So I'm thinking...

Hey there,

It’s been a while since I’ve provided an update. While our site has been getting LOTS of traffic over the last weeks (more on that later), I’ve been across Canada a couple of times since then to check in on our customers, stores, and staff, plus kick off our retail training for Edmonton and Ottawa (both launching soon).

While we continue to build out Edmonton and Ottawa to get ready for launch, we’re also building more and more coverage in and around the GTA and Calgary. In the last two weeks, we’ve turned on over a dozen sites, but more important than the number of sites, is the feedback from real customers that the coverage has improved substantially in key areas. With a 20 year head start, there are undoubtedly several areas where we’re still closing gaps with the established operators, but we’re getting there by focusing on real customer experience.

However, we have missed a key target for U.S. roaming. The reason we’ve priced our U.S. roaming equal to Canadian roaming and at fraction of what other operators charge ($0.25 per minute including roaming and long distance) is because of the great partnership with T-Mobile. This means teams on both sides of the border are working their butts off to get this done, but it’s going to be a bit longer than we wanted (in the next few days we’ll know if it’s this week or next).

I read a great comment on the site from someone seriously PO’d because it was taking us so long to change our ring tone from a European one to a North American one. I laughed out loud, not because it wasn’t a valid comment, but because I know a few people internally had uttered the same words. Truth is, the actual process to change a ringtone is really unbelievable (something I’ve never encountered before), but – good news – it’s done. Whew!

I see there’s still some discussions around ports. As we said on the site, our approach was to make some of the changes, enable services being asked for, and then “let the dust settle” and monitor feedback. This is exactly the process that we aspire to for all of our customer and community interaction… listen, acknowledge, respond and keep listening! I received a great email shortly after we made our first response on ports from one of our community members… very clear, well communicated observations on what else we could be doing and we have taken that into account, along with all of the other feedback, as we plan the next changes.

Watching some of the activity on the site lately, I go back and forth between being encouraged and disappointed. Encouraged because I think we’re leading in terms of openness, and enabling both positive and negative conversations on our site (when I say “negative”, I’m talking about real customers discussing real issues). While it would be great to have only positive conversations, we will move in that direction only by continuing to grow and improve our service, not by removing the negative comments. We’re about the conversation. I say “disappointed” because it seems our real customers are getting drowned out (and rather bored) of all of the troll activity. I was at a great event the other night and talked about how “boring is the new evil”, so I’m really disappointed that the volume of troll activity is annoying and boring our community. We have been taking your comments and suggestions and we’re working on ways to enhance our moderating and management of our site. We will not shut down comments – positive or negative. We will absolutely stop any abusive, offensive or threatening communication. And we’ll work to ensure that the conversation is never boring.

Chris