DiGi wants to show it’s a customer-centric company

DRESSED in their bright yellow T-shirts, the large gathering of “DiGizens” at a few hot spots around the city early this week could have been mistaken for a street protest. But in fact it was another of DiGi.Com Bhd’s out-ofthe-box approaches to marketing. Almost their entire workforce, including their top brass and backend staff, took to the streets to engage with their customers and the public.

On that day, DiGi celebrated an event themed Customer First Day that saw the participation of 1,500 DiGizens bringing their “We Will Win” spirit to connect and engage with customers in an Amazing Race-like challenge.

Customer First Day is part of Telenor’s global exercise to appreciate customers in 13 markets, reaching 150 million customers worldwide.

DiGi.Com Bhd chairman Sigve Brekke, who was part of the team engaging customers at Jalan Silang, Kuala Lumpur, says there were two main reasons for this campaign.

“We want to be a customer-centric company. We are taking our employees to the streets to meet customers. Most of the time it is only sales people that meet with customers. We want our back end guys to also know our customer and vice versa,” he tells StarBizWeek.

Brekke adds that DiGi embarks in engaging customers every week on a smaller scale but has so far organised two big scale events like this week’s one, to engage customers.

On the bigger picture of where DiGi is heading, Brekke says he wants the company to be “an Internet company”.

However, he concedes that it is not easy to morph into that. It entails changing the way networks are designed, prices are set and addressing the constant demands of applications and services from customers.

Brekke says that while the “customer centric” phase is used by many, only a few companies are actually good at it.

Brekke says the only way to win is to be “very focused”. He says DiGi’s efforts have been encouraging. In the first six months to June 30, DiGi enjoyed a 3% year-on-year growth of subscribers, hitting a total of 10.5 million subscribers.

The company attributed the growth in subscribers to bundled Internet usage and devices and the general take-up from its new 3G coverage.

In the first half of this year, DiGi posted an improved net profit of RM708.6mil, which was a 9.9% increase year on year.

And while its competitors are embarking on fixed broadband, DiGi is staying away from that.

“We’re not into TV, cable or fixed broadband. We’re focusing on what we’re good at, which is the mobile space. We are taking upon the Internet challenge,” Brekke says.

That said, DiGi has embarked (via a joint venture with Celcom Axiata Bhd) to build a 1,000km fibre-optic network and continue to build on that. However Brekke points out that this fixed fibre network is mainly a backhaul system to carry data and capacity more efficiently.

“Yes. We’re losing that (fixed broadband) business opportunity. That’s a business we (as DiGi) didn’t and don’t want to get into,” Brekke says.

Nevertheless, Brekke, who is also the head of Telenor Asia, says Telenor is involved in fixed and mobile telephony, broadband and data communication services for residential and business customers, as well as a broad range of wholesale services in its home country.

On the issue of pricing trends, Sigve said that he does see any dramatic drop in prices of telecommunication type services but foresees different pricing structures. “For example, some customers can only afford a daily fee and not a monthly one.”

On Telenor’s venture into Myanmar, he says the group would be taking the best practices from the six markets it operates Asia, into the Myanmar market.

Brekke notes that DiGi is currently faced with three main issues namely service quality, lack of spectrum and coverage. He says DiGi has been swapping out and modernising its network. “Congestion and drop calls have significantly improved,” he says.

Early this year, DiGi was slapped with a total of four compounds amounting to RM100,000 by the regulator due to dropped calls.

DiGi’s internal ambition is to reach less than 0.60% drop call rate by the end of this year.

Earlier, StarBiz reported that DiGi has allocated RM750mil as capital expenditure this year, of which 80% of this year’s allocation would be mainly for its network modernisation for the long-term evolution (LTE) or 4G and 3G networks.

Brekke reiterates that DiGi lacks spectrum and made no secret that is actively looking to acquire new telecommunications spectrum to sustain its growth plan.

Part of the plan could be acquiring companies that own such spectrum, such as the four companies that have the 2,300 megahertz (MHz) spectrum.

DiGi has traditionally been allocated the least amount of spectrum. Maxis Bhd and Celcom Axiata Bhd have around eight times more spectrum in the 900 MHz band.

Brekke hopes DiGi will not be disadvantaged in future when it comes to spectrum. Acknowledging that DiGi is still a little behind when it comes to coverage, Brekke says DiGi has been ramping up quite quickly.

As of June 30, 85% of DiGi’s network sites have been swapped and modernised. It has also expanded its 3G coverage to 71.6% of the population.

On competition, Brekke says Maxis has been a very good competitor, and so is Celcom. “I love competition. The market has become more competitive... that’s something we see not only in Malaysia but everywhere. Customer demand is becoming tougher.”

He expects more cooperation among operators in terms of infrastructure sharing going forward.

DiGi has been reported to be closest to clinching a deal with Packet One Networks Sdn Bhd (P1).

“We’re talking to everyone. I cannot speculate who we’re interested in cooperating with. We’re not talking to Puncak Semangat,” Brekke says.

Meanwhile, Brekke says the possibility of setting up a business trust have been discussed on its board level. However, no decision has been made on that matter yet.

“We’re still in the analysing phase. We just need to understand the model.”