Flow aims for improved customer experience with system upgrade

The focus on improving customer experience continues to be a priority for telecoms provider Flow.

The company recently concluded a major upgrade to its billing, charging and customer relationship management systems that will act as the catalyst to drive an improved level of customer experience.

“After we merged we ended up with a situation where we had many systems that essentially did the same thing. We had approximately 30 different systems that all did the same job, so as you could imagine there was some confusion between the systems,” said Justin Inniss, Senior Director of Customer Experience, Flow Barbados.

“Some systems worked with others while others did not, so we took a decision to move every single customer we have on to one management platform so we can ensure that every single customer has the same positive experience.”

Barbados is now the first business unit in the Caribbean for Flow to achieve complete systems integration.

“As with any technology-related exercise of this magnitude, there are always some unexpected challenges that need to be ironed out, and our systems are now in a stabilisation period as we try to systematically identify the faults we have encountered,” added Inniss.

He said current challenges included the normalisation of the company’s billing cycles.

“Some of our customers will notice their bills for the month of May and June are being delivered late and we sincerely apologise for this inconvenience. As we manage hundreds of thousands of accounts, all with distinct products and services, we have several different billing cycles that we now need to regularise again,” he said.

“Most of the delay is due to the extensive auditing we are doing to the bills because we want to ensure that the billing itself is correct before we hand them over to our customers, so we are spending time auditing and fixing the anomalies we find. Once we get through one complete cycle of the bill run, our standard delivery time should be normalised.”

Inniss also highlighted the fact the company no longer applies late fees to overdue invoices.

“This project is all about standardising our processes, communication and customer relationship management systems, so there is one point of reference when interacting with Flow. Everyone will now have the same bill, in terms of the look-and-feel, and everyone will now interact with the company via the same channels,” he said.

“This paves the way for us to offer a true quad-play experience for our customers who will now receive a consolidated bill for the company’s suite of products and services
including broadband, mobile, fixed-line and TV.”