Suppose you play at TOTO and receive a phone call advising you to lower your player limit for TOTO. If that happens, it’s because Nienka and her colleagues want to prevent you from getting into problems. In this blog, Nienka Kroesen shares more about responsible gaming, why after a 16-year career in various marketing positions she took the decision to switch to her current role as Responsible Gaming Specialist iGaming and why it is that players cannot get by without her and her team members.
With a career spanning 17 years at Nederlandse Loterij behind her, Nienka has an impressive track record. She began her journey as a Market Researcher at Lotto, and then after a variety of marketing roles she worked for 6 years as CRM Campaign Manager at TOTO. But at the end of 2022 she opted to go in a new direction as a Responsible Gaming Specialist. A move that she is extremely happy with. She elucidates: “My previous role as campaign manager had a more commercial slant and revolved around optimising the customer journey for TOTO players and building long-term relationships. Even then though I was simultaneously working closely with the former Responsible Gaming Specialist to ensure that players stayed responsibly engaged in the interests of preventing problematic gaming. The social importance of responsible play attracted me so much that I made the move at the end of 2022.”
What exactly does being Responsible Gaming Specialist involve? Nienka explains: “As Responsible Gaming Specialist iGaming, I deal with responsible gaming policy at Nederlandse Loterij, mainly targeting TOTO players. Within our ‘Responsible Gaming’ department, we have one unambiguous objective: to prevent players from getting into problems. We want to ensure that gaming stays fun. If a player gets into problems because of excessive gaming, it’s no longer healthy and does not contribute to anyone’s happiness.” To prevent addiction, Nienka and her colleagues are actively engaged in prevention, detection and intervention.
Nienka explains that in her role, she mainly focuses on the preventive aspects of responsible gaming. But what exactly does that involve? “I provide information and, together with the team, am constantly devising new preventive measures to keep TOTO players from potential risks.” Together with her colleagues, she gives presentations to a range of stakeholders, both internal and external. “We’re often accompanied by someone with expertise gained from experience. Someone who was addicted in the past. Hearing his or her story is always very moving. We also recently conducted a new (online) campaign called ‘rugdekking’, or ‘we’ve got your back’. The idea of this was to make football fans aware of the taboo surrounding the risks of gaming and ask them to keep an eye on each other.”
But prevention goes beyond the provision of education and conducting campaigns. “We’ve also developed tools for players to better understand their own playing behaviour. These allow them to protect themselves by setting limits, for example.
In addition to prevention, we monitor play behaviour and intervene when necessary. This is done by the analysts in our team in close association with a number of colleagues in the Customer Service department. If we observe that a player is losing control or on the verge of doing so, we initiate intervention. Then our Customer Service colleagues, who are specially trained for this, will call that player, for example, and we will start a conversation about their playing behaviour.”
The government has imposed a strict duty of care on companies, Nederlandse Loterij included. This responsibility is taken extremely seriously by Nederlandse Loterij. “In my opinion, we execute our duty of care better than the average organisation and that means there is no better place for players than here with us.”
Nienka also feels a strong commitment to this responsibility within her own role. “As one of the biggest players in the online market, we do of course have an additional responsibility, and we are strongly aware of that in our department. Everyone is inherently motivated to do this work because we actually want to keep people out of trouble.”
What if gaming simply no longer existed? Wouldn’t that be the best way to keep players out of trouble? This is what Nienka has to say: “Games of chance are as old as the hills and will never disappear. And by far the majority of players enjoy them. With good education and the right tools, we ensure that playing also remains a form of recreation. And if players still get (or threaten to get) into trouble, we’re there with the right interventions. That makes my work fascinating and fun.”
Just like Nienka, do you think you would enjoy working at Nederlandse Loterij, one of the biggest players in the online market? Check out our vacancies here.
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