Some Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) hearings remind us of acts from Shakespeare’s MacBeth. You can count on the weird sisters—commonly referred to as witches—to be there. You know them as Bell Canada, Rogers and Telus. And the CRTC is their cauldron of witches’ brew. It used to be that the CRTC was the master and the witches were the supplicants. Mr. Harper’s appointments have changed that. The witches now seem to be stage managing those plays.
That was why it was so funny the other day to read in the newspaper how the new Rogers Chief Executive Officer Guy Laurence, former head of Vodafone in England, is going to change things by being nice to customers. That will be a novelty. The witches have been in a race for the bottom in customer relations across Canada for years.
What is even funnier is that this silly Brit is telling us he is going to spruce up Hockey Night in Canada. And the best of bloody luck to him! First of all, Harper cuts CBC budgets some more and then Rogers mugs the peoples’ network to steal Hockey Night.
Laurence also wishfully told Rogers’ shareholders last week that after examining Rogers’ Canadian assets for the past three months, he has all the answers.
Frankly we always admired the late Ted Rogers. Ted’s genius in creating the Rogers phenomenon is a classic story of smart marketing. It was just Ted’s customer relations that was clueless. For years the company has been functioning behind a wall of what must be minimum wage call centres. It has no feel for the reality of the marketplace or its customers’ concerns.
When moving a few years ago, we called Rogers’ call centre and asked the price of a specific television-Internet package. The answer came back promptly that the cost would be $190 plus taxes per month. When we got over our sticker price shock we asked why. The answer we found later was that, where we were moving, Rogers had a lock on the cable access—nobody else was allowed to touch it. And then we found that Bell was offering Fibe television in the building and if we wanted to be guinea pigs for this new ultra high frequency digital subscriber line service, we could get it for half Rogers’ price. We came home to Bell. (To our regret of course but that is another story.)
We do hope that when Mr. Laurence attended the right schools in England that he paid full attention to Shakespeare’s tales of MacBeth. They might be salutary.
-30-
Copyright 2014 © Peter Lowry
Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]