FREEPORT, Grand Bahama -- Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) further cemented its reputation as a pillar of the Grand Bahama Community on Friday, April 28 as the company officially opened the doors to its brand new corporate headquarters on the Mall Drive in Freeport. The opening of the new facility marks the beginning of a brand-new style of customer interaction for residents on Grand Bahama.
"We've introduced 360 degrees of managing customer accounts. The classic management style typically doesn't have the follow through on the scale that we now want to introduce," explained Northern Bahamas Vice President Eldri Ferguson-Mackey. "We've equipped every sales team member with sales support staff and what they do is they carry out that support, they answer customer queries and manage the customer's accounts."
For more than 20 years Grand Bahama has played a pivotal role in the provision of telecoms services for residents on Grand Bahama Island and in the northern Bahamas. While BTC has become synonymous with its myriad of community-based locations, establishing a centralized corporate location was vital to the execution of the company's long-term plans for residents on Grand Bahama Island.
"The road to this opening has been a long time coming," explained BTC CEO Leon Williams. "It was a long and winding road but it was very important that BTC establish a location on the Mall in downtown Freeport. For us it must be about more than Nassau, that's what separates BTC from our competitors. We are also very concerned about developing our people".
This was particularly true for the company in the weeks and months following the passage of Hurricane Matthew. Despite sustaining upwards of $40 million in damage to its infrastructure, BTC was one of the only utilities in the country which successfully stayed online before, during and after the storm. This was largely due to the company's intricate emergency generation and relay system, which redirected traffic in areas which were being severely battered by high winds and rains.
Since the passage of the storm, BTC has wholly and solely funded all recovery efforts in the Northern Bahamas and is currently some 98 percent complete. As a leading corporate citizen BTC has worked to do just that, offering improved product and services for its customers.
Equally important to the now fully Bahamianized management team at BTC is the company's commitment to community development through responsible corporate citizenship.
"BTC's history in being an excellent corporate citizen is far reaching" noted Ferguson-Mackey. "I like to say we don't just fly in here, we live here. So the managers responsible for making the decisions live in the various communities which we try to have a positive impact."

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