Nowadays, due to various technological advancements communication is much easier. Traditionally, this was not the ideal situation, people use to struggle because of various reasons and bad Telecom services was one of the major reasons. It is rightly said, “Curiosity is the mother of invention.” While all of this was happening, Martina Klingvall had already been working in the telecom industry performing various roles.
Since her initial days, Martina was curious and had a very keen interest towards telecom industry. Having worked in telecom industry for years, Martina started Telness in quest to provide better communication services.
Recently, the team of Mirror Review had the opportunity to ask few questions to Martina Klingvall, CEO of Telness. Here are the snippets,
Curiosity leading to different roles
How did you end up having/performing so varied roles in the telecom industry? Please tell us about you and little bit your educational background as well.
I believe education plays crucial in every person’s life. I am a very curious person that likes new challenges and also, I like to learn new things within different areas. So, despite of studying in the engineering background I have explored varied roles in the telecom industry. I have been a part of this industry for a long time and its my curiosity that led me to different roles within tech, marketing, and sales.
Unique telecom platform
It’s difficult to choose a career when you have so many options. Tell us something about your career? Which has been your proudest career achievement till now?
Absolutely! It is hard to choose a specific career when you are interested in many different things. In 2016, I took a big leap and left the ‘safe’ career path at one of the largest telecom operators in Sweden, to start a new telecom player in the market by myself together with a great team. Since founding the company, we have launched a new mobile operator for the SME market in Sweden, and successfully built a unique telecom platform (on a world-wide level) enabling, significantly improving the customer experience and differentiating our service both for the end user and for us internally as a combined telecom and tech company. That is my proudest, best and most challenging step I have achievement so far.
Focused on Providing Better Communication
In difficult times of Covid-19, how is Telness coping up with the customer requirements?
We all are going through tough times and I hope you all are taking care of yourself and your family. While all this is happening, communication becomes more than a necessity. I understand that there is such a low customer satisfaction within Telcom with its complicated services and unfriendly customer experience. But our company provides digital, transparent and hassle-free mobile communication solutions for the next generation businesses – saving them time, money and headache. We have, already from the start been focused on providing the 10x better communications experiences, starting with mobile subscription and now broadening with customer friendly switch solutions.
Improving customer experience world wide
How are you planning to expand Telness and its offering?
Expansion is sign of a growth. We are now also expanding our offering globally with our tech platform as a service for international operators (not operating in our market in Sweden, to avoid direct competition). With our platform and by using our tech, it can enable traditional and new telecom players to also make the end-to-end customers journeys digital, improve their customers experiences and have an automized and lean backend and operations.
Accepting The New Possibilities
What are the three must have characteristics in today’s leader?
I think the most important must-have characteristics is that you HAVE to be curious as a leader today. Both in people, but also in change and new possibilities that quickly rises from technology, new ways of working or new generations and their culture and behaviour. If you are not, you will very quickly be irrelevant.
Other important characteristics I think is transparency and trust. I think that today’s people become engaged if they are involved and feel that they can influence their activities and decisions and trust the company´s vision, leaders and colleagues.
Simple, Digital and Hassle-Free Solution
Setting up a company is never easy, please tell us your initial hurdles in building your business and how did you overcome them?
Doing something for the first time is always challenging and we have struggled along the way to succeed in our tech product. I still remember our initial days, Telness was setup from a blank paper and have in three years grown to be an offering with thousands of business customers in the Swedish market. We are the first who actually managed to build a fully end-to-end, cloud based, digital telecom platform in the world, actually enabling our service.
Another hurdle is that telecom and traditional operators in general have low trust in the market, and customer expect more or less the same bad customers experience and complex solutions. Promises from the operators to the customers that have not (at all) been met, with significant unhappy customers / low NPS scores in the industry as a result. When we actually launched a simple, digital and hassle free solution, we had a hard time building trust in the market and to prove ourselves different from everyone else. Many have promised things before, how could we prove we were different and make customers dare to believe and try us?
Internally in our organization; all of our struggles have also been learnings though and we have managed to create a culture where it is ok to fail, learn and raise stronger. This type of company culture makes it fun and developing along the way, instead of actual failures.
