[3GScottishUser]

3's customer acquisition rate may have reduced to a slow trickle in recent months, but the operator is throwing everything it can into retaining its existing customers.

Customers threatening to leave the network are being offered the Video & Talk & Text 700 (400 minutes and 250 texts) for as little as £6.60 per month.

The deal represents a saving of £288.30 in line rental for a customer paying the standard half-price for three months and the full-price for nine months' rental at £35 per month over 12 months. The Carphone Warehouse and smaller dealers would pick up between £220 and £250 commission on the deals.

3 is believed to be bundling its refurbished handsets with the discounted line-rental deals. The operator is also understood to be approaching customers early to stop retailers buying them out of their contracts.

The operator has just 2.9 million active registered customers. Analysts have criticised the operator for heavily subsidising customers and offering half-price line rental, which would hit profitability.

3 said it would 'do everything we can to keep customers'. The operator has also built T-Mobile's Flext into its billing system to hold on to customers threatening to switch to T-Mobile.

One London dealer said: 'When I've got even my most loyal customers showing me the deals they are being offered direct, it is impossible to keep hold of them.'

Sources at 3 have admitted that connections through the indirect channel have plummeted since last year, but 3 is focusing on building a base of high-quality customers.

A spokesman for 3 said: 'This is not a standard offer but on a case-by-case basis we do offer great-value retention deals. Our focus is to attract and retain high-quality customers.'

http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/content/16030.asp?men=1&sub=6

[Hands0n]

Several thoughts spring to mind about this ........



3 said it would 'do everything we can to keep customers'.


and



.......but 3 is focusing on building a base of high-quality customers.


and



A spokesman for 3 said: 'This is not a standard offer but on a case-by-case basis we do offer great-value retention deals. Our focus is to attract and retain high-quality customers.'


A few years ago I used to work [as IT Manager] for an American bank that had its roots in Private Client Banking. These were high net-worth individuals who commanded a different service delivery from the likes of you and I. Customer Service was paramount, there were no opportunities to drop the ball (customers the likes of any A-List you care to mention). These were what could be termed "high-quality customers". Reading 3's quotes [above] made me grin as I tried to compare our Customer ethic in relation to 3's. From the top down the Bank had Customer Focussed down to the core, even for its highly respected Retail Bank operation in New York and other US cities. The Bank's name was respected and even rival bank's aspired to be in such a position. The Bank eventually was sold to a huge multinational when the owner became too ill to hold on to it anymore, and with no heir apparent, it has now passed down into history. And so I was left, this morning, reflecting on two very different businesses, both with Customers are their core income vehicle, but coming from completely opposing ends of the "How to handle Customers" yardstick. One existed in excellence, the other wallows in very much less than mediocrity.

I think that anyone who knows me on here also knows what is coming next ..... bear with me, all will be clear.

All of the above quotes by 3 is pure rhetoric and will be as effective as a UK Politician's hollow empty promises. Emperor's clothes, if you like.

Actions speak louder than words and, to date, and over the past 3-1/2 years, the 3 company have done nothing, absolutely nothing, to remedy the issues concerning what is 3's key business liability. By that I refer to their lamentably inept and ineffective Customer Service (sic. it is anything but a service) operation in Mumbai, India. Anyone who has experienced them when things go wrong will know exactly what I am referring to.

Back to my Banking history - if 3 believe that they are going to attract and, more importantly, retain their "high-value" Customers then I suggest that they are sadly mistaken. As with my Bank customers 3 will find that the higher the value of the Customer the more that has to be done to retain their business. 3's own Customer Services will very quickly put off any high-value Customer who has the misfortune to have to call them.

Now, a lot has been said against Indian Customer Services in general and 3 in particular. The latter attract a huge amount of criticism and general ill-will is generated at the hands of the operation itself. But the problem lies not within the basic premise of an Indian Call Centre but in how the actual project has been conceived and executed. In 3's case they appear to have committed the Cardinal Sin of Outsourcing, they've let the Outsourcer take control and deliver what "they" want rather than what 3 want and [more imporantly] need.

To qualify that proposition let me, for a moment, relate my direct experience of an Indian Call Centre not more than two hours old at the time of this writing. I had occasion to call Apple's CS this morning in relation to a problem with the mouse in a brand new Apple Mac Pro. It took a while to actually be answered, but it was early on a UK Bank Holiday and I guess they've not staffed up for the usual weekday deluge of calls. The person I spoke to was not only helpful, knowledgeable but also spoke to me as a person with zero evidence of a script. He listed to my problem and courteously took me through a very brief diagnostic. He then confirmed my details against their database and offered to send me out a replacement by courier rather than have me trot down to the Apple Store in nearby Bluewater. That suited me fine, although he said that was an option if I wanted the mouse any sooner - I don't. A few more checks for address and account details were made, he explained thoroughly what was going to happen and gave me reference and customer numbers for use should I need to check further. I was left feeling completely in control and aware of what was happening. He was empowered to offer me the courier replacement which cannot be cheap as they are paying for the collection also - the mouse is probably way less than the bottom line cost of the courier deivery and subsequent collection! But, and this is the Customer bit, I'm left happy that my issue has been attended to professionally and, more importantly, effectively. Not by a UK or American operation but by an Indian CS that has been properly established, trained and empowered.

It is my experience of almost all failed or failing Outsource agreements that the process has been mismanaged from the beginning. In a bid to satisfy the Finance Director and the Board quite often baby gets chucked out with the bathwater. The damage to the company is as inevitable as it is apparent. The Finance Director has little to no interest in Customer Service. His job is to look good and save the company money - but it is often a paper saving and when looked at in context with the bottom line the truth can usually be told. The Finance Director has had the same effect as a demolition contractor's wrecking ball. Bit by bit, the company's service offering deteriorates to the point where custom starts to get lost on an ever sliding scale downwards.

3 now find themselves [in the UK at least] at that position. Faced with unsustainable Customer churn and, worse, attrition they are now desperately pouring money that they have not got into Customer propositions that are worthless to their bottom line.

It may be too late to do much to salvage 3 as we now know it, a rather lame duck, ravaged by one of its own key Customer-facing operations. There probably is no one single answer but I do strongly believe that the Customer Service operation in Mumbai must be abandoned with great haste - replaced by a credible, empowered, accountable and effective Customer Service operation in the UK. Sadly, and possibly terminally, 3 do not see things this way. They are trimming down what is left of the UK's Customer Services team, redeploying those that want to stay to their high street stores. They are, effectively, throwing petrol onto the fires of their burning building, still under the rabid control of their Finance Director and his team/s. The futility of this will be for history to judge.

It is, indeed, a very sad thing to witness as I [personally] had great hopes for 3 and was one of their earliest Customers - driven away twice by their Customer Services when things went wrong (life's too short and I'm too intolerant of such). 3 have a superb network, they have pretty good content arrangements - not that I buy those. They have a good range of handsets and, in a financially healthy situation [which they are not in] have a marvelous Customer Sales proposition - the deals are hard to ignore.

None of this, I feel, is sufficient to keep 3 a viable company in its current form. They are ripe for either acquisition or receivership like many of old, anyone remember Rabit?,