As Cable and Wireless moves more aggressively into providing ICT services to business and Government in Barbados, Minister with responsibility for Telecommunications, Senator Darcy Boyce, has reminded the company of some of the key requirements that underpin success.
Speaking at the company???s brand launch last Wednesday evening, Senator Boyce stated: ???This launch will not make your brand. Your brand will be made when your customers believe in your service. For that to happen, your customers must have a continuously truly happy experience of that service.???
The Government Minister said that Barbados wanted a telecommunications backbone that was the most modern infrastructure that the merged entity of LIME and FLOW could provide. ???What I do not want is a retrograde step in the modernity of our telecommunications backbone,??? he emphasised.
He said that the telecommunications backbone should be fast, reliable and secure, since these were critical attributes if an information technology system was to realise maximum results.?????If the telecommunications infrastructure is slow, unreliable and insecure, then users will be faced with a great deal of uncertainty and fear, along with exasperation in waiting on the infrastructure to respond,??? he cautioned.
Senator Boyce also stressed the importance of excellent customer service. ???We do not expect perfection in any infrastructure system. What we do expect, however, and what it is right for us to expect, is that prompt, efficient and effective service will be forthcoming whenever problems develop in the system.???
Part of the brand attribute that Cable and Wireless must therefore continue to cultivate, he advised, must be one of high and always improving levels of service.??The Minister also addressed the matter of broadband, noting that a thrust in ICT for business and Government could not sensibly be discussed unless this matter was dealt with.
???Our country must have a broadband soon that is fast, both for download and upload; that broadband must be as fast as that available anywhere else in the world.?????He told the telecommunications company that its broadband offering must be of reliable and consistent quality, and all customers should be able to get a category of broadband that was suitable for them, and at rates appropriate to the quality of service they got.
Senator Boyce concluded: ???The issues I have raised are the components that establish [quality] service, that deliver the brand attributes and that make the brand believable. I look forward to your achieving these goals before I have them legislated.???
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