“I caught the wave with Webbing”
Irina Bespalova, CSM Team Leader at Webbing, shares what made her move to Israel, how she believed in Webbing even before she joined the company, and why she still sometimes needs to explain what her job is.
Moving to Israel to go 100% global
I’m originally from Russia, and now I live in Israel, in Ramat Hasharon.
I was born in Petrozavodsk, Republic of Karelia, a region bordering Finland. After I finished school, I moved to Saint Petersburg to study international management at the Graduate School of Management at Saint Petersburg University.
When I got my bachelor’s degree, I knew that I wanted to work in a truly international company. My dream was to go 100% global, work in English with clients and colleagues coming from different countries, and this is why I decided to move to Israel. The Israeli internal market is very small, so all companies are by default oriented to the international market and working with international clients. Also, from the very beginning I wanted to work in customer facing roles. I always knew that I had good interpersonal skills, and I wanted my profession to be related to meeting new people.
When I moved to Israel, I started working at a company that organized medical conferences. I worked there for three years and then, during covid, joined a fintech company where I did some customer support. I think the essence of support is helping clients by following procedures, while customer success gives you room for improvisation and thinking outside the box to help the clients grow and succeed. I left after six months and took a long break; I didn’t work for about half a year before joining Webbing.
Joining Webbing
I found Webbing through a former colleague; she posted on LinkedIn that there was an open CSM position at the company. I was specifically looking for a CSM position. By that time, I had already changed a couple of jobs, I was 27, trying to understand my career path, how can I grow, and which field I need to go into, so I started exploring customer success management. So, when I saw that post on LinkedIn, I decided to give it a try. It was exciting and it suited my personality, because it involves a lot of communication and meeting new people. I think that customer success management is still relatively new as a field – while in Israel and the USA people are more acquainted with it, in Europe I sometimes need to explain what it is that I do.
I really liked the hiring process: I got to meet my future colleagues and had an interview with my future manager. I remember they asked me what made me choose between companies, and I mentioned that for me it’s important to believe in the product. I think that even then, not understanding completely what Webbing does, I believed in their product, the connectivity. I felt that it’s a cool product, easy to work with and to promote. It was also important for me to be in a company that is trustworthy and has a good offer, and from the interviews I got that impression.
My journey at Webbing
I started as a customer success manager at Webbing two years ago. When I joined, Webbing began changing, so I feel like I caught the wave of the company growth, and I could grow within it and with it. I got promoted to customer success team leader and I still have the same title, but I guess the position evolved over time. I have more responsibilities, we have a different vision for our department, our portfolio is changing a lot. We still have clients that joined Webbing years ago, new clients are joining now, and there are some big names, so in terms of use cases and connectivity needs the portfolio is much more diversified now.
My team got bigger, the whole company got bigger, the use cases that we deal with have become more interesting. The requirements for CSM have become more demanding, but that’s a positive thing for me, because with more interesting and challenging use cases, we have to deepen our knowledge of the industry, of the product, of offers that we give and solutions we implement.
I learned a lot about our clients, and it’s amazing to realize how cellular connectivity is relevant to so many companies around us. You come to the supermarket, you pay with your phone, and you don’t think how that machine accepts the payment. People taking medical measurements don’t think there’s cellular connectivity behind the technology, it just somehow all works.
Webbing is the right place for me
Every day here is unlike any other. Every day you face something new. It starts with the industry that keeps changing, you need to be flexible and adapt, so our priorities also change. And as I mentioned, meeting new people is my passion. I sometimes go visit Israeli customers, not because I’m required to be there, just because I enjoy talking to people and hearing their feedback about Webbing.
I like challenges. I don’t like routine. If I have an issue and I need to deal with it, I love that sense of adrenaline that it gives me, and how I can quickly solve it by communicating with different departments and having teamwork. And because I’m a CSM, I hear all feedback immediately. It gives you that great feeling of achievement in the end, so I share all Thank Yous, as teamwork is also important. It feels good to know that we achieved something, we resolved a customer issue.
I like the fact that I can build my role and take complete ownership, with the support of top management. It’s important to have someone who supports you, but also doesn’t micromanage and trusts you.
It’s also relevant for the whole CSM team. We seek enablers, independent people who are proactive, who like to take ownership of their tasks and make decisions, so all I have to do in the team is ensure that they have relevant tools and knowledge. And that’s cool about our department, I really enjoy it and do my best to support the team.
I studied management, but only at Webbing did I get a chance to become a manager and have my own team. With my previous companies, my position would be called a manager, and I would be managing customers, but I never managed a team. Webbing believed in me, and they gave me that opportunity, I think this is the right place for me.
Webbing became one of my hobbies
My main hobby is travelling. I like to travel a lot. Every month I try to have a short getaway to some place, most times it would be Europe. Maybe the idea of moving between places was always attractive to me, because when I was a kid, I wanted to drive a train. I couldn’t travel as much as I do today, but my grandma’s house was next to a railway track, and I fell in love with trains after my first railroad trip when I was 2 years old. I also enjoy reading books and fitness.
I think that in a way work becomes your hobby, too. I don’t mind taking a late hour call, and I’m really excited about reading some industry research. I do that in my free time, and I have no issues with that. I think my team members became my friends, I can call them in the evening and chat with them. We joke around, and often go out together, because we enjoy each other’s company so much that we’re eager to spend our free time with colleagues. I didn’t have that in my previous companies.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s not that I’m a workaholic, it’s important for me to have my work-life balance and to have my hobbies, but at the same time I like that my work is becoming one of them. I like what I do, I think I’m improving myself, I’m self-developing, it motivates me.
But most of all I like my team. It’s so cool to be their team lead. I like the vibe that we have, how we support each other. And another thing: we personally know our founders, the guys that started the company are working on the same floor. You work with them closely, you know their journey, and to me they’re a great example, I’m proud of them, proud to work with them and for them.
I love to chit-chat with everyone at Webbing, including customers. Once, when having a work conversation with a customer, I realized he’s sitting with his coffee and we’re just talking like friends, and I thought to myself “we must be doing something right here at Webbing”.
That’s how I feel: we’re doing something right.
