Krea helps companies find the right financing. They work with various types of financing, primarily business loans. In addition to company loans, they also offer factoring (invoice credit), business credit, property loans, and leasing.

Martin Branzell is the Head of Partners and joined one month after Krea started in December 2018. Together with Krea’s Operations team, which consists of six people in Sweden and one in Finland, his main task is to ensure that customers applying for financing receive as many offers as possible. Krea’s partners are primarily banks, lenders, and factoring companies.

The importance of personal contact in business loans

Telephony is particularly important for Krea, as Martin and his team emphasize personal contact.

“Taking out a business loan is a big decision for a company, regardless of size. At that point, it is important that we are present. Even though our entire process is smooth and digital, you still need to feel that there is someone on the other end of the line – a person to answer any questions.”

“We are often intermediaries between borrowers and lenders, and there are many calls. Business financing is tricky for many. It’s difficult to know the terms of invoice financing, which leasing option is suitable, or what type of amortization you should have. Being present and available is crucial.”

Martin and his team have the ambition to call all their customers. It can be up to 4 calls per customer, and in October 2023, they received over 1,000 applications in Sweden and Finland. In total, it amounts to over 4,000 calls.

“I estimate that it’s more than that, but that’s the ambition for all customers – to show that we are here for them. Emails and SMS are not personal enough; it’s telephony that adds that personal touch.”

Easy to scale up with Telavox

As a smaller organisation, Krea doesn’t have time for an employee to manage everything in the PBX.

“With Telavox, we can handle everything ourselves. If we need to change opening hours, add a new voicemail, change licenses, and so on – we’ve been able to do that. I don’t know how many times I’ve changed our opening hours for a day when the whole company is away or changed the voicemail in five minutes because we’ve added a new service – it’s super smooth.”

For a growing company like Krea, it’s important to be able to scale up as needed, even beyond national borders. In Finland, they have started a sister company under the brand Kredita.

“When we looked for a telephony solution, many offered their own telephony, but their packages were too cumbersome for us. It became obvious for us to continue expanding with Telavox.”

With Telavox’s presence in the Finnish market, Krea/Kredita only needed to add a new license – just like adding a new person in the Swedish market.

“It is crucial to have telephony in place in Finland. Someone has to be there, and then we chose Telavox because of their flexibility and pricing. Adding new users, phone numbers, and building the PBX was super easy. We built opening hours and call flows entirely on our own with a super easy interface, and then we were up and running.”

Full control of the call flow with smart statistics

For a company with many calls, statistics are an invaluable feature.

“We get a lot of valuable statistics from Telavox. It’s a tool I use when looking at outgoing and incoming calls. We analyze which weekdays and times of the day have extra call traffic. Such information is especially important when we consider whether to hire someone new or if we need to adjust our opening hours.”

“Telavox statistics have helped us understand customer activity: when are they inactive? How do they work? The data provides a good indication for measuring success and sales. We have made many decisions based on that.”

Companies in finance usually have an obligation to record calls, and that’s where Telavox’s call recording comes into play.

“We have a bit of a routine of discussing a customer case every week. We can share that with departments that don’t deal much with customers. The same goes for the call listening function – it has been great for training.”

Krea continues to grow, and the Nordic region is just the beginning of their growth journey. Martin doesn’t see them compromising on personal interactions as they expand.

“So far, this is how the journey has been: as the applications have increased, we have grown in personnel. We will be able to digitize more in the future, but I can’t see that we will stop making these personal calls,” Martin concludes.