Forging a user-ISP synergy

Sponsored by Nestle (Bangladesh), a total of hundred clients, equally divided between Proshikanet's prepaid and postpaid customers participated at the event. "We invited our best customers for the convention," said Hasnayen Mutakabbir Milton, business promotion manager of Proshika Computers Systems (PCS)'s defining how best customers meant clients who made the most usage of net-minutes from Proshikanet.

"For the first time, such a user-end convention has been arranged by any local ISP," informed Milton, who also continued on how the main motto of the convention was to acquire the user-reflex on Proshinet's service and gather information on the areas that need to be maintained or upgraded. "For us here at PCS, quality is the first thing that we look forward to deliver in our service," he added. PCS provides broadband and dialup internet service under the name, Proshikanet and provides a 24-hour tele-customer service for all customers.

President of PCS Kazi Faruq Ahmed chaired the event along with CEO, Kazi Rubayat Ahmed and other executive and training officials. The company also invited its local dealers for equipments used by PCS including Toss International Ltd., the only authorised local distributor of PCcillin anti-virus, Sonar International Ltd. and the company which makes home-service available for Proshikanet clients. "Dealers were brought in for the users to strengthen their trust on PCS," Milton said. PCS believes that dealers stand as their faces in the industry, where the primary level interactions between the users take place. At present 460 dealer outlets exist for PCS prepaid cards.

According to PCS, local internet users are very price-sensitive. "And you cannot blame them, as most of them are students," the manager added. This 'cost-sensitivity' issue has created a competitive market for both ends and such an environment may put smaller ISPs out of business. PCS is aware that after sales service plays a major role in the ISP business.

In addition to Proshikanet, PCS also branches into additional seven customer care departments, which include corporate services, web-hosting, software development, job portal, training, support and integration. 'Proshika Shobdo', a software to check on Bangla words, and 'Accpro' accounting software are already available in the market. The latest venture of PCS is the job-portal www.jobsbazar.com, which has been customised in different ways to meet most of features necessary for a job seeker.

The training segment of the company has already provided corporate training to leading institutions including Janata Bank, Dhaka Bank, Prime Bank, United Nations Information Center, and many others. Training segments include Visual C++, Oracle products, HTML, Perl, Linux, Unix, CISCO and many more. "We usually choose trainers from a pool of experienced professionals from the existing industry, which gives the trainee a practical orientation along with the required theoretical information," added the program manager.

The user-end convention event was expected to bring out the best that a client-based company has to offer. In this way, both the customer and the service provider were able to interact with each other and share ideas and views. After the first one, PCS is now decided on organising such events in a quarterly fashion each year.