When customers click, Carnival Internet gets paid

Carnival Internet provides modern, ultra-reliable and ultra-fast full fibre broadband perfect for busy homes. Its strategy of using tech to orchestrate exceptional customer experiences from a lean operational base has propelled it to top spot in Bangladesh’s fibre market. And now it’s replicating this approach in the UK.

“Automation is our mantra,” said Jaki Chowdhury, CEO of Dotlines, Carnival Internet’s parent company. “Our proprietary CRM, Catena, and supporting tech stack enables a contact centre team of just 31 to support three million customers in Bangladesh, and we’re building something similar here in the UK.”

When Carnival needed a partner to handle one-off and recurring payments for the new operation, GoCardless quickly rose to the top of the company’s list.

“We compared banks and various PSPs, but their functionality, the quality of their APIs and automation capabilities couldn’t match GoCardless for the kind of zero-touch operation we need,” said Jaki.

“Full click” customer journey

Carnival’s UK customers can self-serve their entire journey, which means convenience for them and lower costs for Carnival. From onboarding to account management, GoCardless is a key player in this “full click” customer experience.

“GoCardless is fully integrated with our systems and it has the widest range of integrations with banks’ APIs,” said Jaki. “That means customers never need to call us to place orders or manage their account, and our payment journey can seamlessly switch between Carnival and banking apps as needed. This is exactly the experience that our younger, digitally-savvy demographic expects.”

Proactively updating customers on billing or related issues is also key to the Carnival customer experience. And GoCardless has it covered here, too.

“GoCardless sends automated, Carnival-branded notifications when payments are due, when they’re successful; or when they’ve failed, with reasons and recommended next steps,” said Jaki. “This transparency keeps customers informed and dramatically lightens our service burden. It’s just another headache that GoCardless takes away from us.”

Fast and secure payments with Pay by Bank

Carnival uses Pay by Bank from GoCardless to take a one-off upfront payment from new customers, to cover the cost of their new router and their first month’s internet.

“Collecting that instant payment reduces our risk when providing services before a customer’s first monthly bill is due,” said Jaki. “Payment details are pre-populated for customers to authorise in their banking app, so it’s a super slick experience. And it all takes place in the same GoCardless payment flow as the Direct Debit sign up.”

Authenticating payments in customers’ banking-apps also provides added security.

“Anybody could have a random credit or debit card, but with Pay by Bank we can be more sure that customers are who they say they are,” said Jaki. “That saves us £5 to £20 per customer on the cost of a credit check.”

GoCardless x Catena

Dotlines has been so impressed by GoCardless that it’s now a feature of the commercialised version of Catena sold to other ISPs.

“GoCardless is fully integrated with Catena and ready to go for our B2B customers,” said Jaki. “They just have to switch it on to experience all the automation and customer communication benefits that Carnival itself enjoys. No coding required.”

Partners in progress

Carnival’s product lines and services continue to evolve and so does its partnership with GoCardless.

“We’ve got a packed pipeline of new products on the way, including mid-contract purchasing of additional mesh Wi-Fi routers and a VPN service, and we’ll be turning to GoCardless to enable these new, eCommerce-like buying journeys,” said Jaki.

“Simply because, from the reliable and flexible platform through to having a named Customer Success Manager on the support side, our trust in GoCardless runs extremely deep.”