Phone providers and Christmas morning: On (not) being a boring business
Are your customers as bored with you as they are with their phone providers? That’s dangerous. Think about making some of these changes.
Are you loyal to your mobile phone provider? What made you choose your current one? In your opinion, what sets them apart from their competitors?
My guess is that you aren’t very loyal. A plan that fits your usage and budget is more important than the brand that offers it.
You probably want support from someone with a brain in case any technical difficulties arise, so you’ll go for one of the big names in the industry who tend to have good customer service. But hopefully, there won’t be any problems and so the only points of contact you have with your provider is when you buy your phone (yay) and whenever they send you the bill (not so yay). And the providers don’t seem to try and change anything about this ‘relationship’.
Mobile phone providers tend to be very meh.
That stops them from retaining customers and – more worryingly – turns them into a commodity. (After all, it’s not the business that decides whether they offer a commodity — the consumer does.)
What can providers do to change this? And what can businesses in your industry do to prevent or fix similar problems?
Problem 1: Where are you on Christmas morning?
At the moment of purchase, what are you excited about? Exactly, THE ACTUAL PHONE IN YOUR HANDS. It feels like unwrapping a gift on Christmas morning. The fact that because of the provider you can actually use it receives considerably less enthusiasm.
As a provider, what can you do (for example about your packaging or store employee behaviour) to amplify that Christmas morning-feeling, instead of looking in on the fun through a frosty window?
And if you’re not a phone provider, figure out if your customers have a Christmas morning-moment. Do you join in on the fun or are you stuck in the snow outside with the phone providers?
Problem 2: Are you a Grinch or are you Santa?
Bills are a necessary evil. At best, your customers feel neutral about having to pay them. And neutral isn’t enough to grow a business that people love. How can you turn payment plans and bills into something fun?
Learn from GiffGaff, a UK mobile phone provider. They offer goodybags: a wide range of pre-paid bundle of minutes, texts and data. The goodybag is valid for a month and you can either select a new one every month or opt to receive the same goodybag month after month for as long (or short) as you like. It’s a lovely flexible product and how good is that name? It conjures up images of shopping and glamour instead of picking a payment plan.
GiffGaff’s goodybags change the dynamics for the customer: they get to carefully select a present for themselves every month, instead of having to hold up their end of a big agreement for a year or two. The customer gets more power. And that feels good.
Whether your business is a phone provider or not, ask yourself if you can change anything about the dynamics of transaction between you and your customers.
Here’s an example: instead of sending out plain, boring invoices, try customising them with fun descriptions of the service or product you delivered. ‘Social media advice’ can become ‘Finally a clear strategy to win hearts on Twitter’.
Can you change from a Grinch or a Scrooge into a generous Santa? This doesn’t mean that you have to radically change your products or the way you run your business, you just have to make the transaction feel different — more like a gift instead of a loss.
Pretty much everybody has a mobile phone. Hardly anybody can tell the difference between the various phone providers. If the providers don’t become remarkable fast, they can only compete on price, which is rarely the way to build a sustainable business.
If a business can’t distinguish itself from its close competitors by its products, it needs to upgrade something else to stand out.
How does this work in your industry? Do your (potential) customers know what separates you from your competitors? And if they don’t, what are you going to change so you’ll be more remarkable?
