Under its new owners, Mississauga, Ont.-based Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) provider Axsit (pronounced “access it”) is already meeting Commissioner of Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS) standards, and will have no trouble continuing to do so, according to the company’s new CEO.
After an eventful eight months that included a high-profile service breach in July, followed by its sale to Calgary-based telecommunications services provider (and CCTS member) WiMacTel last week, Axsit customers can expect reliable service from now on, in every sense of the word, WiMacTel President and CEO James MacKenzie tells ITBusiness.ca.
“We don’t enter an acquistion unless we feel that we can be a major player in the market,” he says. “We look forward to serving Axsit customers the same way that we’ve served our large telephone companies over the years, successfully so.”
In its current form, WiMacTel has been providing a variety of telecommunications services, including operator, emergency call, billing, multilingual, telecom repair, and technical field services to telecommunications and hospitality companies since 2010. It currently has more than 1,400 clients across Canada and the U.S., according to its website, but the Axsit acquisition represents its first entry into the VoIP market.
“Over the past number of years we’ve looked for opportunities to leverage our network, infrastructure, and technology into new services and products,” MacKenzie says. “And so we’ve been looking for an opportunity to move into the VoIP space, because it leverages everything else we do, which is already carrier-grade.”
Because of the traffic volume its services consume, WiMacTel also able to secure excellent long-distance rates, MacKenzie says, which it often sells to other telecom providers, making an entry into the VoIP space a natural step.
The company’s game plan for winning over Axsit’s jilted customers is twofold: resolve whatever problems subscribers are still experiencing, and offer high-quality service at the type of value its business clients are used to receiving.
For example, since WiMacTel purchased Axsit, all customer service has been run from the parent company’s call centre in Calgary.
“In your last article you indicated a one-man show, but on day one we were providing seven by 24 customer service for Axsit,” MacKenzie says. “Meaning that if an existing Axsit customer calls because they have an issue, we pick up the phone. No voicemail, no, ‘send us an e-mail’ – a real-life body answers the phone.”
In a previous interview, CCTS commissioner Howard Maker told ITBusiness.ca he believes WiMacTel will be able to deliver the level of service it promises.
MacKenzie admits that while one of WiMacTel’s key investments has always been customer service, the company does not have a solid web strategy in place, which he says may partly account for its poor Google reviews.
“Since 2010, we have processed well over 15 million payphone, collect, and credit card calls… and any complaints that we have received, we’ve taken care of right away,” he says. “We have an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, in both Canada and the U.S.
“But from a social media perspective, we haven’t made a large investment,” he continues. “Now that we’re moving into a true consumer space, we’ll be spending a lot more time making sure that we have a real solid web strategy in place.”