How often do we encounter a not very friendly attitude from sellers in stores. The little boy was worried for a long time because of the abusive treatment of a seller in a computer store. And when he grew up, he remembered this case and decided to organize a business that prevents such behavior of service personnel. And earned millions on it.
Rude seller
Heikki Väänänen is now 40 years old, but he still remembers the grudge inflicted on him by a rude seller. Heikki says that in the 90s, when he was 15 years old, he often went to a computer store in his provincial town of Finland, where he lived with his parents. The teenager came there for floppy disks, but he always encountered the hostility of the man who worked there as a seller.
Heikki recalls that the man intentionally ignored a teenager who came to the store to buy. And when he was already standing near the ticket office and paying for floppy disks, he often rude to him and was always very unfriendly. The young man was very worried and even angry because of the similar behavior of an adult man, because he did not understand why he treated him so badly. The child’s resentment in the end, however, brought Heikki Väänänen a world-wide recognition and good condition.
Sold a successful business for a new idea
By 2008, Heikki Väänänen was a fairly successful businessman in the field of computer technology and a well-earned programmer. He owned the gaming business of Universomo and worked with many companies known throughout the world. His clients included Sega and Disney, Warner and Lucas Arts. But Heikki sold his successful business to one of the American companies and began to look for a new niche in entrepreneurship that would not be occupied by anyone.
Then an old story came to his aid with an insult to poor service in a computer store. He decided to create something that would prevent such cases and could evaluate the quality of service in all areas of the provision of certain services. So his company HappyOrNot appeared.
"Are you satisfied?"
Heikki Väänänen opened his company HappyOrNot together with his friend Will Levanani.
Their business idea was as follows. They came up with and installed feedback terminals that evaluate the quality of customer service. Thanks to these special terminals, the client could now express his opinion on the services presented to him, whether he liked the service or not. He could tell the owner of the establishment whether his food quality was satisfactory, how the employees of the cafe or restaurant served him, and note other aspects that he encountered in the particular institution in which the HappyOrNot terminal was installed.
The service question appears on the terminal screen, and the client just needs to click on the button with a smiley that displays his answer to the asked question: excellent, good, normal and bad. HappyOrNot processes the received information and sends it to the company that provides services to the client who answered the questions.
The owners of HappyOrNot were afraid of only one thing: that someone in the world had already come up with such terminals and they simply would not have a place in this type of business. But it turned out that there were no such terminals, so friends opened a company, and their business immediately went uphill.
The first steps of a new company
The first customer of the newly formed HappyOrNot company was a chain of popular supermarkets in Finland.They installed terminals in their stores and, thanks to their work, were able to identify shortcomings in the services they provide.
In particular, they revealed that at certain times of the day, fruits, according to customers of supermarkets, were not fresh enough. The store drew attention to this problem, eliminated it, and there were many times more satisfied customers.
Company today
Today HappyOrNot is used by more than 4000 organizations in 134 countries of the world. Their clients include companies such as the British Heathrow Airport, the San Francisco American football team, the British chain of drugstores and health and beauty stores, the Carrefour chain of shoe stores and supermarkets.
Heikki Väänänen admits that far from all the companies to which they offered their terminals wanted to cooperate with them. Some openly laughed at the idea of Heikki Väänänen and his co-founder, arguing that this is an absolutely useless thing that can in no way affect the development of their business. And therefore, Heikki Väänänen is doubly pleased that most of the companies that refused them, after some time, themselves called them and asked for cooperation.
A real breakthrough was the moment when Heathrow, one of the largest airports in the world, wanted to purchase terminals HappyOrNot. The company has become the largest client of Heikki Väänänen and Villa Levananiemi, and businessmen continue to work with the company to this day.
There are currently over 25,000 active HappyOrNot terminals worldwide. The company sells these terminals an average of $ 11.4 million per year.
But it all began with a seller who was rude to a teenager and with a boy who remembered this insult for life.