You sent a message and got a reply. The kind where someone actually read what you wrote, thought for a moment, and responded to the point. Not an automatic "Thank you for contacting us, your request has been received and will be processed within 3–5 business days" wall of messages. No ticket number that disappears into a black hole.
We know. It's weird. Welcome to Valco.
14 people, zero layers of bureaucracy
Valco is a 14-person company. We don't have a customer service department that sits in a different building than product development, which sits in a different country than management. Everyone sits in the same room. Or at least in the same Slack channel.
When you write to us, your message ends up with a person who actually knows something about the products. Not an outsourced call center in Dublin, where a nice person reads a script off a screen and hopes their shift will end.
This isn't some charity project. It's just sensible. When we solve the problem in the first message, we save our own time. Time that's needed for building the Death Star and paying Henri's repair bill for his new Alfa Romeo.
Why don't big companies answer?
Because they can't. When you sell tens of millions of headphones a year, every customer service contact is a cost item. It's optimized. Automated. The phone number is hidden behind five menus. A bot is put in to answer and it's hoped the customer gives up.
We sell a fraction of that. But every customer is truly important to us – not in the marketing-slogan sense, but in the sense that if you don't buy from us, Jasse's ear insurance doesn't get paid.
What our customer service actually does
Basically three things:
- Solves problems. Headphones won't connect? We'll figure out why. Usually it's some small thing. Cushion come off? We'll tell you how to snap it back on. Device broken? Jasse and the rest of the repair team will fix it in Kajaani.
- Answers questions honestly. "Is your ANC better than Sony's?" It isn't. But the sound quality is, and our headphones can be repaired. We'll tell you straight where we're good and where we're not.
- Admits mistakes. If we mess up, we say it. No beating around the bush, no blaming Posti (except when it's Posti's fault, then we do blame them).
Sitting on our hands is Valco's worst sin. If you have a problem, we want it off your plate faster than you do.
How to reach us
By email: info@valco.fi. We reply on weekdays, usually the same day. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower – depends on whether Henri is having his Alfa Romeo serviced again.
You can also browse this support site. We've written answers to the most common questions here so you don't have to wait for our reply.
And if you get a reply from us that feels like a real person wrote it – that's because a real person did. Or at least someone who's trying their best. Thanks for funding our operations. The Death Star doesn't build itself.
