SHELDON KEENS-DOUGLAS

Thank you for granting this interview even in light of your hectic schedule. What has Cable & Wireless been up to lately in terms of improving and enhancing products and services to customers?

The Internet product is in transition and the company is literally preparing itself to offer its customers an unbeatable position. We want our customers to find themselves in a position where the value, the service that they get from the Internet wire is without question the best available.
Several things have prompted that, one being, the company meaning Cable & Wireless global has taken on a mission to reduce what we call the digital divide and the digital divide is literally the access to the Internet from first world countries to developing countries.
That digital divide is how much of a gap, how difficult it is for a child in a developing country to get the tools necessary for him/her to become part of the digital marketplace, in other words to cross the gap.
We find that we have been reducing this gap significantly around the world and Grenada is no exception so we have that as an overriding mandate as well and this is evident just looking at the progression of the phone book as they appear each year.
 The phone book has become one of our biggest communication tools in the sense of communicating our overall message to the customer and last year’s phone book was connecting Grenada to a brighter future and depicted the CEO mentoring and guiding young people into how to use the X-net, how to use the computer and harness it for their own benefit and for a brighter future.
This set the way for the new directory which depicts the use of the computer in the secondary school. We are showing that you have your foundation in computer and now the older children are utilizing it for their studies, their homework, their projects and their SBA’s so these people are getting education now.
That highlights the broad overreaching mission of the company and where we are going as it relates to internet.  Why internet has has taken on such a significant role as opposed to b-mobile which is always there? There is always a lot going on for b-mobile. There are always a lot of deals, specials, so b-mobile has always had hype going on whereas X-net and broad band services are kind of quieter products that are just plugging away.
They are all great tools for customers but do not have the same hype and selling ability as b-mobile phone service and of course there is not much competition in that area of the marketplace as yet so again there is no need for this constant reminding of the customers of the values of X-net and so as yet.
However as we know, competition comes and goes and so we do anticipate that there will be competition in that space in the very near future. So what are we doing? We are preparing our customers for the fact that in six to eight months, as you know, internet service is going to become so fast and so affordable that everybody is going to be able to get on this new way.
So we have the X-net at schools project which is piloted at the Grenville Secondary School but we’ve signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Education and the Government of Grenada to provide free internet access for all primary and secondary school students.
That was our crowning achievement for the year in terms of what we’ve been working towards, bridging this digital divide.
Prior to that we started on a smaller scale providing what was the internet market unit a sort of smaller service that allows you limited browsing on the internet which we’ve been giving to primary school students in need.
The principals identify a few students whose parents may not be able to afford for them the ability to get online and we supply those persons with mark unit and try to get them online.
It is a project on which the momentum is building and by next week it will become even more profound because we’re really getting set to roll the big ball now. We’ve been just rolling out a small ball ahead of time and the big ball is going to get rolling next week and our internet customers are going to be in for yet another surprise addition to their service.
Customers can only expect bigger and faster internet experiences as we go forward.

As much as you are giving businesspeople the tools to enhance their businesses you are giving the younger ones as well what is necessary to prepare them for the future.

Correct. The business arm of it is of course very important. Our business customers come more through our corporate sales at our business solutions centre at Excel Plaza headed by Jackie Christie. She and her team would have personalized accounts services for nearly all of the major businesses in Grenada in terms of customizing and tailor making solutions according to what they need for their business whether it’s a small business enterprise or a medium business account or a premier account which refer to the bigger hotels and companies that require large switch boards and internet solutions. Places too like SGU which requires its own wireless networks.
More and more we are creating wireless solutions because that’s the new trend nowadays. So again we are developing our wi-max and wi-fi solutions and we have some testing right now. We have the hot spots at the airport and various places where people have had the luxury of getting online free of cost and we have some of the hotels that have some personalized web gardens as we call them.
So there is a lot of testing going on in the wireless marketplace and I think we are definitely going to be ready on that front as well.
As you know we’ve been steadily increasing the level. One twenty-eight was the basic package at the beginning of the year then it double to 256, we upgrade 22 of our exchanges across Grenada and Carriacou then it doubled again to 512 and I don’t know where next we will leap but it’s only going up faster and the prices are coming down.
It was $120.00 then it was $99.00 now it’s $79.00 so the customer is benefiting all around because they are getting automatic upgrades. As fast as the system is tested and in place we automatically upgrade the customer with the newest speed available and they get automatic adjustments in their prices as well.

How have customers been responding to these moves?

Customers have really responded well especially in the X-net. It is not that we don’t do things all the time for customers but this is one of the times when the company has been more proactive than others in the sense that we didn’t really wait for customers to say that they wanted faster speeds. We just anticipate where the broad band services are going in some of the first world countries and we are making sure that Grenadians don’t get left behind.
Customers are coming from the UK where they are operating at speeds of 3-4 megs. When they come down here they should find out that there is no difference in service available here and so certainly in Grenada, the Eastern Caribbean and sister companies to the north of us we want to put stuff in place so that we will be ready for when these customers come in to visit us.

So this enhances the tourism product as well.

Certainly, customers go where they feel comfortable and these days there are so many internet businesses, so much web based magazines and people working from around the globe. If they can be assured that when they come to Grenada there is no difference in service available and they can easily connect to their businesses places wirelessly, get on to their secure networks and work in their offices from here they will more likely feel much more comfortable coming here for vacations/business trips.

There is also a new tourism trend in the development of the condominium type projects.

Correct, you can see that more and more business persons are not just taking holidays anymore but they are making investments in holiday destinations.
When they have a time share they are coming here for three or four weeks every year, they will be living here for a short period of time and so you anticipate that they will need all the services that they are accustomed to whereas if you are on holiday you will put up with the fact that you are out of communication. If you are going to be here every year for a certain period one would expect that we will be able to put things in place for their customers, friends, family to contact them and for them to continue to conduct business and for them to stay in their respective homes and monitor their investment in Grenada. So there will be all this e- business and commerce taking place across the network.

You are doing a lot for the customer in terms of upgrading their services but you have also been doing a lot of things as a corporate citizen.

Cable & Wireless remains our only local and only full service telephone/telecommunications company so we not only have a corporate policy of giving back but really and truly we have an obligation to do so because we form part of the community of all the constituents across the tri-island state. Every Grenadian, Carriacouan and Petite Martiniquan has a stake in this company and I think that’s what makes us special and that’s why customers have always stayed with us even during our transition periods where we are making changes and improving our services, trying to be better.
So it’s important that the things that are important; customers and communities that we connect become important to us and so that’s why for a long time this company has been unrivalled, unmatched in its corporate contribution to the areas of education, sports, culture and more particularly now in youth development projects.
So we work quite closely with the Ministry of Youth. Recently we’ve partnered with the job center in Grenada to produce job ready workshops. We’ve had one in St. George’s, one in Carriacou. We brought in professionals to talk to the youngsters about harnessing the power of the internet, looking for careers, making their own careers in limited resources markets and so forth.
 So that’s one area. Of course we have our Cable& Wireless Scholarship Program which is now in its 14th or 15th year and with 150 students, 14 per year having gone through that program getting full assistance, tuition, books, uniforms from primary school to secondary through tertiary if they so desire. Another fantastic opportunity for young persons across the nation to benefit and it is across the nation. There are students from Carriacou, Petite Martinique benefiting as well and this year we are very proud to say that we have added a new dimension to the program where we’ve found that financial assistance is not enough.
What the kids are really looking for are role models, persons that they can talk to.  Maybe they don’t have that in the home environment, maybe their parents don’t have the time and resources to give them this kind of tutoring mentorship and so we’ve started what is similar to a big brother big sister program in the company where every member of the scholarship program is now assigned a mentor in the company.
Quite a lot of our managers, supervisors and line staff, everybody volunteered to become mentors and we had a gentleman fly in from Jamaica who gave us a three day seminar on mentorship so that we had some basic ground training.
We also have a gentleman who has joined our human resource department specifically to help with the mentorship program. It shows that we are not just saying that we’re going to do that, the company is investing, putting resources in place to make sure that the program is run and does so properly.
We have had a meeting with the parents of the children so that they could meet the mentors because if the parents are not supportive of the program we are not going to get very far in terms of mentoring these children so you want to make sure that the parents of the children agree, they like the mentors, they feel comfortable sending their children with these individuals.
It is a life time commitment that we are making to those young persons and their mentoring needs will change over time.
Definitely, we’ve done so much in terms of that type of thing and what is different about our company now is that we are taking a lot more time to let persons know what we have been doing.
Whereas in the past we have always been doing things and nobody knows we have never been in the business of promoting ourselves but time has changed and the people want to know what’s happening with the company, they want to see what we’re doing and things like that.

What is your comfort level with regards to the services for which you are competed with in terms of your confidence in the standard of your products and services and your competitiveness?

I think that we are 100% confident in our products and as I said before competitors come and go. Cable & Wireless has bee operating in the Caribbean for more than 120 years. We have competition here that has been here 3 years, 4 years so the time for proving themselves is still upon them.
New persons come in and they bring with them a certain energy and a certain newness that people rush for especially if they are not getting what they ought to have been getting. We certainly are much more prepared now. We’ve held many customer focused sessions, surveys not only of our customers but of our employees.
The company has also in the background been engaged in a very comprehensive employee engagement program so now we are not so much concerned again as to what’s happening out there but we are concerned about what’s happening in here and we want to make sure our employees feel like they are working at the best company, that this is a company that listens to them because if they feel that way they become engaged with the company and in turn they engage our customers.
So we are really looking at a holistic approach in terms of enhancing the customer experience both from the outside and by improving our products and services. The company has become much more interactive with the customer, much more customer focused. We are all about enhancing the customer’s experience and that includes the experience that they have in our stores so you would see that we are completely renovating all our stores including adding Bruce Street Complex in the Esplanade. This is our new flagship store in St. George’s.
People are still talking about the Carriacou store which has made such an impact on the lives of Carriacouans. Never before has a company so outwardly manifested their appreciation for customers in the sense of literally taking everything that’s important to Carriacou, their heritage, their culture and putting it in huge display form across the store and I think it really meant a lot to the people of Carriacou and Petite Martinique to see a store that is truly theirs and not just a satellite of the company in Grenada.
That has energized the staff that work there, the people that come there and it can only augur well for the relationships that we have in Carriacou with the Regatta Committee, the Maroon Festival all the various things that we support in Carriacou and Petite Martinique.
So we’ve enhanced the customer experience at the store level and the product level in terms of having the number one mobile network in Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique which we can say unequivocally.
We’ve made leaps and bounds and strides after Ivan. Not only were we the only network to withstand hurricane Ivan but after Ivan putting things in place, making sure that the network became more robust; upgrading our exchanges, our coverage our handsets. We literally have introduced the latest handsets into the marketplace, the Blackberry smart phone family.
In the last three months we have had about four of the latest Blackberry’s on the market, the Pearl, the Huron, the Curve and already the White Pearl is here and if I am not mistaken the Amazon is next. They are coming out at a remarkable pace and our competitor is still on probably the first Pearl. Things are moving and the company is moving very swiftly.
We have also enhanced the experience of the fixed line customer. For years they have been saying they would like to get back on the Plan-A after the hurricane and while the company has always listened to the customers now we are making sure that we are doing what they really want. So the cheap chat came back giving everybody a chance to go back unto the Plan-A.
In every one of our products we have made complete turn-around, strides to ensure that our customers are protected and that they are getting the best value for their money.
Our customers are not expecting anything because they are getting it right now and we are positioned to continue to be the leading telecommunications company in this country.

So the picture in the crystal ball looks good.

The picture in the crystal ball looks good because never before has so much attention been given to this region.
Our most senior executive now resides in Barbados so no longer are we being managed remotely from London. The company has literally centered itself into the areas that are running our business so the length of command is so short now that we are all functioning as one unit across the region.
I think this only augurs well for the customer and it is going to get better, there is so much more coming in the pipeline and our customers need to start thinking big because that’s what we’re doing here at Cable & Wireless.  It is a great time to be in the company we are making a lot of strides and doing many new things.
Things will always come and go but at the end of the day it is whether you are getting the service that you are paying for, whether you are happy with that service, whether it’s a reliable service where you can find someone to help you with a problem in a time of emergency.
That’s where the competitors fail because they don’t have the support structures in place to help their customers should something go wrong.