Exciting changes to our brand and customer experience

[Dave_M]

Note: Please clear your cache to optimize your experience on our portals.

Hey Community,

We’ve got some exciting news to share with you!

As you may have noticed already (sorry – hard to hide this one :)) we’ve updated our look! From a new logo, new colours, to fresh, fun illustrations- we got a makeover. Why? Because, we’ve been on a journey since 2015, and we’ve learned a LOT along the way. Our recent research, suggested our brand identity didn’t accurately reflect our mission: Public Mobile is the wireless company with you in mind. We didn’t name ourselves Public Mobile by accident after all. Everything we do – from offering the most affordable phone plans in Canada on the largest network, to rewards that save you even more, to this online community run by passionate customers is with you in mind.

And so, this new design truly embodies the personal, unique, simple and community first approach that Public Mobile stands for.  We hope you like the changes as much as we do. But that’s not all, beyond the makeover, we’ve also been hard at work working on some new initiatives that we think you’ll be pretty stoked for and are a long time in the making:

1.     New ticketing resolution process – yes you read that right, it’s coming! More details to come this week (as this in itself warrants its own full Community post) but essentially, this process will make it faster + easier to track, manage, and resolve issues when submitting a ticket to our online Moderator team.

2.   System improvements  - over the coming weeks, we’re excited to bring through a variety of system improvements. First up is an improvement to our latency and reliability of our web portals, meaning faster loading speeds in Self-Serve and fewer occasions of activation issues related to timing out. We’re also doing some fat trimming and are saying goodbye to our build your own plan calculator. While we love the flexibility of our plan calculator, the tradeoff is the ability to reduce pressure on our systems, help the general upkeep of our portals, and simplify the plan purchasing experience for customers. We know some plans can only be accessed via the plan calculator today, we plan (pun intended ;)) to bring some of those options  back in the near future! Lastly, as you're likely aware, we transitioned to refer-a-friend codes a few weeks ago to better protect your privacy and make referring easy 🙂

We can’t wait to hear what you think about all this goodness and are thrilled to deliver initiatives like #1 and #2 to simplify and improve the customer experience. We know we have more to tackle and are absolutely committed to continuing to make wireless simple, uncomplicated and accessible to all Canadians. Why? Because you’re the public, we’re for you.

Sincerely,

Dave

[makkahn28]

Hi. @Dave_M , I do admit that the new Changes looks exceptionally awesome.

BUT, The plan section, I think the Build your plans should NOT be Axed, because if PPL want the 90 Day plans, the current setup is not the greatest

[jor123]

The new online ticketing and system and self serve improvements should be awesome! 

The new branding is different for sure. What do you guys think of the logo? 

[mimmo]

@stonechucker  im pretty sure Canada wide and provincial costed the same in plan builder on 3g plans can't remember full lte. 

Also iirc  picking 3 item was always cheaper than 2. And pre-made plans were cheaper than plan builder aswell. 

If the focus has been on pre-built what's the point of a almost hidden feature, thaT few used since the advent of pre-made.

Yes 90 day plans but 30 day pre-built were cheaper. Yes full lte, but I'm guessing there has not been much purchases compared to 3g. Plus full lte is now a reason to upgrade to Koodo. 

[GinYVR]

@PoogzleySeems to responding in English just fine for me

[wildstreak73]

This new look is AWESOME! Great job there designers.

[geopublic]

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@XionBunny wrote:

Wow, I'm really loving this new design, it feels more professional, the other felt basic, it's like night and day. I'm feeling hopeful for the future.

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Looks like the selfserve site is down, or is it just me? 

Edit: Works with Chrome but not with  Edge.

[Poogzley]

SIMon seems to be broken since the site update. He is responding in French even when viewing the Public Mobile website in English.

[dabr]

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@KamWest wrote:

Don't know about you guys but the new public logo is flawed.

How many people see two L 's in the logo?

Now match that with the double II and you have a bloody mess.

I like the new 6 month promo though so you could use a pink Paisley logo and I'd still stick around.

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Two L's?  I see two I's? 

[XionBunny]

Wow, I'm really loving this new design, it feels more professional, the other felt basic, it's like night and day. I'm feeling hopeful for the future.

[stonechucker]

I’m with @srlawren  and @will13am and @pm-smayer97, losing the plan builder is the worst.

Sure, I’m on the Fall Promo, and will most likely not require a province wide selection from this carrier, as if it continues to degrade, I will leave for better pastures when they appear.

I rarely call outside Ontario, I live and work in Ontario, and I call only locally when I’ve traveled to Quebec and Halifax prior to coming to Public Mobile.  Why should I pay for Canada Wide when I don’t require it?  I came here, and I recommended subscribers here for the options in the plan builder.  You’re closing what has brought so many here.  Also too bad that when you last changed the plan builder prices, there was no long any price savings on 90-day plans.  Everyone knows, you buy in bilk, stuff is cheaper than buying the same in single packages.

The logo.. it’s ugly, and why 3 different fonts in the forum logo, and a different logo on the homepage?  pM isn’t known for consistency, marketing proves that over and over and over again.

Koodo had aweful pink, yello, and blue colour a while back, their site looks a lot better after their rebrand... you should have taken the hint about their old bad design.  

[mimmo]

I don't see it either, time to ask Simon.

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@wetcoaster wrote:

Is it just me or is the knowledge base missing on the mobile version? (Haven't had a chance to look at the desktop version yet)

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[wetcoaster]

Is it just me or is the knowledge base missing on the mobile version? (Haven't had a chance to look at the desktop version yet)

[geopublic]

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@mimmo wrote:

I don't mind losing the plan builder. Most pre-made plans were cheaper than plan builder. It removed the 90 day plans which caused issues even if it was explained, and there were no real 90 day benefits.

LTE has not been promoed for a long time.

It probably required 2 entries one for selfserve and one for public site, source of errors

As for cpu use I recall it would take several seconds to load price changes every time you clicked a different option. 

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Please change the background colour to white. What is this colour anyway,  pale salmon? 

[mimmo]

I don't mind losing the plan builder. Most pre-made plans were cheaper than plan builder. It removed the 90 day plans which caused issues even if it was explained, and there were no real 90 day benefits.

LTE has not been promoed for a long time.

It probably required 2 entries one for selfserve and one for public site, source of errors

As for cpu use I recall it would take several seconds to load price changes every time you clicked a different option. 

[computergeek541]

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@daredogg wrote:

Update to the logo is bland and unoriginal. Being a graphic artist, the colours just don't do it for me. Should of at least stuck to the orange we've all grown accustomed to. Can we also do a little lighter on the beige background? Harder to see the orange links like @stonechucker already mentioned.

Here I come out of the woodwork, and my first post is a complaint!

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I'm not a fan of the new colors, but am surprised that a change wasn't done sooner. At least to me, orange made it look to me as if Public Mobile were linked to Freedom Mobile on some way.

[computergeek541]

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@tonyottawa wrote:

PublicMobile is too long. Now they make it shorter to Public , so everybody can remember their name

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That works if everyone knows who the company is.  I realize that Public Mobile is not changing the official brand name but just saying "PUBLIC" and using that as the brand is missing what they do/what they sell.

[KamWest]

Don't know about you guys but the new public logo is flawed.

How many people see two L 's in the logo?

Now match that with the double II and you have a bloody mess.

I like the new 6 month promo though so you could use a pink Paisley logo and I'd still stick around.

[pm-smayer97]

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@srlawren wrote:

@Dave_M I like the fresh coat of paint and I'm extremely excited about the ticketting system (though, also trepidatious until I actually see it live).

However, why the removal of the plan builder?  Can you please provide more info on exactly what problems this was causing?  I'm sure that in recent history, the ready-made/promo plans have been very popular, but is there not still a non-trivial percentage of the userbase that currently has a pick-and-pay plan?  I think that for a lot of people, that's one of the great things about PM, so that they can pay for exactly the services they really need.  I'd love to hear more about what the challenges are and what the advantage is to removing the plan builder.  Are existing pick-and-pay customer plans grandfathered indefinitely?  If so, can you really gain any operational efficiencies while maintaining that backward compatibility?  Could we maybe get a developer's blog entry on this?  cc: @Alan_K 

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All changes are reasonable, except removing the plan builder. A LOT is lost there (I know SOME things are coming back but what and when)...

No LTE, no $20 unlimted calling, and many other useful combinations.

Sure, it needed some simplication but this?

Hammer, meet thumbtack...  😕

[will13am]

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@srlawren wrote:

@Dave_M I like the fresh coat of paint and I'm extremely excited about the ticketting system (though, also trepidatious until I actually see it live).

However, why the removal of the plan builder?  Can you please provide more info on exactly what problems this was causing?  I'm sure that in recent history, the ready-made/promo plans have been very popular, but is there not still a non-trivial percentage of the userbase that currently has a pick-and-pay plan?  I think that for a lot of people, that's one of the great things about PM, so that they can pay for exactly the services they really need.  I'd love to hear more about what the challenges are and what the advantage is to removing the plan builder.  Are existing pick-and-pay customer plans grandfathered indefinitely?  If so, can you really gain any operational efficiencies while maintaining that backward compatibility?  Could we maybe get a developer's blog entry on this?  cc: @Alan_K 

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+1,000,000!  If removing plan options for customers is the way to make the portal run faster, I would tolerate the slower speed for more plan options.  I will generally agree to more plan options as this makes the service appealing to a larger customer base.  This is a step in the backward direction.  

[daredogg]

Update to the logo is bland and unoriginal. Being a graphic artist, the colours just don't do it for me. Should of at least stuck to the orange we've all grown accustomed to. Can we also do a little lighter on the beige background? Harder to see the orange links like @stonechucker already mentioned.

Here I come out of the woodwork, and my first post is a complaint!

[tonyottawa]

PublicMobile is too long. Now they make it shorter to Public , so everybody can remember their name

[srlawren]

@Dave_M I like the fresh coat of paint and I'm extremely excited about the ticketting system (though, also trepidatious until I actually see it live).

However, why the removal of the plan builder?  Can you please provide more info on exactly what problems this was causing?  I'm sure that in recent history, the ready-made/promo plans have been very popular, but is there not still a non-trivial percentage of the userbase that currently has a pick-and-pay plan?  I think that for a lot of people, that's one of the great things about PM, so that they can pay for exactly the services they really need.  I'd love to hear more about what the challenges are and what the advantage is to removing the plan builder.  Are existing pick-and-pay customer plans grandfathered indefinitely?  If so, can you really gain any operational efficiencies while maintaining that backward compatibility?  Could we maybe get a developer's blog entry on this?  cc: @Alan_K 

[stonechucker]

Hyperlinks in posts should be darker.  The ‘orange’ is see is very light, and not very different in contrat from the background (what colour is the the background?

Im still going to advocate for accessibility around here, contrast is better for those with vision issues, as the harder to read something, the harder to fully understand quickly what is be read.

[Poogzley]

I noticed first 😜

https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Discussions/Public-Mobile-website-has-a-new-look-and-...

[computergeek541]

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@savvy wrote:

@computergeek541 

I see it isn't just me. Please say these are just temporary regressions...

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Upon further examination, they are there but only in desktop view. The mobile site is missing reply, quote, and solution buttons.

[savvy]

@computergeek541 

I see it isn't just me. Please say these are just temporary regressions...

[computergeek541]

 On the mobile site:

No way to reply to a specific post? No way to quote? Solution button missing?

Guys, what have you done?

(this was fixed shortly after)

[popping]

Looking forward for the faster self-serve portal...

[obviouslyacorgi]

I really like the idea of an online ticketing system. It would save so much headache and make the process a lot more streamlined.

[dabr]

@Dave_M   Still digesting the changes, kinda of like it and kinda not, but I don't hate it:)

Happy to hear about improvements in the online ticketing are on the way and hopefully that will facilitate better response time for the users.

But when do we get the quote button back?

Update: Thanks @Dave_M  reply button is back at least!