Finnair Plc, Stock Exchange Release, 26 August 2013 at 2:00 pm EET
Head of Customer Service Anssi Komulainen has announced he will leave his duties as the head of Customer Service and as a member of Finnair’s Executive and Management Boards on August 31, 2013, and continue as a senior advisor until the end of February, 2014. Komulainen has worked at Finnair since 2001, most recently as Senior Vice President, Customer Service since 2010. Finnair will not recruit a successor for Komulainen, which means that there will be one less member on the Executive Board.
“I want to express my warmest thanks to Anssi for the tremendous work that he has done for Finnair’s benefit over the years. Anssi and his team have had a significant role in transforming Finnair into a world class airline,” says Pekka Vauramo, Finnair CEO. “We will continue this work with a planned organizational renewal.”
Finnair plans to bring parts of its organization closer together and in this way develop its products and services as well as its operations. According to the plans, customer service functions would move partly to Finnair’s Commercial Division and partly to Operations.
Functions related to inflight customer service and airport customer service would move to Operations, ensuring that the processes related to daily flight operations would become even more effective, holistic and inclusive of the customer satisfaction point of view. Finnair’s customer experience and product development would in turn move to the Commercial Division, where Finnair has strong knowledge and experience with bringing new products to market. The transferring units would report to Ville Iho, Chief Operations Officer, and Allister Paterson, Chief Commercial Officer respectively.
“The customer is at the center of our operations and we will continue to develop our customer service and new products intensively,” stresses Vauramo. “The service identity renewal project, Peace of Mind, which was implemented by Anssi and his customer service team, has taken Finnair’s customer service to the next level. It provides an excellent foundation to continue developing our operations toward an even sharper focus on customer. We will continue to enhance teamwork and integrate the customer’s point of view into all of our operations. We will begin more detailed planning with these units, and our aim is to make plans final during the fall."
The planned changes will require employee consultations before any final decisions are made. The upcoming consultations concern only this organizational change plan. If implemented, this plan itself would not have personnel reduction impact.
Further information: Finnair Media Desk, tel. +358 9 818 4020, comms(at)finnair.com
Distribution: NASDAQ OMX Helsinki Principal media
