“Now we are really lightyears ahead. But it took time, longer than I first expected”, Karolina Baszarkiewicz describes the journey.

Customer in focus

Elisa is one of the biggest telecom companies in Finland, holding around 37 % share of Finland’s telecom market. The company offers a wide selection of services and products from consumer mobile and internet connections and devices to company network and cyber security services.

“We´ve always been very customer-centric, but we haven’t had a central view of customer which created challenges in for example customer communications and customer experience management." Chief Customer Officer Karolina Baszarkiewicz tells.

To solve these challenges and to bring a more holistic view on customer relationship management, the organisation needed fresh thinking and ways of working, as the main challenge laid within the organisational setting.

“The work happens in line organisations, you have the managers who, set the targets and the team delivers accordingly. This model is challenged when the customer is truly put in the centre of the processes. In a customer-centric way of working you have to see the customership from a more comprehensive perspective, instead of, for example, the business area or business unit point of view.”

To test this approach, three cross-functional teams were set up with members with complimentary skills such as marketing, customer operations, data analytics and business skills.

“We wanted to test if we are able to work in an agile, cross functional end-to-end teams. And are we able to manage teams like this with right targets and ways of working." Baszarkiewicz describes the first steps in finding more agile and customer centric ways of working.

Change takes time

Withmore’s agile coaches Karoliina Luoto and Miika Kuha helped the three pilot teams to get started with the work.

“At first we needed a lot of support from Withmore. For example they hosted the meetings, prepared all the materials and Miro boards, and ran the retros. Then gradually we shifted towards our team leads taking the reins. What Withmore does really well is that they coach you and teach you building a process where at one point, they are not needed anymore and the customer takes the steering wheel."

At the beginning, Withmore’s Lean Consultants and Baszarkiewicz and her team leads had a somewhat clear vision on how to get started in the transformation work, and how it would work out.

We had a clear plan, but when you start to involve people in the process, it doesn't always go like you planned ahead. We had a pretty bumpy start, and people were just confused in the first workshop, asking why are we here”, Karolina says laughing.

They realised they had run straight into conclusions and solutions, and that more time was needed to explain the problem and why there was a need to experiment with more customer centric and agile ways of working.

“Even if we, me and the team leads, saw the challenges and also the solutions, for others, things were really functional, and from their perspective everything was running smoothly. People have their own points of view, and each team has their own perspective, and it just takes time to explain and onboard people one by one, patiently.”

“Now we are really lightyears ahead. After these challenges the enthusiasm really spiked and people got to work. In the end it was a relatively smooth transition. But it took time, longer than I first expected”, Baszarkiewicz describes the journey.

“This is how it should feel like at this stage”

Thus, Baszarkiewicz praises especially the support she got from Withmore’s coaches, especially in the role of leading the whole change process.

“For me personally, the best thing in working with Withmore was the outside perspective they brought. Obviously, there is the whole experience and practical tools and support they can bring. But it was really great for me as a person leading that change, to have this sounding board that was really neutral. Even if internally everyone wanted the project to succeed, people always have different kinds of opinions”, Baszarkiewicz brings up the need for leaders to have personal support in the midst of a change project.

“And of course their calm presence, they have done this many times before in multiple companies, so they´ve seen this and have experience, and they can say `hey this is normal, it happens, it is a big change, this is how it should feel like at this stage` when at our side we were ready to run and hide and never come back”, she gives a laugh.

Now after a year and a half, the work in the pilot teams continues. The more customer centric and agile way of working is considered to be an efficient and functional way of organizing the work, and there are plans to scale the approach into new areas.

“I’m very proud of Elisa for having the courage to go on to do this kind of development work. It is also a kind of testament to what kind of organisation we are, and shows that there is open mindedness and the urge to learn new things. As the main thing in this project was, I think, that it was a really good learning process.”