Getting to Know Us

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Some of the Cambridge head office staff

We started this blog and a bunch of other online communication channels like Twitter and Facebook a little over a month ago now, and ever since we’ve welcomed a tremendous increase in engagement from our customers.

They are asking us questions about promotions like March Madness, clarifying terms of service, letting us know about some of the issues they are having, and even just saying “hi.”

It’s been very cool so far. But it shouldn’t be unexpected, because prior to this, pretty much the only avenue of communication open to our customers was giving us a call on the phone.

I don’t know about you, but I’ll do pretty much anything to avoid calling up a service provider and talking on the phone, and it’s not just about the insipid hold music either, (Spanish Eyes? Seriously?).

No, it’s about something else entirely. Regardless of how well-trained or how personable the person is on the end of the line with you is, in the end the process is just simply annoying.

We try our best to give the customers the best service experience we can. We train our people relentlessly. We audit their performance on calls, we even listen in on them as often as we can to ensure they are doing what we expect them to do, and that is to give our customers the best answers and best solutions to whatever their issues are.

But sometimes things just suck.

Stubbing your toe? Sucks.

Old cats? They suck.

Rope burn? Really sucks.

A paper cut and then picking up a lemon slice? That sucks hugely.

And being on the phone with a customer service guy or girl, even when the outcome is positive, well, that generally sucks as well.

So we’ve embraced this whole social outreach to let everyone know what we’re up to, (March Madness anyone?), or how our network is doing (Right now? Just fine thanks) or about how we’re all about saving you money, either through our #moneysavingtips, or letting you know about our low-cost Unlimited High Speed Internet or our Digital Home Phone (and stay tuned for a major announcement about that next week!!).

That’s not the only reason however: It’s also because we want our customers to know all about us.

We know the more they know, the better they will feel about us and our service.

And we want potential Worldline customers to know about us as well. An informed consumer is Worldline’s best friend because once they get to know us, they will want us as their High Speed Internet or Digital home phone provider.

We know that for sure.

Worldline March Madness Official Press Release

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Worldline March Madness – Prices slashed on DSL & Home Phone & DSL Bundles

In-line with company philosophy of “Positive Disruption” new pricing could save Canadians $700/year

CAMBRIDGE, ONTARIO–(03/04/13)- Worldline, a Canadian telecommunications leader, has long held that Canadians were being overcharged for their data and have tried to positively disrupt the telecommunications marketplace by keeping their pricing far below the industry standard. Now that March is here and with it a promise of better weather and anticipation of the better things to come, Worldline has decided to add to the excitement by offering its most aggressive pricing on Unlimited High Speed Internet (Starting at $29.95/month) and Unlimited High Speed Internet and Home Phone Bundles (starting at $44.95).

“Our normal pricing is already the most inexpensive in Canada, but this March Madness special really pushes our positive disruption philosophy to the max,” says Worldline Co-founder & CMO John Stix. “If anyone has thought of switching, now is definitely the time. I really couldn’t be any happier, as I have heard firsthand from our customers how much they value the service we provide, and how we can now help even more Canadians save a substantial amount of money.”

March Madness marks the start of Worldline’s year-long 10th anniversary celebration. “What a better way to celebrate than to deliver even more value to Canadians. We are a proud Canadian company with all our owners being born and raised here and we operate here and we employ here,” says Stix.

Francisco Dominquez, Worldline CTO says, “as always, we do not sacrifice quality of service for cost savings as we have provisioned enough network to handle the expected surge in activations. Our network is one of the most stable and robust in the country.”

March Madness pricing, which could save the average Canadian as much as $700/year, will last only until the end of March.

About Worldline:
Celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2013, Worldline provides affordable home phone, unlimited high speed internet and long distance services to hard working Canadians. With over 300,000 subscribers, Worldline is one of the fastest growing telecommunications companies in Canada.  Worldline is wholly owned and operated by Fibernetics Corp, a Competitive Local Exchange Carrier (CLEC).  Website: worldline.ca Twitter: @worldlinecanada

About Fibernetics:
Headquartered in Cambridge Ontario, Fibernetics is dedicated to changing the way people communicate by offering telco functionality and pricing that Canadians have never seen before. Fibernetics has its own national infrastructure that delivers a full range of voice and data services for residential customers through Worldline and business clients with their Newt PBX and ANA solutions. Website: fibernetics.ca Twitter: @fibernetics

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We’re not ones to blow our own horns usually…

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Coincidentally Fiona, Mike’s daughter, graces the front of the Worldline Facebook page right now

Okay, actually that’s nonsense. What company doesn’t after all? But in this case we’re going to post a letter from a new friend of ours, Greg, because he’s been through a lot to get his Internet just right and he’s been both really, really patient, and now he’s really really appreciative.

So, take it away Greg!

“”I Would Like To Share My Story””.

In the past 2 years I have had nothing but problems with my internet & phone bundles, using providers like Rogers and ACN. Both my phone and internet would go out of service from 1 hr up to a whole day. I would call and complain, a ticket would be made, and that would be the last I heard from anyone, until I had to contact them again for the same issue. All I ever got from them was a lot of excuses of what ” it could be” and never a follow up phone call to see if the problem was fixed. So….as you can see, I was very skeptical on joining yet another provider.

I did some researching on the internet and came across Worldline. The first thing I did was gave them a call and talked to one of their support team members ( Carlos ) and told him all the problems I have had, and asked what made Worldline different. He told me that they had upwards to 300,000 customers changing over to them from other providers. Right there that made me think that Worldline was doing something right. Carlos was very knowledgeable about their service, and made me feel very comfortable. Every question I asked him he had an answer for, so I signed up for the 15 MBPS Internet & Phone Bundle.

All installers showed up on time, and were very polite. Now…I started having a problem with the service going down after it was installed, just enough to reboot the modem, but again I was wondering ….OH NO…NOT AGAIN.

I posted this problem on their Facebook page, and before I could even call them, a Tech contacted me (Mike). He was a very pleasant gentleman to talk to, and understood my concerns. He started trouble shooting my problem right away. He found that I had a very rare situation with something called “occupancy”, which is undetectable during installation as it occurs so infrequently), and they’d have it repaired in 24-48 hours.

It actually was fixed early in the afternoon. Mike has kept an eye on service for a couple of days to make sure there was no more interruptions. Mike called me today March 1 2013 and confirmed with me that everything looked good, and ” I AGREED “.

I AM SO IMPRESSED WITH THERE CUSTOMER SERVICE AND TECH SUPPORT. 10 THUMBS UP TO MIKE AND ALL OF WORLDLINE.

YOURS TRULY

ONE VERY HAPPY CUSTOMER

GREG

We have to find something nice to send Greg. And just thinking about it, we have just the thing actually.

We’ll be announcing that on Monday, March 4th.

Home of the Free

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Stratford & Kitchener: They’re practically touching!

It all started in Stratford, Ontario.

See, if you lived in Stratford, calling someone on the phone in Kitchener, the city just to the east, you were charged for long distance.

You could practically see the place, yet the phone company was going to ding you 40 cents a minute for calling right next door? That’s insane! That’s outrageous! That’s disgusting!

But for two local buddies, Jody Schnarr and John Stix, that was awesome!

They saw an opportunity that no one else had. They would cobble together some basic tech to  hook up the two communities, charge customers a flat fee, and allow them them talk all they wanted.

It was a win-win for sure. So what they did was knock on 700 doors in town and asked if anyone would be interested in a service that allowed them to talk to Kitchener all the live long day for a flat fee of only $10 a month.

Practically everyone said “yes,” so with that market research in hand, they spent all the money that had between them, about $15,000, on this new switching gear and their brand new phone business was born.

…and then precisely none of the 700 who said they would take it, took it.

Panicked, they spent the next two months “calling, begging,” and in the end, they had managed to sign up a grand total of 70 customers.

Which was enough to guarantee that they would go broke. Their monthly carrying costs were $1000 a month so it wasn’t looking too good, but then they came up with a new plan.

The “free” plan.

“We thought about getting someone to pay the $1000 monthly bill, to let everybody use it for free,” said Schnarr.

What they needed was an advertiser. They pitched local car dealer Gary Stockie with the simple concept: Anyone making a call would dial a custom branded number and after hearing a brief advertisement, they would be able to make a free long distance call.

Gary went for it, so Schnarr created an easy to remember phone number, 662-GARY, and launched their first PR campaign.

Next-day coverage in the local newspaper prompted 4000 people to use it that first day. “The town just went nuts. At the end of it, we had 8000 household using it a day,” said Stix.

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John & Jody

Up, up and away in fact. This elegant “free” calling plan was quickly picked up by communities across the province, and then by companies like Labatt and the Toronto Star.

Flash forward to today and these two local guys, Schnarr is the CEO and Stix is the CMO, have built one of Canada’s largest coast to coast networks that supports over 300,000 customers a day. They have over 200 employees globally with their head office in Cambridge and two international offices located in Sofia, Bulgaria and Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic.

Yet that concept of “free” is never far away. The concept that built the company goes into every product they offer today.

Be it all the free calling features or the free long distance for Worldline digital home phone customers, or the free unlimited bandwidth for High Speed Internet customers, it’s everywhere, and it will remain so in whatever they come up with next.

It’s a very non-traditional business model, and one that leaves many in the industry scratching their heads.

But for Jody & John, free works, and after all, it’s their company, they’re free do whatever they want.