The IT Nerd

Bell has announced a pair of news items today.

The first is that they’ve come out with a new MyBell app which offers a range of new features and improvements designed to make it easier for customers to manage their services, shop for great products and services, and get the support they need.

Key highlights of the refreshed MyBell app include:

• Improved navigation system: Simplified and intuitive pathways to common actions, such as managing services, shopping for services and products, and accessing support.
• Reimagined home screen: Provides a summary view of accounts and services, with contextualized alerts and personalized reminders to guide customers.
• New dedicated area to manage subscribed services: Customers can easily view, manage, and add new services.
• Modern visual design: Updated across main landing pages, with more improvements coming throughout the app.

The refreshed MyBell app is a direct result of extensive research and collaboration with their customers. New customers or customers that don’t already have the app, can download it in the App Store or Google Play. For existing customers already using the app, check your phone settings to make sure that automatic app updates are enabled so that they are always running on the latest version of the MyBell app. 

Second, Bell has a new retail partnership with Loblaw and the introduction of no name mobile. On top of that, Bell has also entered into a partnership with Sobeys and FreshCo. Starting this week, Lucky Mobile and Virgin Plus prepaid plans will be available in select Ontario stores, with remaining Ontario locations to roll out over the coming weeks. Customers can pick up a Lucky Mobile or Virgin Plus SIM card from their local Sobeys or FreshCo and get 2,000 Scene+ points after two top-ups. This is a pilot program with potential for nationwide expansion. If you’re interested, you can get more details at luckymobile.ca/sceneplusbonus and virginplus.ca/sceneplusbonus.  

These partnerships come at an interesting time me the not so casual observer. For starters, telcos are under the microscope in terms of how much they charge Canadians for the services. So the cynic in me wonders if these new retail partnerships an attempt to blunt that? And second, specific to the partnership with Loblaw, there’s a lot of noise surrounding an effort to boycott the grocery chain starting in May due to the exorbitantly high prices that Loblaw owned stores are said to charge. Thus I have to wonder if Bell hopping into bed with Loblaw is a good idea. I say that because strolling through the sub Reddit that is associated with the calls for the boycott, there’s talk of not just boycotting Loblaw stores, but going after partners associated with Loblaw. Such as Esso and Mobil who are part of PC Points which is the rewards scheme that Loblaw operates. Thus it is possible that Bell could get caught up in that, which might not be a good result for Bell. I’ll be keeping an eye on this to see what happens.

Bell Canada has announced the availability of Google Cloud Contact Center AI (CCAI) from Bell for Canadian businesses – the first fully AI solution for Bell enterprise and mid-market customers.

Google Cloud’s CCAI from Bell is a managed solution supported by professional services expertise that enables intelligent customer and agent experience leveraging generative AI-infused technology. Providing rich conversational experiences and analytics, Google CCAI from Bell offers scalability and flexibility that can be added to existing contact centre environments and to cloud contact centres of any size.

Google’s CCAI solutions can deliver exceptional outcomes, as Bell has experienced with its own implementation. Bell will work with customers to customize use cases that leverage the power of the innovative technical solutions available with Google CCAI from Bell, including:

• Virtual Agent – Natural-sounding virtual agents reduce call volumes and accelerate time-to-resolution by collecting key information to answer simple customer queries, freeing human agents to handle more complex issues. When customers do need to speak to an agent, they’ll reach one faster and be automatically directed to the agent with the right expertise to solve their issue.
• Agent Assist – A virtual supervisor of sorts, Agent Assist uses real-time natural language processing to determine customer needs and sentiment and offers step-by-step recommendations to help agents deliver the best responses and solutions with confidence. Faster agent onboarding, improved customer experience, reduced callbacks for the same issue, and improved sales are proven outcomes of Agent Assist.
• Analytics and Insights – Actionable insights into customer experience and sentiment help managers and agents learn from every interaction. Analyses of interactions provide a better understanding of business trends, interaction drivers, traffic, and other key metrics. Insights support strategic business decisions, tailored agent coaching, and result in more data-driven workforce planning and management.

Bell is also deploying both the virtual agent and contact centre as a service AI solutions (CCAI and CCAIP) within its own contact centres, digitally transforming and AI-enabling their internal solutions, delivering improved customer experiences to Bell customers, and helping them develop deep expertise to guide Canadian businesses with their own integrations. Bell provides customers with end-to-end managed support – from assessment of the best fit solutions, to customer journey mapping and optimization, workforce management and quality assurance, technology and applied AI integrations, and optimization of agent experience and change management.

As a Premier Level Partner for Google Cloud in the Sell Engagement Model and 2024 Google Cloud sales Partner of the Year – Canada recipient, Bell offers enhanced expertise within Google Cloud. Bell will now add Google CCAI solutions to its Contact Centre Practice, which has a proven track record of successful premise and cloud contact centre implementations with a commitment to customer satisfaction.

The availability of Google CCAI is a significant milestone for Bell as the company continues to support Canadian businesses in their digital transformation journey with next-generation solutions. Bell itself is undergoing a company-wide digital transformation, and in addition to Google CCAI services, is in the process of deploying other solutions within its contact centres, including Google Cloud Contact Centre AI Platform. Join Bell at this year’s Google Cloud Next conference starting today (April 9-11, 2024) to learn more about how these AI solutions are driving digital transformation among Canadian businesses, and why Bell looks to leverage these same solutions internally.

It’s almost as if Bell wants to anger its customers rather than keep them. I say that because Bell is going to cut the amount of time that Bell Fibe TV customers get to store recordings in Bell’s Cloud PVR service. It used to be one year which for comparisons sake was the same as competitor Rogers does. But now according to this, it’s going to 60 days. And here’s what someone from Bell had to say about that:

A representative says the company anticipates “minimal impact” to customers since viewing of “nearly all” recordings takes place within 60 days

I bet that while Rogers in the same Toronto Star article said that they have no plans to change what they do, you can bet that they’ll be watching to see what sort of blow back that Bell gets. If it’s none, Rogers will copy what Bell does and go from one year to 60 days. If there’s significant blow back from Bell customers, they will laugh as Bell takes the heat. But I’m digressing here. The fact is that Bell is really making themselves harder and harder to chose as a telco. Sure their fibre technology, if you can get it, is top shelf. But their customer service frankly sucks, and then to top it off they do stuff like this. At some point this will come back to bite them at some point. The question in my mind, is when will that happen.

With events like firing a bunch of workers via video conference, execs getting big bonuses despite missing their own key performance indicators, and stopping their fibre rollout because they’re not happy with the government along will significant job cuts, Bell is perhaps not seen in the best light at the moment. Which is why it doesn’t surprise me that Bell has decided to put out their own talking points in advance of being summoned to Ottawa to explain all of this. This Tweet was posted to the Bell Twitter account today:

That Tweet leads to these talking points that puts forward Bell’s view of this. I’ll let you read them for yourself. But what this suggests to me is that the heat must be on Bell from a PR perspective for them to put something like this out. I say that because I’ve been following Bell for years. And Bell doing something like this is a rare event. And other people who I know that follow Bell agree with that sentiment.

The other thing that I note is that they’re trying to use the term “disinformation” to bolster the fact that their talking points are the ones that you should be listening to. I find that to problematic as we live in a time where this term has some really negative connotations. I’m not sure that I would have used that word in relation to what we’re talking about. But I don’t run Bell’s PR department.

I’ll make sure to see if I can find a broadcast of Bell in front of Parliament on the 11th of April. Based on the talking points that they put out, it will certainly be worth a look.

Now I’m a bit late to this party. But I wanted some time to think about this topic before posting something.

This must make you angry if you’ve recently been fired by Bell via video call. A whole bunch of execs at Bell got serious bonus money. This despite the fact that they missed their own targets. Here’s what The Globe And Mail is reporting:

The company paid chief executive officer Mirko Bibic an annual bonus of $2.96-million as part of a $13.43-million compensation package last year, the company disclosed in its proxy circular to shareholders. His bonus was down slightly from $3.09-million in 2022.

Wade Oosterman, president of Bell Media until his retirement in January, received a bonus of $1.08-million as part of $4.87-million in total compensation. Three other executives in their roles for all of 2023 received bonuses of between $853,470 and $923,400 as part of pay packages between $4.5-million and $6-million.

Here’s the problem with this:

In its compensation disclosure, BCE said it fell short of all three financial targets in its annual bonus plan – revenue, free cash flow and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA). The misses were tiny: For example, BCE had a target of $10.454-billion for revenue, but posted $10.417-billion – a $37-million miss.

So let’s think about this. Bell is basically a regulated monopoly. But Bell missed the above KPI’s. On top of that, if you look at their stock value, it’s down over the last year:

Thus I am trying to figure out why any of these execs deserve bonuses based on all of this. Bell claims that they do this to retain talent. But it really gives the appearance that Bell execs are trying to line their own pockets at the expense of their workers who lost their jobs and Canadians who won’t be getting Bell’s top end services such as Fibe Internet because Bell is mad at the CRTC and the Canadian government. Honestly, if any exec in any other company missed ALL their key performance indicators, they at the very least would not get their bonus money. At most they’d be gone.

Sometimes you just have to shake your head. In disgust.

Bell really does a lot of things that make them look really bad in the public eye. For example they have a tendency to fire people out of the blue which seems inconsistent with their Bell Let’s Talk mental health campaign. Today’s latest example of this is this Toronto Star story where it is claimed that Bell fired 400 people via a virtual meeting:

The union representing employees of Bell claimed the telecommunications giant laid off hundreds of its members Wednesday via virtual group meetings, a move which it described as “beyond shameful.”

In a press release, Unifor said more than 400 workers were informed Wednesday that they were being declared “surplus” by the company. Its members were informed of their termination via a 10-minute virtual meeting, the union claimed, adding that a manager read the layoff notice, “without allowing members or the union the opportunity to unmute to ask questions.”

“Our members, who have devoted years of service to this telecoms and media giant, are being repaid with pink slips,” said Daniel Cloutier, Unifor’s Quebec director, in a statement. “If that’s not beyond shameful, I don’t know what is.”

Bell did not immediately respond to the Star’s request for comment, including questions about whether this termination process is standard practice for the organization. 

Let’s talk Bell.

You couldn’t find a better way of letting go of people that is way more humane than this? You keep going to this well as this isn’t the first time that you’ve done something like this and I bet you’re surprised that every time that you do this there’s epic blowback. Maybe it just highlights the fact that you don’t see your employees as people with families. But instead you see them as just numbers on a spreadsheet. Maybe I’m being harsh. But when you terminate people in this manner, you’re just asking to get criticized because you’re doing it wrong.

UPDATE: Bell sent me a statement that I will reprint below in full:

Bell announced a restructuring on February 8 at all levels of the company, and since that time, Bell has been working with Unifor and other unions on the impacts to our unionized workforce. Bell has been very transparent with Unifor leadership about the process in which these discussions would take place, having started discussions over five weeks ago, and has met all of our obligations under the respective collective bargaining agreements.

As planned with Unifor, on March 20, Bell initiated calls with groups of our unionized team members to give notice of upcoming actions taking place, which include both a voluntary separation program and surplus reductions. Employees who were informed that they were being let go additionally had individual meetings with an HR representative to discuss their individual packages and to ask questions. They also have the option to invite a union representative to the meeting. Bell is offering departing surplus employees fair and competitive severance packages, including providing non-working notice and salary continuance as negotiated with the union. Most of the employees are remote workers as enshrined in their collective bargaining agreement, and therefore all of these discussions are being handled remotely so that they are not called into an office.

Following up on this story where I point out that Bell is slashing jobs, not rolling out fibre and scaling back their speed offerings, and selling radio stations along with slashing jobs at what used to be called The Source, Bell also reported their Q4 and full year results. You can read that here, but here’s the TL:DR:

• There was a a 3.9% increase in wireless service revenue as Bell got 170,831 net subscriber activations.
• There were 55,591 retail Internet net subscriber activations in Q4. Which according to Bell is the second best Q4 result in nearly two decades.
• Bell’s net earnings fell by 23.3% to $435 million in the quarter.

And whose fault is that that their earnings fell 23.3%? Here’s who Bell blames:

While it’s clear that we are continuing to execute with discipline in a competitive marketplace, we need to take additional measures in response to increasingly unsupportive federal government and regulatory decisions, legacy business declines and a macroeconomic environment with higher interest rates and continued inflation. As our business is hampered by regulatory decisions that discourage investment, we are slowing the pace of our network expansion and capping fibre speeds. 

Really Bell? I find it hard to be sympathetic when they still made money. And I find it even harder to be sympathetic when Bell decides to slash all these jobs after they finish their “Bell Let’s Talk” mental health campaign. Because slashing these jobs is sure to cause some mental health issues for those who are losing their jobs. But maybe I am looking at this wrong?

In any case maybe Bell needs to better “execute with discipline” given the environment which includes an “increasingly unsupportive federal government and regulatory decisions”. That might make their balance sheet look better. But again, maybe I’m looking at that wrong as well.