Rogers Communications aims to improve its declining customer experience through three recommendations: 1) Increase low employee engagement by implementing behavioral tests for internal roles and an internal social media tool. 2) Decrease the two main areas of customer complaints by improving information flow to frontline employees. 3) Set an aspirational customer experience vision by benchmarking against top customer experience leaders in other industries to guide Rogers' strategy. The presentation analyzes Rogers' current customer experience challenges and proposes initiatives to align its strategy and increase employee engagement to enhance the customer experience.

1. Rogers Communications Inc.
A vision to improve Rogers Customer Experience
Abhishek Sharma
Rogers Communications Inc.

2. Table of Contents
1 Baseline and approach
2 Executive Summary
3 Assessment of current CEX state
5 Low employee engagement score
 Behavioral tests for internal roles
 Internal social media tool
9 Customer complaints related to
misleading terms & conditions
 Improving information flow to
frontline employees
11 Misalignment between CEX strategy
and corporate strategy
 Lack of an aspirational CEX vision
 Benchmarking across the industries
14 Next Steps
15 Appendix

3. Baseline and approach
 Rogers is the largest Canadian communications and media company from more than a decade
 However, the company has seen its market share eroding to new competitors as well as
increasing threat from regulatory changes set to benefit telecom players from US
 Rogers could maintain and improve its leadership position through improving Customer
Experience in an increasingly competitive industry
Improve Customer Experience
Increasing
Employee
Engagement
Decreasing
customer
complaints in 2 key
areas
Setting a goal for
Customer
Experience
1

4. Executive Summary
 Recommendation 1:
 Increase employee engagement through
 increasing internal employee movement within
the organization
 internal social media tool and customer issue
discussion board
 Recommendation 2:
 Improve information flow to frontline employees
 Recommendation 3:
 Benchmark Rogers across the industries for CEX
goal setting
2

5. Assessment of current CEX state at Rogers
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Churn Rate comparison overall
Bell Rogers Telus
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
2010-11 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14 2014-15
Customer Grievances to Commissioner for
Complaints for Telecom services
Bell Rogers Telus Linear (Rogers)
Takeaways:
 Churn rates suggest our
rates match Bell, but trend is
negative
 Worst among big 3 telco’s
Takeaways:
 In Customer grievances, we
are lagging behind Telus by an
increasing delta
 Second among big 3 telco’s
3

6. Assessment of current CEX state at Rogers
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Churn Rate comparison overall
Bell Rogers Telus
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
2010-11 2011-12 2012-13 2013-14 2014-15
Customer Grievances to Commissioner for
Complaints for Telecom services
Bell Rogers Telus Linear (Rogers)
Major steps since 2010
 Customer Measurement Program
 Customer Experience Officer
 Journey maps
 Understanding CEX ecosystem
 Career Zone – internal job site
 Value of CEX orchestrated to
management and employees
 CEX strategy aligns with the
corporate strategy/vision
 Curriculum for CEX training
4

7. Lower than competition’s Employee engagement score
 Rogers CSR 2013 report suggests a strong link between employee
engagement, leadership effectiveness and organizational success
 Our Employee engagement score has been inconsistent since 2011.
Kenexa, a company specializing in employee engagement surveys,
suggests 76% is the best-in-class external benchmark
 However, Telus has employee engagement score of 83%
5

8. 3 Key indicators among no. of factors that affect employee engagement
 Regularly survey, measure and analyze employee attitude and
engagements
 Company enables each employee to collaborate and engage with
coworkers
 Company empowers customer-facing employees to make decisions
on the behalf of company
 Company recognizes and rewards outstanding employee
contributions to company success
 Employee know what skills they need to be successful
 Employees are encouraged to advance their careers with the
company
 Employees have flexibility in their work schedule
 Company offers formal programs for employees to manage health
and wellness, build financial security, take care of family, and enjoy
time off from work.
6

9. Behavioral tests for internal roles
 Different job profiles need different levels of Empathy, the basic
skillset required for Customer Experience
 Identify the levels of empathy through Gallup StrengthsFinder,
the Hermann Brain Dominance Instrument, the Myers-Briggs
Assessment tests, or any other similar behavioral test
 Identify the high performing teams and individuals, then scale
their empathy scores
 Encourage employee movement within the organization based
on matching of the behavioral skills along with the competency
 Keep the test voluntary, not mandatory: leverage peer pressure
and appreciation reward process
7

10. Internal social media tool
 Create an internal version of Facebook for the employees to
share the customer issues and stories
 Crowd source feedback and resolution option internally by
allowing reps to post individual customer comments and posts
on social media channel
 Empower employees from outside of customer rep teams to
respond customer issues directly on external posts
8

11. 2 Key areas of customer complaints that cover 37% of our complaints
Key Takeaways:
 We are 2nd last in misleading
terms and conditions, as well as
last in communicating 30-Day
cancellation policy
 There is likely to be a strong link
between misleading
communication and customer
happiness
 I hypothesize that the benefit we
gain from not informing customers
does not exceed the benefit from
providing better customer service
and reducing churn.
Source: CCTS Annual Report 2013-2014
9

12. Improving information flow of systems might make the most impact
Issue Resolution
The information is not readily
accessible by customer
representative
Improve information flow of
backend systems and align
incentives of IT with new
development that facilitate easy
accessibility
Customer representatives are not
incentivized to provide this
information rather to retain the
customers
Add layer of incentive/appreciation
on successfully avoiding the issues
There could be confusion in the
process on which step the
information should be shared
Streamline the process flow and
provide constant training on
avoiding potential issues
10

13. Misalignment between CEX and Corporate strategy
Business
Terms
How Rogers define it
Unique Value
Preposition
Mix of assets, culture of growth and innovation
Corporate
Strategy
Rogers 3.0 Plan : Accelerating growth and
overhauling the customer experience
Customer
Experience
Vision
Customer
Experience
Strategy
• Dedicated 9,000+ employee customer
experience division reporting directly to CEO
• Simplifying commercial policies, processes,
plans & systems
• Promote web sales, web care, app self care
Brand Canada’s most dynamic communications and
media company
Brand Strategy • Invest in & develop our people
• Focus on innovation & network leadership
Key Takeaways:
 Rogers corporate
strategy has no
connection with the
customer experience
strategy
 Customer Experience
Vision statement is
missing, and hence we
don’t have a goal to
aim for
11

14. Lack of an aspirational CEX vision
 Customer Experience is a competency more than a function, and it needs constant
refinement
 Goal setting requires comparison
 Comparison requires standardized data and metrics
 Industry competitors might not be our guiding star as they might be only marginally
ahead while we need a 10-20 year goal to progress toward and envisioned future
Source: Top 10 Customer experience questions answered, Forrester 2015
X
12

15. Benchmarking across the industries
Benchmark Rogers against Telus as well as other Customer Experience leaders
outside of the industry
 Example: FedEx surveys competitors’ customers in addition to its own to
understand emotional reactions to experiences that correlate to business
results
 John Deere benchmark itself against best-in-class CX organizations like Disney to
formulate set of decision factors
0
1
2
3
4
5
Rogers Telus Disney Kroger's
Sample CEX Maturity Modeling Data on
a scale of 0 to 5
Some Techniques for benchmarking:
Forrester Customer Experience Index,
IBM Kanexa, AON Hewitt, JD Powers
13

16. Next steps
 Validation of hypothesis that the benefit gained from not
properly informing customers does not exceed the benefit
from informing and providing better customer service and
reducing churn.
 Select behavioral technique to measure and analyze
employee attitude and engagement
 Setting up meeting with Senior Management to set a
customer experience vision in line with corporate strategy
 Select the benchmarking measure and choosing the right
CEX leaders to benchmark against
14

17. Appendix
i. Customer experience
strategy is about
competition
ii. Rogers competition and its
falling market share
iii. Customer experience is
important to Rogers
iv. Rogers account page
against competition
v. Align CEX strategy with the
brand promise
vi. VOC along with VOE
15

18. Customer Experience strategy is about competition
“Strategy is about competitive advantage.
Without Competitors, there would be no need for
strategy, for the sole purpose of strategic planning
is to enable the company to gain –as effectively as
possible– a sustainable edge over its competitors.”
-Kenichi Ohmae
16

19. Rogers Competition and its falling market share
 Current Competition:
 Telus
 Bell
 Wind
 Near Term Competition
 Apple
 Verizon
 AT&T
 Comcast
 Vodafone
 Orange
 Netflix
 Skype
 Vonage
 Google Nest Labs
37%
34%
2006 2014
Wireless national market share by
Subscribers
Rogers Others
17

20. Customer Experience is important to Rogers
Since there is a relationship between
Customer Experience Strategy and
Business Performance
 Loyalty  Incremental purchases
 Lower churn  Retained revenues
 Lower customer attrition  Cost
savings
 Word of mouth  Cost savings in
Marketing
Through growth in revenue as
well as cost reduction, Rogers
can leverage customer
experience as a source of
competitive advantage
against current and potential
competitors
18

21. Rogers Account Page
19

22. Cablevision’s account page (CEX leading practice)
 Rogers customer portal home
page says what company wants to
say: “Buy more”, however this is
not what most customers would
like to hear at point in time
 Cablevision broke that trend with
the 2013 redesign of its customer
portal, Optimum.net. Subscribers
now have access to all of the
products and services Optimum
provides right from the home
page.
20

23. Align CEX Strategy with the brand promise
Customer Experience and Brand
strategy are linked, therefore:
Create a brand promise and customer
experience strategy in tandem. Find
out what expectations Rogers
customers have for their brand and
develop a customer experience
strategy aligning with the brand
promise
 Best Western Hotel UK rebranded
itself as “Hotels with
personalities” and then delivered
value with its CEX strategy
fulfilling the brand promise
21

24. Voice of Customer along with Voice of Employees
Voice of the frontline employees
 Internal social media platform
“Voice your customer” –
employees discuss issues and
ideas for CEX improvements,
voting on ideas from their peers as
part of contests, Subject Matter
Experts take the winning ideas
and determine to fund for full
scale development
 Shift the focus of call center reps
from average handle time to first-
call resolution
22

25. The presentation was prepared for Rogers in order to address growing concerns
about the customer experience at Rogers. The analysis is transferrable to any of the
other big telecom firm in Canada.
I am a recent MBA graduate from the Rotman school of Management - Canada's
best business school by mulitple ranking agencies. I am seeking a career in strategic
change and implementation, or management consulting broadly. Please check out
my linkedin for my qualifications.
Please feel free to write me at: abhishek.sharma15@rotman.utoronto.ca
Abhishek Sharma
MBA-2015, Rotman, University of Toronto