Maintaining customer relationships

For the purposes of maintaining our relationship with you, and to enable us to offer you personalised promotions, for example, we use information such as your contact details, transaction data, travel behaviour, contact history with NS, customer profile (such as analysing whether you are likely to terminate your season ticket soon), open/click behaviour in e-mails and on the website (only under the conditions described in our Cookie policy), and inferred preferences (such as leisure activities, if you have specified this). The personal data you have provided to NS is linked to you as an NS customer and not to an NS product or service you have purchased.

If you are an NS-Business Card holder or booker, we will use your business contact details if possible.

We use your data to maintain our relationship with you, for example by providing you with the best possible information about our products and by optimising the products and services you purchase from NS. NS has a legitimate interest in doing so. We also maintain a relationship with you through marketing promotions, the NS Spoordeelwinkel, cookies and by sending newsletters in the post and by e-mail. This data processing is based on the principle of consent. Below you can read about the processing operations that take place on the basis of the aforementioned principles.

The basis for processing is: consent 

Use of travel data for personalisation in communication 

NS only uses your travel data to personalise messages if you have given your consent for this. In the online Mijn NS environment, you can use 'Data and preferences' to easily select which messages you wish to receive digitally from NS, and which data may be used for this purpose, so the messages can better accommodate your preferences and your journey. You can view and edit your communications preferences at any time.

If you give consent, NS may use your travel data to present you with personalised offers. In that case, we will draw up profiles based on your personal data and travel data. 

Tips and deals

If you want to receive tips and deals from NS, you can give NS consent for this. You also give this consent in the online Mijn NS environment via 'Data and preferences'.

Service messages from carriers

If you have given consent, then we will forward your data to other carriers so that they can send you service messages.

Cookies

For the use of cookies and similar technologies by NS, please see the cookie statement.

Targeted advertising

With your consent, we will use an encrypted version of your e-mail address for Meta 'Custom Audiences' and Google 'Customer Match'. These are the platforms used for targeted advertising.

By using customised target groups in Meta and Google targeted advertising, NS can define existing target groups among those people who use Meta technologies (Facebook, Instagram) or Google technologies. To that end, we use sources such as e-mail addresses, customer lists, and web or app traffic. These methods allow us to contact people who have previously interacted with NS via mobile or desktop devices. Our banners and other advertisements are shown to people in this segment when they use Facebook, Instagram, Google or partner websites like NU.nl or Buienradar.nl.

After matching an encrypted version of your e-mail address with Meta or Google, they immediately delete the encrypted e-mail address. NS will store your encrypted e-mail address for this purpose for a maximum of two years. If you wish to withdraw your consent for using customised target groups for targeted advertising, you can do so by changing your cookie settings via our cookie policy. Click on the link under the heading 'How can I change my cookie settings?', and choose which cookies you would like to accept or refuse.

Listed below are the processing operations that take place under the principle of legitimate interest.

The basis for processing the information is: legitimate interest.

Functional e-mail policy    

We may send you messages that are not for advertising purposes without your consent, for example messages regarding the purchase, management, change or termination of NS products or about your booking with NS International, such as changes or emergencies. If the situation allows, NS may also decide to offer you the option to unsubscribe. If the situation allows, NS may also decide to offer you the option to unsubscribe. 

We comply with the codes of conduct regarding personalised advertising from the Data-driven Marketing Association (DDMA).

Service notifications

Based on the customer relationship, NS will send you service notifications with important travel information, such as delays, maintenance work and crowded trains. NS will use your profile data to provide you with the best possible information. You can cancel this service at any time via a link in the e-mail or your own login account for Mijn NS.

Analysis of pseudonymised travel data

We would like to maintain our relationship with you by offering an attractive timetable and other services that suit the needs of our passengers. If we do this for marketing related to monitoring passenger growth and passenger distribution, we have a commercial interest in using certain derived travel data. We call this travel data 'Maandtellers'. 'Maandtellers' are data relating to travel frequency, time since most recent journey, travel during peak/off-peak hours, preferred routes, preferred stations, OV-fiets, storage on account, and travel yield. We use this data for analyses aimed at identifying trends, so we can adjust our products accordingly. By linking this information with individual travel information, we can achieve better business results and improve customer satisfaction. We use aggregated or anonymous data for the analyses wherever possible. The data we use only tells us about your travel behaviour. We cannot 'track' you using this data. If you do not want your pseudonymised travel data to be part of these analyses, you can let us know by means of the request form. You will only receive offers based on your travel data after you have given NS consent for this.

We adhere strictly to the legislation regarding e-mail advertising. We will not send you any advertisements or promotions without your consent if you have never given us your e-mail address for our online services. If you have done that at some point, we are not obliged to ask for your consent, but we are required to offer a simple option to unsubscribe. NS always does this. If you are not one of our customers but would still like to receive messages, you can sign up for them on one of the NS websites.

If you would rather not receive any information or promotions, then you can unsubscribe as follows:

• For e-mail: by logging in to Mijn NS or Mijn NS Zakelijk, or by clicking on unsubscribe at the bottom of the message
• For post and telephone calls from NS, you can use 'Data and preferences' in Mijn NS or the  NS Customer Service.
• For e-mail from NS International: via the unsubscribe option at the bottom of the message

We do our best to process your choice to unsubscribe as quickly as possible. However, processing your choice to unsubscribe may take some time; it is possible that you will still receive commercial messages from NS in the meantime.

Customer and market survey

Based on the customer relationship, we may send you occasional e-mails inviting you to share your opinions and experiences with NS to improve our products and services. NS will use your profile data to provide you with the best possible information. You can cancel this service at any time via a link in the e-mail or your own login account for Mijn NS. 

Service notifications

Based on the customer relationship, NS will send you service notifications with important travel information, such as delays, maintenance work and crowded trains. NS will use your profile data to provide you with the best possible information. You can cancel this service at any time via a link in the e-mail or your own login account for Mijn NS. 

Partners we work with often ask whether they may offer you, as an NS customer, interesting promotions such as travel discounts, theatre tickets or books. We do not give these third parties your data, neither do we sell it to them. But since we do not want our customers to miss interesting promotions, we may pass them onto you ourselves.

We also give your information to national and international carriers for the purposes of sending service messages. We have made agreements about the processing of personal data with these parties, pertaining to how this information is secured and stored, for instance.

We contract third parties to provide IT and marketing services. These third parties process our data solely for our own internal use, and for no other purpose. We have made agreements with these parties pertaining to the processing of personal data.

We are authorised to provide your personal data to parties outside the European Economic Community under certain circumstances. In that event, we will take suitable measures with these parties, for example by agreeing to the standard provisions required by the European Commission.

We store data that we have used for analyses for no more than 48 months from the last time we had contact with the customer concerned. We also store data used for personalised promotions for no more than 48 months. When you unsubscribe from commercial messages or object to the use of your personal data, we will delete all data that we use for maintaining our relationship with you as quickly as possible.