Never Too Late to Transform?

Transformation: Better Late than Never

By Francesca Siow

Iwas randomly reminded of this phrase recently when chatting with an old classmate, Freddie. Besides the usual banter about work and life, we took the opportunity to exchange intel about our common friend – Frankie. Frankie is my brother (in case you don’t already know) who happens to also be Freddie’s ex-colleague.

NEVER AND FOREVER LOST

Reminiscing about the good ol’ days at the Hapless Helpdesk, Freddie shared how he and Frankie used to repeat the same answers over 10 times a day to different users – and how they had “fun” fielding questions in voices from characters in South Park, SpongeBob SquarePants or Sesame Street.

But those were the days. Apparently, their then company held on to Private Branch Exchange (PBX) telephone systems when Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology came along and people wanted the flexibility to answer their office phones remotely. Today, the company exists only in people’s memory and Wikipedia.

LATE BUT JUST IN TIME

Lucky for Frankie, he left long ago to pursue his startup dream. As for Freddie, he stayed on till the very end. After all, that was easier – and Freddie was actually on a roll! Because day by day, the number of calls from distressed users went from one every few minutes to only a few in one day. Surely that must mean that Freddie was doing a great job, that’s why users aren’t calling anymore?

It turned out – the real reason why there were fewer calls was because business was declining. Eventually, Freddie was picking up the phone over 10 times each day just to check that the phone was working. To keep himself looking busy and useful, Freddie decided to introduce the Hapless Helpdesk to TikTok. Between livestreaming during work hours and filming videos of himself using voices of cartoon characters to answer calls, Freddie found his number of social media followers increasing exponentially while the number of work calls continued decreasing – scarily. As it goes, the day Freddie lost his job at Hapless Helpdesk was the same day he became a full-time social media content creator.

ON TIME AND AHEAD

Today, Freddie with his three million strong followers is a celebrity influencer. Who would have thought – geek turned celebrity?

Well, but Frankie (the one who got away early) is also doing great at his startup. He just completed Series B financing and raised over $50 million. And I hear that he has big plans to bring his business to the North Pole next year. (Word has it that he might put a certain man garbed in red and white with a big bushy beard out of business.)