The IT Nerd

This didn’t take long.

I posted a story earlier today about Rogers putting out a video and some talking points to say that they’ve heard you and they will do better. The video ended with Rogers employees saying that they are “Committed To Canadians”. In that story, I said this:

Now all of this is nice. But I have to wonder if Canadians are willing to commit to Rogers as much as Rogers wants to commit to them? 

I also said this:

The point is that if two dozen people who pinged me on this didn’t buy what Rogers was communicating, chances are the public at large isn’t buying this either and this attempt by Rogers to “earn back your trust” to use their words likely has fallen flat.

Well, I think it’s official. Rogers message to the public has fallen flat. First, let me post the tweet that they put out yesterday with the video:

Now let’s read some of the backlash.

And this is the problem that Rogers is facing right now. Nobody is willing to give them a second chance because nobody believes what they are saying. And before anyone says that this is just the Twitterverse raging, it’s not. I’m hearing the same feedback from people who aren’t on Twitter. Which means that Rogers must know that this attempt to make their outage related problems go away has crashed and burned.

If I were in front of Rogers C level execs, here’s what I would be saying: A well edited video, promises of improvements with zero details and timescales that the Canadian public can hold you to, and not explaining why the outage happened in detail and instead appearing to hide behind redacted documents to the CRTC, isn’t going to result in earning back the trust of Canadians. Instead it’s going to drive them to Bell and Telus depending on what’s available in a given area of Canada. Which I suspect is happening now as I type this.

Now if Rogers does explain the outage in detail, if Rogers provides details and timescales as to what Rogers is going to do to make sure that this never happens again, and Rogers shows that Rogers is meeting those timescales, that will begin to earn back the trust that went up in smoke on July 8th. Key word: Begin.

So how about it Rogers? Are you willing to go way outside your comfort zone to earn back the trust of Canadians? Canada is watching what you do next and making their telco decisions accordingly.

You might recall that Rogers got a letter from the CRTC asking for more information above and beyond what they have already provided in relation to the nationwide outage in July. Rogers asked for a one week extension which ended on Monday. And now the responses are online. You can read all of the responses by downloading this Word document.

But there’s a catch.

A lot of the responses which comprise the ones that you actually want to see are redacted. Yes there’s some information that you can pull from this 31 page document. But the fact that Rogers has chosen to redact information “for competitive reasons” isn’t going to do a whole lot to restore public trust in them as a telco. Thus if I could give Rogers some advice, they need to just come out and say what happened in some degree of detail and what they are going to do about it. Meaning that they have to go above and this. That would help them to win back the trust of Canadians. Because redacting documents like this isn’t going to cut it.

I’ve been musing how Rogers might dig itself out of the July outage that brought the country to a standstill. And what seems to be happening is that Rogers is on a full court press to make the case that they can and will do better. Which is where this post on the Rogers website comes in which was posted yesterday. Let’s start with the video that was posted along with a large amount of verbiage:

Okay…. Rogers says that they’re “committed to Canadians”. That seems almost sincere. Yes that’s sarcasm. But let’s hit the highlights from the post which you can read in full at your leisure:

• Rogers wants to ensure that 911 services work 100% of the time. That’s something that I always thought was a given until the July outage left people on the Rogers network unable to call 911. Which is the ultimate #Fail if you are a telco.
• Rogers is going to spend $20 billion on network reliability. I question where they are going to get the cash to do that seeing as that they are having to borrow money to buy Shaw Communications. And they’re going back to their lenders to extend the deadline to get the deal done. So based on that, where are they getting the money to make their network more reliable? Your cable bill perhaps? Seriously, inquiring minds want to know. Also, the cynic in me wonders how bad their network must be for them to feel the need to spend $20 billion. Which is up from the $10 billion that Rogers previously promised to spend. The cynic in me also says that they are just throwing a bigger number out there hoping that it will stick because the last big number that they tossed out there didn’t stick.
• Rogers touted their 100% Canadian call centres, which is a clear shot at Bell who are known to outsource and offshore their call centres, and via that say that they will deliver the best customer experience to Canadians. That part I will buy into because Rogers has always had a better customer experience than Bell. They also want to increase their customer satisfaction as well. Seeing as that likely took a dive because of the July outage.
• Rogers then goes on to talk about their charitable work, closing the digital divide etc. All to give you the warm fuzzies.

Now all of this is nice. But I have to wonder if Canadians are willing to commit to Rogers as much as Rogers wants to commit to them? I say that because I was tipped off to this post by a mix of readers of this blog and clients of mine. And 100% of them didn’t believe a word that was being communicated in this post. They just see it as damage control with the more cynical suggesting that Rogers was grasping at straws because customers were likely fleeing for the competition en masse because of the July outage. I have no inside information to confirm or deny that. But I for one will be extremely interested to see what their churn rate is for the current quarter as that will tell all.

I’m digressing here.

The point is that if two dozen people who pinged me on this didn’t buy what Rogers was communicating, chances are the public at large isn’t buying this either and this attempt by Rogers to “earn back your trust” to use their words likely has fallen flat. And that’s going to be a huge problem for this troubled telco as it tries to rebuild what’s left of their reputation.

It sucks to be Rogers right now.