“I was supposed to join Swappie for the summer 2018 as a part-time employee. Initially I was a bit hesitant because I had this idea that there are probably just tech enthusiastic guys fixing phones; How would I even get selected without any experience in such, let alone fit in that culture?”

It is now August 2024. Veera has worked here the whole time since 2018 and has built her career to a leadership position, nowadays leading five customer support teams as Regional Manager for the Nordics.  We just had to have a chat with her to discuss her inspiring Swappie journey!

“I had been checking iPhones at the Operations site for a week after which I found myself in the Swappie store as a full-time employee!  At that time Swappie was developing the Customer Support function, and I got the opportunity to go to the first Swappie store and support customers from there.  The first years during our hypergrowth everyone was pretty much doing everything: We jumped in to help wherever the business needed the most hands on deck - my weeks included working with customers at the store, helping the phone customer service team, refurbishing the phones at OPS and helping the outbound team to pack and ship the orders!”

Having this vast experience of Swappie’s business has led Veera to become a Store Lead and Retail Lead, eventually reaching the current Regional Manager position in the spring of 2023.  She currently has 18 direct reports who are working with Swappie’s consumer customers in Finland, Sweden and Denmark. She spends the majority of her working time with the team members - having one-to-ones, developing their skills and supporting them to fulfil the customer needs in the best way possible. Together with the other CS management team they develop the function on a strategic level, and plan ahead on a quarterly and annual basis. Veera also enjoys running the bi-annual performance management programme, hiring new team members and cross-functional projects with, for instance, the marketing teams.

Veera says Swappie’s customer focus is very visible in her daily work.  It is not only that we want to keep our customers happy in general, but the whole Customer Support organisation is focusing at the moment on bringing CS data to be easily and efficiently at the whole business’ disposal.  “The company is genuinely obsessed with understanding the customer point of view, what their experience is and what they expect from our product. For instance the expectations can vary between different countries.” 

In addition to the customer centricity, Veera is inspired by the growth-mindset culture at Swappie: “Without this growth mindset Swappie would not be in this situation. I have seen the company evolve from having only 2 webshops, Finland and Sweden, to expand to 11 countries in Europe, to over 800 employees and several international locations.  We have always known how to dream big, try out things and believe in our business model.  In challenging situations our growth-mindset has helped us to learn from mistakes, analyse them, and recognize where we can and should develop in the future.”

Veera has adopted the growth-mindset so thoroughly that she feels she is fluently using that also outside her work.  “I love to try out new things.  I want to break the invisible chains created by society and the world, which often are mere biases in our own heads about not being able to do something.”   Swappie does provide a fruitful soil for this kind of mindset, as we believe in constant improvement and being endlessly optimistic to achieve what we set our minds to.  This challenges Veera also to learn new things daily and take on projects she has not done before.  However, she has the perfect way to get her mind off work and ground herself  - You are sure to find her at the horse stable every day after work.  Veera has her own horse, Vekku, to bring her back to the present moment and relax.

So Veera, how do you feel now about the initial doubt of whether you as a female would fit into a tech company and in our culture?

“Well it clearly was a misconception that I might not necessarily fit in - I was welcomed warmly and I have gotten amazing opportunities here to grow my career.  When my friend suggested me to join Swappie, he said that the people at Swappie are simply great. Now, after 6 years, I still think that the best thing here are the people!  It is a privilege to work with like-minded colleagues who are positive and want to develop themselves and work together for the important Swappie mission every day.”