Beyond price: a digital brand’s winning formula for happy customers

Whether it’s because MVNOs and digital brands genuinely deliver a better customer experience than MNOs, or whether it’s a function of customers congratulating themselves on changing to a new, lower-cost provider, the evidence is that MVNOs score higher on customer satisfaction than the operators whose networks they use.

Canadian digital brand Fizz has recorded the best NPS of the country’s MNOs, MVNOs and digital brands for the last six years, Its current NPS is 55, significantly higher than any of its competitors whose NPS is 20 or less. Over that same period it has also won the award for the best online experience provided by a telecoms operator. And this is despite the fact that the company does not offer a simple call-center option for its customers’ general queries, nor a physical retail presence, nor an app on their device to manage their services.

So, how has the company managed to build such a strong bond with its customers? There is no disguising the fact that price is the main attraction of Fizz. Its monthly price plans, ranging from C$19 to C$50 are exactly half of those offered by market leaders Rogers and Bell Canada (although they both offer considerably more data and lower prices for fixed broadband customers).

But it’s not just about price. Fizz faces strong competition from other MVNOs and digital brands with prices that are broadly competitive. Much of the attractiveness of Fizz lies in its ongoing treatment and management of existing customers who benefit from lower prices and benefits than new ones. On top of that there is the flexibility of tariffs, the ability to change plans on a monthly basis, price simplicity and transparency, and a burgeoning loyalty scheme.

Fizz is also pioneering a new GenAI-driven chatbot which, it hopes, will takes its automated customer service to the next level, improving both customer experience and efficiency.

Grabbing opportunities in Canada’s evolving telecoms landscape

Digital brands and MVNOs have been an important part of the mobile landscape for many years. But the sector has gained momentum as more countries have embraced MVNO-driven market competition and operators have begun launching their own in-house MVNOs or digital brands.

Canada represents an interesting, and unique case study for MVNOs and digital brands. In 2021 the regulator mandated the country’s three national mobile network operators – Rogers, Bell Canada and TELUS – to provide wholesale access to the country’s regional operators to allow them to offer national services.

Fizz started life in 2018 as a digital brand, using ETIYA' s BSS platform, offering services over the network of Videotron, a regional network operator offering mobile services in Quebec and Ottawa. At the core of Fizz Mobile’s business is ETIYA' s Digital BSS, which frees Fizz from the complexity of implementing its own core network, operations (OSS) and business (BSS infrastructure, instead providing these capabilities as a fully managed service.

Since 2021 Fizz has expanded its service to offer 99% population coverage by using wholesale agreements and national roaming agreements with different operators.

Canada’s mobile market today comprises three national operators and brands – Rogers, Bell Mobility, TELUS and Freedom Mobile (formerly Shaw Communications) – a handful of regional operators and digital brands (sometime referred to as flanker brands) offering services over the Rogers, Bell Mobility, TELUS, SaskTel and Videotron networks. Fizz is one of these flanker brands.

Fizz: a digital brand for new customer needs, and solving new challenges

The motivation behind setting up the Fizz brand was to help Videotron – a 60-year-old company with a solid ‘buy conservative’ reputation – attract a younger customer base.

Fizz is aimed at a digital-savvy GenZ, millennials and people who have recently arrived in Canada and who are looking to get online quickly. It offers rapid onboarding, flexibility and simplicity, allowing customers to assemble the products and services that they need. Fizz promises its customers that there are no hidden fees. Gamification is a key part of the onboarding experience, and a loyalty scheme is integral to the value proposition.

One of the key drivers for the creation of Fizz was a desire to offer a low-cost, no frills mobile service to attract a new, younger market segment but without cannibalizing the existing Videotron customer base.

Easy, quick customer onboarding has been a founding principle for Fizz. “We try to attract customers with the minimum number of clicks. Amazon’s one-click experience is a benchmark for all of us”, notes Fizz general manager Martin Gendron.

But there is a downside to getting so little information about the customer during the sign-up process. “We ask for the minimum amount of information when a customer creates an account, but this does present a challenge afterwards because when you want to try and understand your customer base and segment it you have very little information available”, accepts Gendron.

As such, the loyalty platform designed by Fizz and supplied by ETIYA, its BSS vendor is extremely important for helping the service provider learn more about its customers. Gamification is built into the loyalty platform, consistent with Fizz’s strategy of trying to secure younger customers. “First, we want customers to subscribe, then we can find ways of getting customers to fill out their profile, for example by offering them additional data for free. Another key principle is that the longer customers have been with Fizz, and are signed up to the loyalty program, the more discounts from the rewards program”.

“The longer you stay the more benefits you get, the less you pay. So, if you've been with Fizz for years you’re going to pay less than me as a new customer, which is often the opposite of how it works with mobile operators,” says Gendron.

Another of the principles guiding Fizz is that inevitably there will be customer complaints, and things that need fixing with customer-facing and back-end systems, but this can actually help Fizz to improve if it acts on, and eliminates the issue that gave rise to the complaint.

“We're fighting against huge players with smaller means and way smaller teams. I believe we're more agile than they are and we try to innovate and then what’s obviously key is being able to deliver quality rapidly and with the assistance of your partners.”

Whether or not a Fizz customer has signed up to its loyalty scheme has a huge impact on their propensity to churn. Fizz’s yearly churn for customers who have unlocked at least one bonus is half the churn rate for its other customers.

The new GenAI-enabled chatbot – a smart digital CSR team member

For most operators a chatbot represents one of the many different channels that customers can use to contact them. But for Fizz, it represents the only route to resolving ongoing customer service issues. As AI is opening up new opportunities in customer service operations, Fizz is aiming to deploy more AI-powered support tools to improve speed and efficiency in case resolutions, and thus elevate customer satisfaction. Although its NPS score is already higher than its competitors’, it admits that there is room for improvement. As a first step, a smart chatbot, that goes beyond the basic rule-based responses is already in place.

“We’ve been offering a chatbot service for four years, “says Gendron.” But in some cases the rules-based chatbot was unable to solve the customer enquiry; “it sometimes took a long time for someone to call you back”. Big strides have been made to improve responsiveness in recent years and now a Fizz customer service agent will pick up a query from the rule-based chatbot in minutes. “The rules-based chatbot has two tries at providing a satisfactory answer and then the chat is handed over to a human.”

In recent months Fizz has been working with ETIYA to introduce a new chatbot. The new, RAG-enabled chatbot was launched in March 2025. It is GenAI based, it can handle more complex queries than the existing rules-based version and maintains context in conversations. It is able to form human-like sentences, and deliver natural interactions based on the FAQ page contents.

“We’re being very cautious about introducing the new chatbot. You will continue to be answered by a bot first and, so far, 85% of queries are still answered by the bot. But customer satisfaction has already improved tremendously.”

“We’re monitoring whatever the GenAI is providing as an answer.” to verify its accuracy and the quality of responses. Fizz plans to fully launch the new chatbot at the start of 2026. The chatbot will guide users through all phases of the customer journey, from enquiring about the service to signing up and then managing the relationship during the duration of a subscription.