How do you view the competition between yourselves and your mobile operator rivals at this moment?
With seven major mobile players, the UK is one of the most competitive mobile markets in Europe. We welcome this healthy competition which has become a key characteristic of our industry and has given our customers great value over the last few years. It has acted as a catalyst for innovation to ensure O2 offers the best services, products and customer experience. In the UK, consumers and businesses have genuinely benefited from lower prices, compelling services and better handsets.
What is your main tactic for keeping your customers loyal?
Traditionally, mobile operators have not been very good at creating emotional customer loyalty. However, over the last two years we have constructed our business strategy around creating a more loyal customer base to reverse this trend, which doesn’t include buying their loyalty. There is a huge difference in loyalty between customers that stay with us because we have thrown a lot of money at them and ones that want to stay with us because of the experiences they have encountered. At a base level, I think there are two things that need to happen to create a loyal customer. The first is to offer a great experience at every customer touch point – from an O2 retail outlet to the O2 Wireless Festival to our call centres. We work tirelessly to ensure a consistently good experience every time the customer comes in contact with O2. The second is to give customers something they can’t get elsewhere. This could include a special VIP area at the O2 Wireless Festival, a free pie and pint at the rugby as well as the successful O2 Treats programme where customers get money savings like free texts.
What is your take on the development and growth of mobile technology?
I am excited to work in one of the most dynamic and fast moving industries, the mobile phone has fundamentally changed the way we live our lives. GSM (the cellular digital network standard) was launched in 1993 and in that short time the mobile has grown to the point where there are over two billion phones worldwide today and more than 63 million in the UK. That’s more phones than people. I am constantly amazed by the pace at which mobile technology changes and helps people to live their lives differently as well as the phenomenal growth the industry has enjoyed. However, as our market reaches 100 percent penetration it will be the companies that utilise new technology to create the best customer experience that will be the winners in the market moving forward.
What is the next technological break-through we will all be marvelling and depending on? Will we reach a plateau of mobile development where further growth is just not possible?
What is important is that as an industry we work to understand what our customers actually want from their mobile and not push technology for technology’s sake. Some of the most successful applications on mobile have been some of the simplest, think of the 30 billion text messages we send in the UK every year. Another great example is the new O2 Jet phone, our first branded handset that is based on true customer insight and the customers need for a simple to use phone that has substantial battery life without lots of extra functionality that the customer may not want to use. As we move forward, the art of the possible becomes more of a reality.You only have to look at advances in handsets, which double up as video cameras, games consoles, music players and radios – that’s all available today but we will only deliver what our customers want and this will always be at the forefront of our mind when deciding what we offer them!
Is there a key message you try to promote throughout your whole organisation?
We focus on our customer loyalty strategy that ensures we put the customer first in everything we do allowing us to drive customer retention and loyalty. This is the one message that everyone contributes to – be it in a call centre, retail store or the boardroom. However, to really ensure that this comes to life it is important to engage your employees and listen to them.They hold a wealth of knowledge, experience and expertise and tapping into this helps us to further understand our customer expectations. A good example of this is an initiative called Real Directors, a programme that has created a shadow O2 board made up of frontline O2 People.This activity ensures we use the insight of those individuals that best understand our customers via their multiple interactions with customers every day.It is intended to cultivate employee engagement and engender fresh thinking by giving front line staff a stake in the future of the business by finding new and creative ways to tap into the thinking of the people who actually make the business run.
What events will you be putting your name to over the next 12-18 months?
Well for me the most exciting is the creation of The O2 [formerly the Millennium Dome]. It will do something that no other destination – and no other company – has ever done before; it will blend the immediacy of live entertainment with the power of mobile. In the process, it is creating something that is truly more than the sum of its parts – a completely new way to experience entertainment and, crucially, to live it before and after the event. The O2 is built around an intelligent mobile network that will redefine the concept of live entertainment. From the moment of ordering a ticket, The O2’s technology will start to bring the event to life with the aid of some of the most sophisticated mobile technology ever deployed and, more importantly, will provide one of the key pieces of our jigsaw to the strategy of customer loyalty.