It was almost a year ago when Rogers’ new CEO Guy Laurence spoke about his vision for the company – Rogers’ 3.0 Plan. He boldly stated, “We’ve neglected our customers, and we’ve let our legacy of growth and innovation slip. The plan I’ve laid out will significantly improve the experience for our customers and re-establish our growth by better leveraging our assets and consistently executing as One Rogers…All customer experience functions including customer care call centers, field operations, go-to-market and online channels will be brought together into one team reporting to the CEO.”
Recognizing that people have begun to rely on our smartphones as our sole source for communicating – especially when they travel to the US, which many Canadians do – this past fall, Rogers implemented a new program called ‘Roam Like Home.’ With this new program, subscribers enrolled in the ‘Share Everything’ Plans could ‘roam’ in the US for a flat $5 per day and use unlimited minutes, text and data and the charges would only occur for a ten-day period per billing cycle. So if you were in the US for a month, you would get up to 21 days a month free, then the ten-day cycle would start over for the next billing period. Recent studies show that Rogers’ customers use five times the data when traveling to the US and that more than one million customers signed up for the program in the first six months alone.
Rogers is now extending this ‘Roam Like Home’ program to over 35 European countries as well. Starting April 15, the nearly 6 million Canadians planning on visiting Europe this year can now reap the same benefits in these countries as Rogers’ subscribers can in the US – the only caveat being it will cost $10 a day rather than the $5 per day in the US. Mr. Laurence, said, “Canadians used to be afraid to use their devices when traveling – it was just too complicated and they were worried about their bills. Six months ago we fixed this with a unique technology called ROAM LIKE HOME and over a million of our customers are enrolled to use it. They are now using their phone in the U.S. just like they would at home. Given how much customers love ROAM LIKE HOME in the U.S. it made sense to expand it so now our customers can use it in over 35 European countries.”
If you are already enrolled in ‘Roam Like Home’ for the US, you do not have to do anything to use the feature in Europe. Existing ‘Share Everything’ customers can enroll by texting ‘travel’ to 222 and new ‘Share Everything’ customers are automatically enrolled, however, you may opt out at any time.