The foyer of Netox in Oulu echoes with bubbling laughter. Tuulia Nissinen, who came to Netox from the listed company Bittum, clearly enjoys herself in her new workplace. “I served with Bittium for 13 years, the final years as the Director of Information Management. Wonderful years, but now it was time to move on,” says Nissinen. “I want to see what the world looks like from the other side of the table.”
By the other side of the table Nissinen means that at Bittum she got used to buying IT services. Now she is figuring out how to sell them. ”Or, I’d rather not even call it selling, because it is about a comprehensive understanding of our customers and designing that understanding into the right kind of service,” ponders Tuulia Nissinen. ”The time of large-scale distant outsourcing is over. We have moved back into the era of local service, and to listening and understanding the customer.”
“Twenty years ago the matter of cyber security was nearly negligible. Now it is at the centre of everything,” Nissinen emphasises. “This is no longer news to anyone, but I will say it nevertheless: data is the uranium of our time. Exceptionally valuable and requires extremely careful handling. Fortunately, at Netox we have world class knowhow what comes to preventing cyber threats.”
“Help desk in India – we all know what happened there. Customers need something completely different. There may be Pirkko at the bottom of your screen who chats in Oulu dialect and resolves your issue. And if needed, comes for a visit if there is no other way to solve the problem,” Nissinen describes and bursts into laughter again. “I want to build the Netox services into such a whole that there are no weak spots in the customer experience. Because the same applies here as anywhere: A chain is no stronger than its weakest link.”
“A good seller should never direct the conversation so that they can sell the newest thing which provides the best commission. No, no and no. The sole job of the seller is to find out what the customers need, what they need to buy and what brings value. The most important skill of a seller is to ask the right questions,” reminds Tuulia Nissinen and thanks for the interview.
