In September 2007 we, at Utopia Image, started to put together a team that was going to be supporting our technical support division for Videotron.  Our deployment plan was given to us by Videotron and required us to ramp up a certain number of agents by the end of October. Every technical support agent that was hired needed to follow a seven week training in which they had to pass all 4 exams before they could start working in a production environment and take customer calls. Failure to pass the exams meant they had to be let go. Therefore, it was important that our trainers were qualified and our management staff had the ability to hire great individuals in order to make sure that most of our hired agents would make it through. Initially, it wasn’t the case! Many agents were failing exams and the quality of some of the ones who were succeeding wasn’t great. We experienced many problems structuring our technical support division and training of our future technical support agents. The main reason was due to the lack of experience our team had in that field.  In October 2007, I received a visit from the general manager of Videotron telling me that if we weren’t going to be able to effectively structure our service within a week, our partnership was going to end.

During the prior 12 months, I worked very hard on building my credibility with many stakeholders at Videotron. Throughout that time, I was extremely transparent with my goals and my strategies with them. I wanted them to truly understand that my objective was to make them succeed in their respective roles at Videotron. During the months we worked together, we were able to establish a very strong relationship, which was much more than just a business relationship. Doing so, was the key for our early success! Things got really hard in October 2007 and if I wouldn’t have been able to establish that initial relationship, I would have never had the second chance I got in October. Many people within Videotron wanted us to succeed because they really got to know me personally and truly understood my values. They knew that my objective was to make sure everyone wins! They worked really hard in helping us structure our technical support department and together we succeeded. Today, almost three years later, we’ve become one of their most performing and reliable partner in helping them increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty!

I cannot stress enough the importance of establishing a strong and honest relationship with your customers. In every business, there will be good and bad times and we as entrepreneurs need to make sure our customers enjoy the good times with us and help us during the bad times. That is how I think we can build strong partnerships and successful companies.

To the whole Videotron team: Thank you!

Anthony.