Flow not worried by new players in broadband, fixed line

Fast forward to 2016. Your home WIFI modem supports two desktops, a laptop, three mobile phones and a Kindle. Someone in your home is shopping online. Meanwhile, someone else is watching Netflix. Somebody else is researching a paper for school. Another, is playing a game with a friend in China.

Flow is keen to mark its place as a premier provider of broadband in more ways than one.

“When we launched this service in 2007, broadband was a novelty for a lot of TT,” said Cindy Gatt, Flow’s Director, Marketing.

Gatt likened the change to the difference between “chalk and cheese”. In her mind, far from being a novelty, today, broadband is on par with electricity. Given this level of importance in customer’s lives, Gatt said the company is always working to see that customers’ have a consistently high quality broadband experience, the backbone of which is the company’s continual investment in its plant and hardware.

“We have never been a company that went out and invested in culture and sponsorship deals, only recently having gotten into that. Most of our history in Trinidad and Tobago, we’ve taken the money and invested in improving customer service.”

Maximising the customer experience, said Gatt, is a core activity at Flow.

To illustrate, the director of marketing said Flow’s customers have been benefiting from occasional bumps in speed for years at largely no cost to themselves.

“These same customers, 6 years ago, would have been on a 5 mbps package,” she said.

Now, most of Flow’s customers opt for the company’s 30 mpbs package. Gatt explained that the company periodically doubled speeds as customer usage patterns showed more and more homes were using multiple devices requiring higher bandwidth than in times past.

But beyond broadband, Gatt said, customers are also benefiting from innovations and improvements in other areas of the company’s operations. Gatt spoke about the introduction of Flow Sports a year ago, as well as the Premier television package for fans of English Premier League Football. This year, Flow was also involved with Olympic coverage of the regions athlete’s through ESPN Caribbean.

The company also has a new video service where subscribers can access 21 channels on their mobile phones. Additionally, there is the Flow Study app, featuring practice tests and online tutorials for CSEC. Currently, the basic package is available at no cost to customers.

“We are always doing more,” said Gatt, “ We are always upgrading our services and we are very concerned about customer experiences. All of what we do is done for their benefit.”

But does this mean all is well between the company and its customers?

Gatt admitted, “Could we improve? Everyone could improve. Nobody has it down perfect. No one.”

She referred to customer complaints about difficulties experienced contacting Flow.

According to Gatt, the company receives between 10,000 and 12,000 calls on a weekly basis. She said to accommodate customers, its call centre was converted to a 24-hour operation and now has a toll-free number. The company has also established an online portal where users can access bill information, services and changes requested going back 12 months, as well as pay bills.

Gatt said the company attempts to help customers get packages that are best suited to their needs and their budget, but emphasized that customers also had a share in that responsibility to make sure that they had the best fit.

The marketing director thinks Flow’s customer centred approach will help it retain market share in the face of increasingly intense competition. This year, two more players entered the market. One challenge made by competitors is that Flow network is not fibre optic.

“To clear up confusion, Flow’s network is a fibre network,” This from Allan Kangaloo, a product manager with responsibility for broadband and fixed line services, who has sat in on the interview to explain the more technical points.

“Our competition offers fibre from the node to the home. Flow has coaxial cable to the home. However, the entire back end (of the network) is fibre. There is little material difference in speed. Using this, they say they have a fibre network and Flow does not.”

“We’ve always had competition,” said Gatt, “We’ve been getting ready for competition for a while.”

And Gatt is not afraid.

“I think competition keeps you on your toes and it makes sure you continually innovate and keep abreast of all your customers wants. It makes you very aware of their experience and you take that into consideration into everything you do.”