The history of Teleservice.
Click here for Danish version
This page was written in order to tell, how Teleservice was founded, and how the development went.
Earlier Teleservice company-websites had this information, but now, after both founders left the company, it has been removed.
My workplace from 1964 to 1985, Mads Olesen A/S in Esbjerg, was representative in Ribe County for the danish radiotelefonfirma Storno A/S, who manufactured land mobile radio telephone equipment (LMR) for electricity distributing companies, vets, truckers and the like.
When Storno in 1985 wanted to change representative in Ribe County, Jan Nørskov Laursen and I founded the company KN- elektronik (KN are the initials for Kjærbro and Nørskov), and we succeeded to be representatives for Storno in the region.
We opened office and workshop the 1. of november 1985 in a rented building, Malervej 4, 6710 Esbjerg V.
From the opening 1985.
There were a total of 5 employees, two engineers (ourselves), Jytte as accountant, Børge as Storno-salesman, and Jens Christian, who installed the radioequipment in the customers vehicles and buildings.
The company was named Storno center esbjerg.
Cellular Phones were at the time a fast growing market, and we got more and more share of this business, in the shop and the workshop.
Storno was sold to the American company Motorola and the products changed name to Motorola.
Because of that we changed the company name to Telecenter esbjerg.
The numbed of installations grew rapidly, so 1987 we employed one more mechanic, Kenneth.
Telecenter esbjerg logo
In 1989 we built our own house at Sallingsundvej 4, 6715 Esbjerg N.
A picture from the time, when Nokia was Mobira,
and Teleservice esbjerg was Telecenter esbjerg.
Agreements were made with many outlets and chains, and a large percentage of the phones at the workshop was send to us by the parcel service.
In order to register and control the huge number of repairs we in february 1994 implemented the computer system, which later appeared to be of invaluable importance for Teleservice.
The platform was the danish system Navigator (later Navision).
At the beginning we used the program "only" to create workorders, but soon invoice and accountancy were inplemented in the system too.
In this way data should only be written once, to make information available both for the technicians and the billing department.
Most of the repairs were warranty repairs, paid by the manufacturer (NOKIA, Ericsson, Samsung etc), and the system now was expanded to deliver logistic material to these customers.
The monthly warranty maintenance reports and bills to the manufacturers would have required quite a number of employees to work out manually, but now it took the machine only a couple of minutes to work it all out.
And the various manufacturers could acquire all the reports, they wanted.
Later on, all customers had a specially designed website, where they could get information from our database, about every repair delivered from them to Teleservice.
Customers could respond to quotations, and images of phones damaged by water etc could be seen at the website.
It is the customers demands and the staffs suggestions to improvements, which developed this unique system.
When we began co-operating with Dangaard Telecom (look below) the entire system was converted to the English language.
The system is still in operation "world wide" i Teleservice, in spite of the fact that the core, Navision, now is old-fashioned, and not supported any more.
Very simply said, there are no system able to deliver similar performance.
All info about all repairs can be seen at the monitor.
In order to find room for the still grewing number of engineers, an extension was build at Sallingsundvej 1995.
The sales department expanded too, and 1996 it was separated as a self-contained company named Infocall.
The activities in the sales department were in 1999 sold to 2 employees, and later sold to TDC.
After the separation the service department changed name to Teleservice esbjerg a/s.
The 1. of april 1996 we opened a little workshop in Odense with 1 technician, and the 1. of october 1996 a second technician was engaged.
The 1. of december 1996 Teleservice odense a/s bought the entire Motorola workshop at Hvidkjærvej, Odense, and took over the staff of 6 Motorola employees.
The two technicians from the litlle workshop moved to Hvidkærvej.
Only a month before, the 1. of november 1996, Teleservice took over 6 employees from Danita (now Comitel).
They moved to a new workshop in Tåstrup and formed Teleservice copenhagen a/s.
In autumn 1997 Teleservice aalborg a/s was founded, and in autumn 2000 Teleservice århus a/s.
Teleservice esbjerg Gokart 2000.
This corporation is parent company for all Teleservice workshops outside Denmark.
The first Teleservice workshop outside Denmark was established in Flensborg/Harrislee the 1. of october 1997.
Teleservice Navision workshop system was connected to the Dangaard accounting system DanModul.
It was not done easily, but after a while it worked well, and is still used in Teleservice International.
1998 a workshop was established in Dublin.
That went incredible difficult. There were problems with the premises, there were problems with dataconnection, there were problems with allmost everything.
However, the workshop was working, at top there were 5-6 employees.
After a couple of years the workshop was closed down.
Below is shown the workshops established by Teleservice International.
Ireland :
Dublin (established 1998, closed 2000)
Germany :
Flensborg/Harrislee (established 1997)
Dusseldorf (established 1999, closed 2002)
Essen (established 1999, closed 2004)
Trier (established 1999)
Berlin (established 2001, closed 2004)
Portugal :
Porto (established 1999)
Lisboa (established 2001, closed 2004)
Østrig :
Wien (established 1999)
Schweiz :
Oberägeri (established 2000)
Spain :
Malaga (established 2002)
Madrid (established 2003)
Hungary : (established 2002 (?)
Tyrkey :
Istanbul (established 2000), closing 31. december 2018. See UPDATE below.
Ankara (established 2001), closing 31. december 2018. See UPDATE below.
Izmir (established year ?), closing 31. december 2018. See UPDATE below.
Greece :
Athens (established 2002)
Norway :
Oslo (established 2003)
Sweden :
Västra Frölunda (established 2003)
All together with the unique Navigation/Navision repairsystem and with Dangaard accounting system DanModul.
In december 2000 I sold my shares in Teleservice to Jan Nørskov, and I continued as manager, until I retired at NewYear 2001/2002.
Jan Nørskov sold his shares in Teleservice DK and Teleservice International to Dangaard Telecom at the 30. of september 2002, and was employed as manager for Teleservice Denmark until autumn 2003.
As it often happens, when a company get new owners, a lot is going to change.
Among many other things was the company logo changed to a "repair - hero", and colors are changed from our handsome blue and white colors to a mysterious looking green/yellow.
Due to downgoing sales and thereof following smaller repair volume, 3 danish workshops closed down 1.april 2004 : Copenhagen, Århus and Aalborg, with a staff of 55 persons.
Also Berlin, Essen and Lisboa are closed.
It is a depressing development.
The 1. July 2005 Teleservice International A/S was sold to german company arvato, and is now 100% owned by the arvato/Bertelsmann Group of companies.
The mysterious green/yellow color has changed to shades of blue.
Company-name is now Teleservice arvato, and the "repair-hero" is sentenced to death.
A pair of curved, colored linies are now the company logo.
Teleservice was for me a very good workplace with a lot of lovely persons, and although I no longer has any responsibility or obligations towards the company, I follows the development at a distance.
UPDATE: I received an e-mail 12. december 2018 from Tolga Semih Gülen, who was working as a Technician, Technician Leader, Technical Supervisor from 2000 to 2007 in Teleservice Istanbul, and was one of the first staff of Teleservice Istanbul.
Tolga writes, that by 31. december 2018, the last branches of Teleservice (Teleservice Turkey : Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir) will be closed by the decision of Arvato/Bertelsmann.
So the only remaining part of Teleservice was Turkey, and it will be a dust in the wind soon.
The company will be taken over partly, by a local repair center (around 1/4 of employees) and the rest will be sent off.
If You know anything about Teleservice, please send me info, and I will add it to the story of Teleservice.
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