With last week’s announcement from both HBO and CBS that they are going to offer their content online for a monthly subscription, the Television and cable industry are about to change in the U.S. And, according to this report, Canada will not be far behind.

HBO is Coming

(From the AP) Canadians who want to view specialty channels and watch their favourite shows must go through their cable providers, like Bell and Rogers.

But some industry experts say that may change. They suggest that Canadians will inevitably have access to American content streamed online when online streaming becomes the norm and more and more people abandon their cable providers.

It’s already happening south of the border. Last week, HBO announced that it will allow Americans to stream its programming online next year without having to subscribe to the cable channel.

While HBO won’t be streaming its service into Canada, at least not yet, the experts say the pressure from the public and from some content providers to allow more streamed foreign content is bound to grow. And that could mean that Bell and Rogers may eventually be relegated to essentially providing the “pipe” —  or the actual cables, connecting to households that facilitate internet or wireless service.

“[Rogers] controls the pipe as does Bell. They will come to the realization, that’s their model, forget about content, and all this other nonsense, they don’t really have anything of propriety there to offer,” said Fred Lazar, an economics professor at York University’s Schulich School of Business. “Focus on the pipe, control that, and essentially increase the rates charged there as people start migrating.”

“What [Bell and Rogers are] going to do is try and slow the migration as much as possible and try and better position themselves through different types of pricing to take advantage of the inevitable migration [from cable to online],” he said.

In a sense, cable companies were the Netflix of their time, Lazar said, mostly providing cable subscribers programming (much of it American) that had been created by others, while also supplying a healthy dose of Canadian content.

But then the internet came along, providing a more direct distribution forum for content that allowed customers to pick and choose what they wished to view. Companies like Netflix, which provided quick online streaming access to films and TV shows and catered to binge viewers, roared to success, putting the future of cable in jeopardy.

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Mike Champagne has been with Worldline on our Level Three Support Team for almost four years. His primary function is working with our customers ensuring they are receiving the service they are paying for – which is a huge responsibility and he does it very well. Above and beyond actually.

He also works with our support staff in the Fibernetics Contact Centre (FCC). Our call centre staff’s main job is to handle calls from new and potential customers, not technical support. However they do handle many of those calls, and escalate them to our Level 2 and Level 3 teams if they are beyond the standard technical issues. Mike and his teammates have taken on the task of training our FCC people to improve their technical skill set – and therefore our overall customer service. Working with the support staff, Mike came up with a cool way to recognize individuals at the FCC who are going above and beyond as well.

Introducing the Level 3`s Superhero Recognition Award

Here at Worldline, we are constantly working on improving our service and customer interaction. One of the things we look at is how hard our customer service representatives are working to make any call a customer makes to us a positive experience.

We are very proud of how far our customer service has come and are VERY excited with the growth and direction they are going. Today, we would like to recognize one of our wonderful colleagues.

We would like to introduce you all to Danny Castillo. Danny works in our Fibernetics Contact Centre and covers a wide array of questions and technical issues our customers may be having, and welcomes any and all questions they may have.

Danny is always happy to help someone and is happy that he is especially happy when he is able to help a customer solve their problems and answer their questions.

When I say he is happy to help, I am understating his attitude by a long shot. He is at his happiest when at the end of a conversation, he knows they are hanging up the phone with every one of their question answered, every issue dealt with, that the customer aware of every feature and promotion that could benefit them. Conversely, what he doesn’t like is when a questions or issue bottlenecks and he is unable to get things done right away. That’s why he is working hard at getting better every day to ensure Worldline customers have the best experience in Canadian telecom.

Danny genuinely cares about each and every Worldline subscriber and wants to make sure that they are happy with not only our service, but their experience when they call into our contact center . When I speak with our Quality Assurance team, not a single person could think of a negative thing to say about the work that Danny does. However each person was quick to give recognition to how hard he works and how much he cares about making Worldline’s MVP’s, our customers, feel happy.

So I’m happy to award the very first Level 3`s Superhero Recognition Award to Danny Castillo. Thanks for all your hard work Danny. Well done, and behalf of everyone at Worldline, congratulations!

Mike Champagne – Level III Bilingual Escalation Specialist

Recently we asked a number of people at Worldline if they could spell out what they do in their daily working lives to make our customer’s experience with us just a little bit better. One of the more interesting pieces we received came for Leigh Sabourin, our purchasing and logistics manager.

She and her team are responsible for all the equipment that both Worldline, and NEWT, our business services division, provide to customers. That makes her the pointy end of the spear for us when it comes to ensuring our customers are getting what they are paying for, and as she puts it:

We want you to forget about what we do!

Our goal is for customers to plug in their new hardware and forget about it!  Customer peace of mind is what we bring, the ability to plug your gear in and not think of it again.  Reliability .  Consistency.

Each piece of hardware is personally handled by one of our staff.

Modems are individually configured, tested and prepared for FedEx shipping to our customers.

Phones are provisioned, registered and carefully packaged for delivery to their new homes. Part of how we can keep customer costs low is by offering high quality refurbished equipment.  Hardware goes through vigorous testing prior to being approved for deployment on Fibernetics diverse network.  We offer refurbished equipment to all channels of Fibernetics business, to the delight of our customers and their bank accounts.

We strive daily to hit tight target timelines and support all of Fibernetics customers by providing them a quality product they can count on.

And forget about.

It’s an interesting take, and a valid one. Having a consistent, reliable nuisance free product delivered to our customers is the ideal for a service provider. The greatest customer experience that Worldline could possibly provide would be essentially having our customers forget about us. Except on invoice day of course 

Worldline’s annual golf tourney went off without a hitch, despite the blustery weather. Special thanks to Amanda for organizing the tournament, and to CEO Jody Schnarr for stealing the show.

Just part of what we do here

A new customer of ours asked a question on our Facebook Page this morning and I thought it deserved a more thorough explanation than the one I gave him there.

His question was:

Hi!! My family just ordered DSL yesterday, and I read few reviews online. One person say that there is cancellation fee if you cancel in one year. Is this true?? I couldn’t find any information online or sales rep didn’t mention it at all.

That’s a very good question, and the answer is simple. The reason our customer service rep didn’t mention anything about Worldline cancellation fees is, we don’t have any – unless of course, you want to have one.

See? Told you it would require a longer explanation. Our new Worldline customer up there has no cancellation fees for his DSL service at all. All we ask for is 30 days notice for a cancellation. The same thing goes for all of our products and services, be they our DSL Unlimited Internet and Digital Home Phone Bundle, our long distance services etc.

Except for our cable Internet service. We offer our customers the option to have a two year contract. It’s not mandatory, it’s an option and the reason so many of our cable customers are going for it is, with a two year term, that kind of guaranteed revenue allows us to lower what we charge to the bare minimum, while ensuring a profit. Signing up for a contract saves our cable customers an additional $10/month off an already industry low monthly fee. It’s good for them, and good for us.

Why doesn’t Worldline have mandatory contracts?

Our no mandatory contract policy works for us principally because we trust our customers to stay with us due to three things: First, the services we provide, second our pricing and third, and most importantly for us here, how we care for our customers.

We work day in and day out to ensure that once we have a customer, we keep them as our customer. We look at it like this; we’re all in this together. Worldline, though it has 200 employees and offices on a couple of continents, we are still relatively small player in the industry and we are taking on Big Telecom head on for our customers. Since our inception over a decade ago that’s what we’ve been all about – helping Canadians get a better deal on their telecom, and being all nice about it while we do it.

It’s a big part of our culture. The folks at Worldine understand what we’re all about. They are happy to provide Worldline services to our customers. They are enthused and pretty much evangelical about what we do here. To put it simple, Worldline folks are “In!” and strive everyday to make our customers as happy as possible by connecting them to one of our services.

We’re “In!” because we know we’re not trying to pull a fast one on anyone. A perfect example of which is, unlike some other telecoms we know, we have no hidden cancellation fees.

Thanks for the question, and welcome to Worldline. I think you’re going to like it here.