Tjalja Schaaf

People Leader | Customer Experience | group.one | Building Teams | Enabling Change and Digital Transformation

Amsterdam, North Holland, Netherlands

About

Every business function has the potential to be strategically valuable, if it's built with the right intent and the right people. CS teams are the first to know when something isn't working. They hear the frustration before it shows up in the data, the confusion before it becomes churn, the praise that tells you what's actually resonating. That intelligence is gold, but only if the organisation knows how to use it. That's what I've spent my career trying to build. Not just teams that handle contacts well, but organisations that listen, learn, and feed that understanding back into the business. For the past 12 years I've been leading CS at group.one, across three brands: one.com, Hostnet, and Antagonist. 130 people, 5 countries, 8 nationalities. Building something at that scale, across that many cultures and contexts, has shaped how I think about leadership, customer experience, and what great organisations actually look like. I've always been drawn to the intersection of things. I'm as comfortable in a product or technology meeting as I am in a service operations review, and I've spent a lot of time being the person in the room making sure the customer perspective doesn't get lost when big decisions are being made: pricing changes, migrations, product launches. At the core of everything I do is people leadership. Helping people perform, grow, and find their confidence is what I find most rewarding, and it's what I believe makes the difference between a good team and a great organisation. The function almost doesn't matter, the quality of leadership always does.

Experience

  • group.one (3 yrs 3 mos)
    • Director Global Customer Service Operations
      Apr 2025 - Present · 1 yr 4 mos

    • Head of Customer Service group.one brands
      May 2023 - Mar 2025 · 1 yr 11 mos

  • one.com (9 yrs 3 mos)
    • Customer Service Manager Group One
      Oct 2022 - May 2023 · 8 mos

    • Customer Service Manager West- and Southern Europe
      Jan 2021 - Sep 2022 · 1 yr 9 mos

    • Support Manager Copenhagen
      Aug 2018 - Jan 2021 · 2 yrs 6 mos

  • Director at Dutch School Copenhagen
    Aug 2013 - Jun 2015 · 1 yr 11 mos

  • Founder and Owner at Mis Pegatinas - NameLabels.dk / www.mis-pegatinas.es and www.namelabels.dk
    May 2009 - Mar 2015 · 5 yrs 11 mos

    Online retail shop in Spain and Denmark for personalized and fun name labels.

  • HR Manager at VBAT
    2005 - 2009 · 4 yrs

    HR Manager - direct report to CEO and member of the Management Team, responsible for servicing an employee population of around 90 employees. - Developed and successfully implemented HR strategies, policies and tools - Advised and supported managers in the successful implementation of HR policies - Advised management regarding the in- and outflow of employees and the embodiment of the recruitment process - Developed, implemented and managed compensation and benefits program in cooperation with CEO and CFO