As you would imagine, the folks who work at Worldline use Worldline as their Home Phone and Unlimited High Speed Internet provider – meaning they were once with someone else.

Like Bell for instance. Our employees bring in these “loyalty” cards all the time for us to giggle over, but for our business, it’s not a joke.

Once someone leaves a company like Bell, that company works very, very hard at getting that person back by being all touchy-feely with a series of personalized cards offering them super discounts to come back.

You know, because they care and stuff.

The problem with this is, if they were this awesome while they were providing their service, chances are no one would ever leave them in the first place.

Regardless, these semi-shameless marketing efforts are effective, but not nearly as effective as what they do when someone calls in to cancel on them.

When we sign up customers to a Worldline service, we know a certain percentage will in fact not become our customers because of what happens when they are on the phone with the likes of Bell, Telus or Rogers to cancel.

In the parlance of the telecom industry, this is called “breakage.”

The big three are great at it. We’ve heard customers tell us tales of being wooed with promises of discounts (that only last a few months) or price matching us (again, for only a few months) or if they are truly desperate, actually going lower than us (which will last even fewer months). Then if that doesn’t work – then comes out the major artillery; they switch them over to a “supervisor.”

These are the folks who are specialists at making the switch as painful as possible. They’re so good they even make switching from their overpriced, bandwidth-capped service seem somehow illogical.

And, unfortunately for us, on occasion these tactics work. We lose customers who were looking forward to saving up to $600/yr on their bills simply because they were talked out of it.

Now Rogers is going one step further. They’re trying to entice their existing customer base   into staying by signing them up to their new “loyalty” program. Starting this summer, “points” can be earned for Rogers services, and applied to other services like discounts on roaming charges, or a free PPV movie, stuff like that.

It adds up to a few pennies a month in benefits, weighed against the hundreds a year they are overcharging their customers.

It’s a great deal – for them.

And it’s also a preemptive strike to keep customers from thinking about going elsewhere, because now when someone calls into switch Rogers can say, “But what about all your points?”

Tricky eh?

So, how will Worldline fight against this? Same way we always have – by providing the fairest priced, Unlimited High Speed Internet and Home Phone in Canada – and trusting our customers to understand that we are taking on the big telecom companies on their behalf.

Joyce Maynard once wrote, “a person who deserves my loyalty receives it.”

The same applies to companies who provide a service.