May 29, 2023, 5 years celebrated with employees and more.
Let’s go back to talking about iliad and the celebrations for a protagonist birthday. During the two days in the spaces of #iliadLand we had the opportunity to speak with CEO Benedetto Levi.
A small preview arrived yesterday from the video interview made outside the space where the celebrations were taking place.
Mondo3 interviews Benedetto Levi
In reality, Benedetto Levi has also granted Mondo3 readers the opportunity to speak directly about some hot topics to our Community.
Let’s go over our face-to-face interview made yesterday.
Let’s start with the most obvious question… we are in iliad Land, why?
“We are here to celebrate iliad’s fifth birthday. Fifth birthday that we obviously don’t see as a goal, as an arrival, but as a stage. An opportunity to look back, five years ago, when we started and I must say we are really happy with the journey made beyond the numbers. Obviously – smiles – we just announced that we reached 10 million users, while the satisfaction rate of our users is 99%. But beyond the numbers, I think the most important thing we have done in recent years has been to build a relationship of trust with our users, of course, but also with our partners and our ecosystem. A relationship of trust made possible by having always been very consistent and faithful to one’s values, therefore transparency, innovation, clarity and simplicity”.
Values that are at the heart of your philosophy, but also of the future.
“Values that we announced five years ago, we have remained consistent for 5 years and today we can say that it was the right thing to do, these numbers show us this. After these five years with the three great revolutions we have made, of course the furniture revolution five years ago, the fiber revolution last year, the business revolution a few days ago, for the future we already have many, many goals on these three threadsin. Surely we also have many others but the goal is to remain ourselves, therefore remain consistent and remain the same as we have been over the years in terms of values.
Obviously we want to continue to innovate, to question the market, to question ourselves too, therefore not to assume that what we do is right because we do it this way and because it has brought good results. The goal is to always remain with this perspective of “we innovate, change, let’s question ourselves” but remaining solid and steadfast on our basic principles.”
The fact of having such a young managing director helped to understand what was the sentiment of a part of the Italian clientele who asked for transparency, or are we wrong?
“I think it’s not so much a question of age as more the fact that, coming from other sectors and having no experience in this, except as a consumer, it has allowed us to approach and see telcos in a new way and therefore – this it is also true for many other people in iliad – we have built a mix of people also with great experience in the world of telecommunications. Obviously experience counts, but the people who came from completely different worlds, completely different sectors, have certainly contributed to bringing a newer and fresher vision and to questioning things that perhaps for an insider, for a long time in this sector, however, they were ‘Untouchables’. This new look was able to give a breath of fresh air”.
Speaking of insiders, Mondo3 is a Community that is attentive to all the details: from the latest price to signaling a certain contentiousness in the relationship between consumers and operators. You are a white fly in this sense.
“Ae have tried to build a relationship of trust, but really not for slogans, not for communication campaigns, but in fact. So the total absence of hidden costs goes in this direction. Today it really happens that users arrive in our Stores who perhaps had subscribed to our offer a year or two before and who come back to the store just to tell us: “Thank you, you haven’t charged me a single cent more in two to three years now.” Here, then, are these facts: quality and keeping promises certainly ensure that there is no litigation and, on the contrary, our users are our great ambassadors”.
By the way, our Community has historically also been attentive to conciliations. What numbers does iliad record?
“There are some, but they are close to zero.”
We remain in the interests of our readers: the signal question is always hot, updates on the number of antennas are among the most requested. What can we anticipate?
“Our antennas increase daily, today we have a top-level network. We recently won the Opensignal award as the first operator in Italy in the category of mobile availability. Our 4G and 4G+ reaches more than 99.5 percent of the population. Our 5G is in more than three thousand cities throughout Italy, but the single number I want to mention is the concrete demonstration of what I was saying before: 99% of satisfied users. Evidently the quality, performance and coverage of the network are what users expect.”
About things to expect. We have also written about it on Mondo3 for some time, they are there rumors on the fact that iliad is about to enter the multi-brand store network. Are there any antipathes?
“In recent years we have greatly expanded our distribution network by launching new channels. We started with the simboxes, then we launched the iliad points, the iliad express. In general, our will in the future is certainly to continue to be ever closer to people. In what modality, in what channels and in what timing [sorride] we will reveal it in due course“.
[Sorridiamo anche noi leggendo il sottotesto] We remain in the field of rumors: the Group’s interest in Vodafone is concrete. Isn’t there a risk of a marriage with an ‘old lady’?
“In recent years we have traced a path that we have traveled, that we are continuing to travel, the celebration of todayi (ieri, ndr) it is the proof. Of course, as I said and I confirm it today, if there were opportunities in the future to consolidate the market, also for market and system operations, surely our willingness to look at the dossiers and to be an active part would be there, but today we are here to celebrate five years of iliad.”
So let’s get back to being concrete, there is no doubt that the iliad group is growing at European level…
“It is growing a lot, in all the geographies in which it is present: Italy, France, Poland and in general – being a group that has just been listed on the Stock Exchange – we have great strategic and financial freedom and in a sector like ours , which requires medium and long-term investments, therefore with long-term returns, it is very important to be able to plan these investments with a ten-year perspective and not three months. So we certainly have a group that is growing a lot, that has the will to continue growing and that has the possibility to do so.”
iliad still likes the role of little Cinderella, even if now the numbers are “big” in the sector.
“More than a little Cinderella we like to be ourselves, to be innovative, to be different and to continue to be so on all fronts.”
We have reached the end of this pleasant chat: is there a message to be sent from iliad Land?
“We continue to grow, we are now great from many points of view, but we are the same as day one in terms of spirit, values, and also the desire to have fun. So while growing up, we want to stay the same as day one.”
Good luck to you!