I know I have, and what irks me most about this experience is the sheer guts of it. How dare they compound my misery. As Bruce Willis might have said (but probably didn’t) in one of the Die Hard films “Don’t **** in my pocket and tell me its raining”

The issue here, of course, is that the Call Centre Manager/Director made a call somewhere along the line. Probably under pressure from his boss/wanting to please his boss/trying to cut costs, they recognised the issue (clients who wait too long get annoyed), but failed to apply the solution (hire more customer care agents) and foolishly thought their clients could be bought off with a clearly insincere statement. If the company really cared about the customer’s call, it would answer it quickly, wouldn’t it?

The result, normally, of low customer satisfaction scores is higher churn (which is a measurable loss of revenue) or weaker brand bonding (which isn’t).

In companies where the brand is truly embedded, the above is unlikely to happen.

In my experience the difference is all about execution. Anyone with a ppt presentation can write a strategy. It takes persistence and stamina to execute one properly.

Here’s an example of a brand with conviction – ie that executes.

Its a brand that is more successful in its home market than Coke, Google, Mercedes, Apple, BMW, Nokia…more popular than IBM, than Nike, you get the picture….

Its a mobile phone brand, Digicel Jamaica:

http://www.digiceljamaica.com/

Of course those of you who have had a look around the site probably notices that I am an ex employee, who must be biased, no? Maybe so , but I believe the evidence overwhelms any bias I might have: 70%+ market share, very low churn; exceptional ARPU (as a % of disposable income), exceptional positive awareness and recommendation, etc…

It must be because the competition is poor, then? Well, it may not be as competitive as the UK, and the competition has been weak in the past, but they are no pushover:

http://claro.com.jm/index.php?option=com_phones&Itemid=28

http://www.time4lime.com/country_home.jsp?countryName=Jamaica&index=8

The secret of success is simply the commitment to execution. When the company launched in 2001 no-one was about to reinvent the mobile phone sector. Orange, Starhub, Smart (at their relative peaks) and a few others had already provided ample inspiration for how an operator should act.

Just build a demonstrably superior product (ie the network) and deliver it in a branded lifestyle package. No inspirational strategy required, a tiny bit of market research would give you the answer. (Apologies to the inspired technical team who built the network, but this blog is about brand).

The interesting bit for marketeers and brand folk is in the little details of the execution. Some examples:

• Make the senior management visible and approachable.

One example was the giving away of millions of (Jamaican) $ in scratch cards. 50 or more senior managers across the country would give away scratch cards to taxi drivers, store owners, or other people they would meet in their day to day life every week, over a period of years. You could reach maybe 10,000 people a year like this, but you could be sure that they would tell another 5, who would tell a few more. Over 5 years you might just recruit a few hundred thousand evangelists like this…

• Make the customer experience as pleasurable as possible.

Hire the friendliest, most outgoing people in store, and at the call centre and train them well. Simple strategy, tough to execute.

• Promote as many people as possible internally, from the ‘coal-face’ of the business, customer care

Example – Usain Bolt is sponsored by Digicel. The person who looks after him at Digicel is the Head of Sponsorship. She used to be a call centre operative. Now she deals with Olympic Gold medal winners and Premiership footballers.

…of course there are many more examples, too many for this blog, but I trust the point is made.

The payoff for Digicel Jamaica is ARPUs superior to the prepaid ARPU of UK networks, super low churn, and a brand name that is consistently voted the nation’s favourite.

In developed countries, why should the banks open up the value chain to operators when all they can see is lost revenue? (another player taking a slice of the small transaction fees). Eventually, the mobile phone will have to become a ‘credit card’ in my view, because convenience and consumer demand will make it happen, but it’ll take a lot longer than it has in places like the Philippines and Tanzania:

http://smart.com.ph/money/

http://www.vodacom.co.tz/docs/docredir.asp?docid=3492

In ‘developed world’ countries we have seen countless innovations in the ‘mobile money’ arena – and some I find interesting are:

http://www.zong.com/zong/products.gsp

..which focuses on alliances between eg gaming companies and operators to drive transactions. Its not ‘real money’ in that it is effectively credit in a specific environment, but its a step on the way.

I think one of the drivers of innovation in this space could be the emergence of mobile as a remmittance enabler/platform, where credit is stored, transported and accessed via the mobile phone.

In one example of this, Belgacom is apparently talking to operators provide cross-border cash remmittance. Belgacom’s position as a carrier hub is a great advantage as they already bill  and collect across many operators, but this method still relies on a ‘cash-in – cash-out’ at the local operator level – akin to what Smart provides in the Philippines via retail partners (e.g fast food chains). Until this happens at both ends of the remmittance corridor we will still be waiting for real ‘mobile remmittance’.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10286279-37.html

The operators are finally starting to bring their responses to the market. The world’s two biggest operators by subscribers, Vodafone and China Mobile, who between them have 770 million customers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operators), are developing and app store that could potentially reach 1 billion customers over time (or more realistically 200 million+ smartphones):

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_31/b4141024521443.htm?campaign_id=rss_tech

And surely Symbian, which runs the OS on Nokia, SE and other smartphones, will be competing soon:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10250094-16.html

Not to mention Android, OVI, and others…

http://www.rethink-wireless.com/?article_id=1756 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10250094-16.html

It will be interesting to see whether the operators can catch up with Apple – they have a daily contact with their users, can they change internal mindsets fast enough to embrace the internet before Apple entrenches its market leading position….?