faboom – the monitoring system developed by DSaF specifically for Facebook – increased the processing rate of incoming messages manifold. Since its implementation, service agents have been able to manually handle over 30 million comments through this system.
Then a new challenge in digital communication emerged: automation. As early as 2016, DSaF developed the first chatbots for Facebook Messenger. Once again, congstar was at the forefront.
AI has since become one of the most important focus areas in communication. In 2019, the Botcamp was established. Here, the programmers and language experts at Dr. Schengber & Friends have been developing state-of-the-art chatbots for all forms of corporate communication: from service to recruiting.
The complex interplay between service teams and intelligent tools has been continuously developed since that day to make customer service more personal and cost-efficient. The Data Transformer and the Dialog Support Panel are the central control elements for integrating humans and AI in service. In 2022, the flagship project with Casio was launched, where service agents and a custom-developed chatbot have formed the most efficient symbiosis in customer service to date.
Part III – Visions Ahead of Their Time
We are in the early 2000s, marking the beginning of a new era that continues to shape our lives to this day. The mobile phone is gradually making its way into the pockets of nearly everyone, bringing with it an endless array of new possibilities for connectivity and modern interaction.
In this part of the Journey with 1000 #Friends, we explore bold visions that came with the new technological advancements. Ideas that are now an integral part of our daily lives but faced significant obstacles at the time. We’ll take a look at three different projects from the Friends in Münster that, unfortunately, did not manage to establish themselves in the market at the turn of the millennium.
Maut Mobil
It’s the year 2003, and the new truck toll is about to be introduced on Germany’s highways. And with it come the problems: the coverage with automatic On-Board Units was only 10%, while manual booking through toll terminals or web forms led to long waiting times and a very high workload for shipping companies. DSaF was ready with “Maut Mobil” as a bridging technology.
The easy registration of truck drivers into the TollCollect system via SMS (hotline, email, or fax) to the DSaF Maut Mobil team was the plan. Unfortunately, the implementation failed due to excessive bureaucratic hurdles. The service contract for toll processing between Toll Collect and the federal government spanned 17,000 pages.
The Know-It-All
Today, it’s almost unimaginable not to have answers to our questions at any given moment. The vast knowledge of the internet lies dormant in our pockets and is just a few seconds away. But the world before smartphones with integrated search engines was a different one.
So, in 2004, the Friends set out to bring the future a little closer by developing the “Know-It-All.” Through this system, anyone could send any question via SMS at any time, which would then be processed by a research team, and the answer would be sent back to the user’s phone. Unfortunately, the system failed due to a lack of demand and the simultaneous technological advancements in mobile internet usage.
TheCity
We are in the year 2006, and the internet is making huge leaps forward in the realm of gaming, especially when it comes to real-time interaction. Three years earlier, Koch Media, together with Ubisoft, released the iconic life simulation Singles. At the same time, Second Life came into existence, an early precursor to today’s Metaverse.
The goal of DSaF was to further develop and combine both elements into a completely new online experience. The focus was on the community and active entertainment with one another, which was to be actively supported through moderation, events, and gaming. The City was exactly that, but this big idea also required significant capital to get off the ground. Unfortunately, the necessary project budget of over €30,000,000 could not be secured, and so The City remains, to this day, complete but still on the drawing board.
Whether it was a mobile job exchange or a phone oracle: ideas came as quickly as the state of technology allowed. Some were nipped in the bud early on, while others were fully developed and ready for implementation. Today, technological progress moves so fast that new ideas are already outdated before they are even fully thought through. Yet we have still made it our mission to drive innovation in customer communication. Whether through proprietary or generative AI, or the more than 250 real people who give their best every day to bring a little more color to the gray world of customer care, step by step.
Part IV – The Journey continues
Today, we stand at perhaps the busiest crossroads of digital communication. Between human empathy and technical efficiency, we strive every day to create the best possible service, encountering not only a few challenges but also many new and fascinating opportunities. The way we communicate today is hardly comparable to how it was 25 years ago, and how it will look in another 25 years is something we can barely begin to imagine.
What is clear: The very best customer service is indistinguishable from our private communication. Social media, chats, messengers, and even the good old telephone— as long as companies are present where their target audience is and outdated formalities no longer have a place, half the journey to truly delighting customers is already achieved.
And just as diverse as the people out there who search for answers to their service questions every day, so too must the team behind every company be that delivers those answers. That’s why we’ve been fighting against the old call center monotony to this day, making equal opportunity at DSaF more than just a buzzword. We want to be Friends, both internally and externally, welcoming everyone who enjoys supporting people in customer service—regardless of their life circumstances, interests, clothing styles, or any other criteria that no longer belong in a modern company.
Today, we are proud to call more than 250 wonderful people Friends, and we are proud of every single one of them. A huge thank you to all of you who give your all every day to make customer service something better. We also extend our gratitude to the many companies that, over the past 25 years, have entrusted us with their most valuable asset—their customers. You confirm that we are doing something good and are still on the right path.
And the end of that path is nowhere in sight!
