'Very few people realise how good you are'
Satisfied accountants: Behind from the left: Tone Anne Wik Aasberg, Gry Maritha Sevaldsen and Line Paulsen. In front from the left: Georg Backer, Geir Arne Johansen and Tore Severinsen. Photo: Ronny Lien
'We are very satisfied with the services offered and the customer service, and with the increase in electronic services', says general manager Gry Sevaldsen of Økonor Brønnøysund, one of the 95 offices in this national chain of accountants. Økonor has nearly 1,000 employees all over the country and serves around 16,500 customers.
Short waiting times
'Your phone waiting time is short compared with other public agencies. It is easy to contact you and be passed on to the right case officer. We are very satisfied with the Brønnøysund Register Centre's services and customer service. The Oslo-Økern office, which has a big customer base with lots of different types of customers, states that, no matter how big or small the enquiry, the Brønnøysund Register Centre answers their enquiries quickly and provides good help, whether with processing an application for a D number, registering foreign companies or complicated technical transactions relating to mergers and demergers.
Part of day-to-day work
'Contact with the Brønnøysund Register Centre and Altinn is part of our day-to-day work: submitting VAT statements, payment record forms, annual accounts, registration of new firms, changes in firms, and coordinated register notification forms. At the end of last year, there was a rush to report decisions to drop an external audit.
Like many other accounting firms, Økonor has specialised systems that are directly linked to the Brønnøysund Register Centre and Altinn.
'We have very good experience of communicating with your systems. This has become a matter of course for us. On a few occasions, the Brønnøysund Register Centre has been down, but we have usually been notified in advance so that we could prepare.
Not all of our customers are on Altinn. They can use the internet, but find it difficult to log on to Altinn. They don't know where the right codes are and so on. Then we can help them. That is why we are here, to be our customers' "everyday hero".
Those of us who work in Brønnøysund also have an extra advantage: We sometimes make urgent registrations. We just bring the papers over before lunch and get them back after lunch. The customer service is impeccable.'
Praise and criticism
'We would like to help to influence Altinn in future, and want to get involved as users,' Gry Sevaldsen says.
'Without Altinn, we cannot do our job. But when there have been big explicable delays, our deadlines have been extended, and that's good. Our employees use Altinn several times a day, and we think user-friendliness is an area with a significant potential for improvement. The structure is not very logical, which makes it more difficult and time-consuming than necessary to navigate the site. After Altinn was reorganised, the amount of clicks required became a bit too high. When deleting delegations, for example, you have to do it for one person at a time. I would also like to see a function in Altinn for sorting the list of persons represented by the individual case officer. At present, the names seem to be in random order, and you have to scroll down to the right person.
If we who use Altinn actively every day could help to design and test the site, we believe the solution could become even better,' Sevaldsen concludes.
