Interesting Exercise re. Mobile Phone Providers

sdanseo

Was at a training day with 02 today and we were told to go and mystery shop the competition, looking for salesmanship and attitude towards the customer and of course keeping an eye on price for myself. Thought the results might make interesting reading - for this is a public forum, I'll make no comment at all re. o2.

(Basically we went into Meteor, Carphone Warehouse, Vodafone and Three)

Meteor were friendly, approached me after a moement's browsing. The assistant was informative but went on a lot and focused on the price plans. When I asked her about the phones selection, based on the old phone I broke and wanted something in the same league, she selected a vastly different and cheaper product and was "excited" about it. She knew very little about free texts and I had to point out different offers to her in the windows rather than be told of them. She also kept going on and basically wouldn't shut up. The products they had were well priced for phone, but broadband was not on offer outside major cities. I was shown a book/catalogue and handed it on leaving.

Carphone Warehouse were very friendly, the assistant again let me browse for a while before taking me aside. On learning my situation of having broken a phone, he immediately showed me a demo of the nearest matching phone available and allowed me to have a go of it. He then accessed my Vodafone records and accessed customised deals for me with all of the other networks which were very resonable. I was offered some great deals wich were not repeated even in the Vodafone store. I could not have a brochure to take away as the results were customised but was not offered one either, and again the salesman did go on a little bit about non-related things when all I wanted was the info.

Three had a very friendly CSA who was honest about prices and upfront, as well as extremely helpful and informative. Thier price plans were very competitive and coverage, I am told, piggybacks the VF network and so is identical. I was however allowed no time to browse but jumped on straight away on entering the store. He consulted and showed me a sales brochure also, and I took this with me. He also provided adequate information and had a good working knowledge of the various phones and plans as well as broadband pricing.

Vodafone (who I'm currently with) offered nothing short of terrible service today. I waited around the sotre for about 10 minutes before being approached, when I was a customer called him and he apolpgised in a not very caring way before dealing with him once again after which he promptly forgot about or ignored me. I was soon served by another, very boring lady who accessed my records but offered very little in terms of solutions and though she knew her stuff re pricing, left it to me to ask about or suggest price plans for myself rather than tell me about them. She knew very little about phones when asked and made not attempt to show me and displays or demos, or to hand me a brochure. Thye also appeared to be the most expensive.

Though this might make interesting reading for ye - as far as deals go CW seem to be the best; he even offered to throw in a generic BT headset and all. We didn;t mystery-shop 02 for obvious reasons, but the staff in the two stores of theirs I was in today seemed (and I mean this in as non biased a way as I can) very friendly. I now of course know their price plans back to front and they are competitve also.

Random

This is all well and good but do it again next week and see how the results vary. I know only one instance is all it takes to lose a potential customer, but you may have caught someone on a bad day etc.

Slice

Hang on a second, wasn't he served by two Vodafone agents who were both "having a bad day"?

jor el

sdonn wrote: »

Vodafone (who I'm currently with) offered nothing short of terrible service today. I waited around the sotre for about 10 minutes before being approached, when I was a customer called him and he apolpgised in a not very caring way before dealing with him once again after which he promptly forgot about or ignored me.

The reason I left Vodafone was the terrible service I got in one of their shops, by all the staff including the manager. They couldn't care less, so neither did I.

Shelflife

What i found interesting is that you work with O2 yet you support vodafone.

ElNino

Why didn't O2 ask you to mystery shop one of their own shops as well? Surely they should make sure their own house in order first.

artyeva

as regards a mystery shopping excercise i'd give your reports on all stores a fail. you have inferrence and personal opinion in there all heaped on small amounts of actual facts. not really sure what the point of this thread is to be honest.

what is interesting however, is that you're employed by O2 but they didn't have you go into one of their stores, if their reasoning behind this exercise was to compare customer service levels

sdanseo

ElNino wrote: »

Why didn't O2 ask you to mystery shop one of their own shops as well? Surely they should make sure their own house in order first.

Hard to mystery shop the place you're training in :P

ElNino

sdonn wrote: »

Hard to mystery shop the place you're training in :P

There's more than one O2 shop in Dublin. Surely you could go to a different shop?

tagoona

If he provided any sort of positive review of an O2 shop, he would have been accused of bias. No chance of winning the argument if you're affiliated with any of them.

Random

Random wrote: »

This is all well and good but do it again next week and see how the results vary. I know only one instance is all it takes to lose a potential customer, but you may have caught someone on a bad day etc.

I should clarify - I'm just saying you shouldn't judge them by one experience alone .. although we do and it's certainly very interesting.