“It’s good to work in a company that has a future”
Monta Vērse, Webbing’s Customer Support Manager, tells her story of being a chef, a football player, and a call center team leader before joining Webbing to challenge herself – and how this new job has changed her.
7-year cycles leading to a new job
I was born in Aluksne, a Latvian city 200 km away from the capital. I lived there until my twenties, then I moved to Norway for some time, and now I live and work in Riga.
Growing up, I wanted to be an actress. Since I can remember, I always participated in school theater and singing. Upon finishing high school, I even applied to an acting school but didn’t get in. It was a moment of “okay, this dream probably won’t come true, let’s think about something else”. I was only 18 and didn’t really know what I wanted to do in my life, but I loved to cook, so I took a cooking course and, in half a year, got my chef diploma. It helped me start working in a restaurant in my hometown, where I spent the next 4 years reigning over the kitchen.
Then I moved to Norway to become a chef at another restaurant, gaining new knowledge and experience. While there, I studied Norwegian and also played for the local team in the girls’ soccer league. I loved to play soccer when I was a kid, so I was a decent right midfielder.
Even doing what I loved to do – cooking – I felt something was still missing in my life, so I decided to move back to Latvia and get my bachelor’s degree. As I have always been terrific in communications, I applied for Public Relations at Turiba University and graduated in 2020. Then I decided to continue my master’s studies at the same university. I studied Business Psychology and Human Resources Management and received my diploma in December 2021.
In the meantime, I wanted to be able to use my knowledge of the Norwegian language. Actually, there were not many possibilities to use it in Latvia, it was either working in a call center or in a bank. I chose the first option and for the next seven years I worked in a call center in Riga that was supporting Scandinavian customers making money transfers.
But after 7 years in the call center, I realized that my work was routine, the same thing every single day, and I was getting tired of it. Or maybe it’s because I have a seven-year cycle for life, so after being a chef for 7 years and working at a call center for 7 years, it was time for a new cycle. Anyway, I decided to make a change. Being a team leader for so many years, I got attached to my team, so leaving them was extremely difficult. But if you want to improve yourself and change something in your life, you just need to do it.
So, a year ago I joined Webbing.
Joining Webbing to challenge myself
I made this change because I like to challenge myself. I knew it was a huge challenge to move from finance to telecommunications, a completely new field for me, and I wanted to prove to myself I can learn something new and become good at it.
My best friend Edgars, who was working at Webbing, suggested that I, having so much experience leading the team, might want to work at the company too. I only knew about Webbing what Edgars had told me, and when you are familiar with the subject, everything looks easy. I told him I’m not a technical person, but he encouraged me to do it anyway. So I did, and here I am.
While building my team, I was working on customer cases, and I realized that this was far away from what I used to do before. However, I feel more comfortable handling cases and talking about technical stuff today. I know there are still areas I need to improve but seeing how much I have grown in a year, I think it’s just a matter of time.
Motivated to help people
The same motivation that made me join Webbing keeps driving me forward.
As the customer support team is supposed to help the NOC team, there was also a motivation for me to do it and not make their life difficult by asking “What’s that” and “How to do that” all the time. I wanted to understand faster, so I could take some of the load from them and work independently.
Besides, I’m really customer oriented – I will go above and beyond to help them. In the very beginning I had two customers who were personally reaching out to me. That motivates me a lot: it’s so good to feel needed, when they write to you and ask for help. And I like to help people, I’d push everyone, reach out, follow up, just to resolve the case. Whenever these two customers write “Thank you so much, you helped a lot”, it feels great.
Learning to be patient and believe in myself
Though it’s only been a year, I can see that things are quite dynamic. The company is growing, new customers are coming in, and it’s a good feeling to work in a company that has a future. Things change in the team, too: when I started, I was alone, and now I work with someone I can rely on. I have a team that is amazing and intelligent. One of my teammates knows a lot about network engineering, he supports me and sometimes teaches me something new, not only the other way around. The other two team members are highly skilled in customer communication and technical expertise, so together we make a balanced team.
I have learnt a lot at Webbing. When I just joined the company, Anete, who was the NOC manager at the time, gave me some basic knowledge about networks and everything that I needed to know to start. Then, I was training by handling the cases: when a customer opened a case for us, I went through it together with the NOC team. We sat side by side in the office, they were showing me where and how to check certain things and how to understand everything, that’s the way I was learning.
I’m naturally an extrovert, fast, loud, and emotional person. Work often requires you to be calm, even more so when you don’t know something – you may get frustrated and angry at yourself. But I’ve learnt to deal with my emotions and be more professional in that regard. And I’d say work at Webbing helped me in learning to be more patient and to believe in myself.
Every day is fun at Webbing
Before I joined Webbing, work usually took more time than life. So much so that I didn’t really have time for hobbies. Currently it’s not like that, and I’m quite happy with it. I go to the gym, I like to read once in a while to educate myself. In the summer I’m always with my family and friends, we go to all kinds of festivals, and my main hobby in the autumn is making winter food.
But even when I’m at work, it’s not only working. Every month we have our Happy Hour: we order lots of food, we bring games, and we enjoy each other’s company. Plus, there are all the activities HR is organizing that we participate in. Actually, every day is fun at Webbing, even communicating with someone on a daily basis. I can name a few friends among employees that always make my day happy.
I truly admire the people that work here. Everyone is an expert in what they are doing. And I guess I have never felt so close with everyone. I can’t think of a person in the team I haven’t become friends with yet. This company takes you in as family and treats you accordingly. Honestly, it’s not even that I have not had any issues, I can’t remember being dissatisfied with something.
If I had to describe Webbing in three words, I’d say they are “unique” – for it’s not like other companies in every way possible, “genius” – meaning both technologies that it creates and people that work here, and “family” – for even when working in different countries, people here are so close.
