Do you think the Telecom XT brand is damaged, and if so what can Telecom do?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Do you think the Telecom XT brand is damaged, and if so what can Telecom do?

freitasm

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#57679 21-Feb-2010 19:07

One for you guys: do you think the "XT" brand is damaged after the problems in the last couple of months? Yes, no, and if yes, what do you think should Telecom do to recover it?

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#300781 21-Feb-2010 19:14

I believe it's seriously damaged.. Infact I'd go as far as saying that virtually every cent spent on building the brand has essentially been wasted.

The big question is what Telecom can do to rebuild the brand. At this stage their only chance is through pricing, people will very quickly forget the history is the price is good.

robjg63

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#300782 21-Feb-2010 19:23

Yes - damaged for sure.
1) Offer to let anyone that is having issues/concerns go back to CDMA without question - Small business owners need a service they can rely on.
2) Fix the problem PDQ
3) Perhaps offer a loyalty bond if people keep with them (Telecom) for x period of time they get a special credit.

Though I expect that the only thing they could do to repair the brand would be to have a system that doesnt fall over for say 12 months after an announcement that it was all fixed.

Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself - A. H. Weiler

alasta

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#300789 21-Feb-2010 19:39

Yes, the brand has been seriously damaged and to be honest I think the only thing that will redeem it is time. Lots of time.

The irony is that historically Telecom has always been seen as a middle aged and conservative brand compared with Vodafone, and business users have tended to turn their backs on Vodafone's youth friendly image in favour of Telecom's perceived reliability. Many business users who are still on CDMA will be thinking of migrating to Vodafone rather than XT, so Telecom will need to do everything they can to cling on to their business client base, or suffer a big drop in ARPU.

oldmaknz

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#300794 21-Feb-2010 19:55

When people hear XT they think of all the outages and being in the headlines for problems for the best part of two weeks.

I honestly don't know what could fix it.

I personally look beyond the appearance and more at the great pricing and coverage.

Ragnor

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#300801 21-Feb-2010 20:02

They will probably fix the problems then rebrand for sure. XT was a dumb brand name anyway.

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#300802 21-Feb-2010 20:02

To me it would be more damaged in the areas south of Taupo where the actual network problems have been as you could physically see the problems, north of taupo it will be the bad press.

Telecom would have to come back with something like a 100% satisfaction guarantee on all connections (post pay and prepay) so if more problems occur then the option of compensation is given or to switch to CDMA

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#300814 21-Feb-2010 20:24

1. Fix the problems once and for all - make sure they stay fixed. If necessary start migrating the network to Huawei - I'm sure they'll do a good price.

2. Ditch the XT brand and relaunch as Telecom Mobile under the new Telecom branding. This should cover the CDMA and 3GSM networks, at the end of the day customers don't care.

3. Make a big splash in launching the iPhone and the iPad ASAP leveraging the 850MHz 3G advantage while it lasts. Position these devices as heroes for a whole new category of 'Mobile Internet Devices' (MID's) along with Android phones and tablets in the near future. Give this MID category its own area in store with really skilled sales people and specialist support - again borrowing from the Apple store model.

4. Don't ever let this happen again.

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#300815 21-Feb-2010 20:26

The problem with offering a switch to CDMA is the total lack of handsets for it now.

Richard rich.ms

nitrotech

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#300825 21-Feb-2010 20:58

I agree the brand is seriously damaged, when XT launched we all commented at the time that the pricing plans were disappointing, telecom were charging a premium for what they believed to be a premium product.

The problems of the past few months mean that there is no basis to now charge a premium, pricing is the only real option to rebuild the lost ground.

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#300836 21-Feb-2010 21:19

Yes it is seriously damaged.

The one thing I can see that they could do would be to slash prices.
I agree with timmyh on launching some new MID's and making a fuss about cheap data. i guess it just needs to be reliable.

oxnsox

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#300856 21-Feb-2010 22:38

Assuming they have no more problems, their next big hurdle will be the CDMA network shutdown and customer migration. It may well be round a little longer than they plan.

Of course any more hiccups, even minor ones, will simply be seen as more nails for a coffin. And I can't see them rushing into rebranding untill we've all had a good dose of amnesia.....

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Damager

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#300863 21-Feb-2010 23:15

Yes damaged and then some. If the 67 year old tea lady at work, who has never owned a cellphone in her life says to me "Everyone hates Telecom now, because they have had so many problems in a short time. I'll be making sure all of my kids and grandkids are on Vodafone, because they don't have as many problems".

Now, I'm Telecom through and through, but this shows much the bad media has penetrated through to the absolute lay person. I cringed when she made the comment, and noticed others in the queue were nodding in agreement.

Unfortunately Telecom's name is mud in many places now. I've given up singing it's praises.

- Telstra HTC Touch Pro2 - Energy ROM WM6.5.5 20 Oct/Cyanogen Mod Froyo 2.2 - R.I.P
- AT&T Galaxy S Captivate 16GB on XT (now with brother)
- Samsung Galaxy S2 on XT- Runs ICS 4.0.3 Resurrection Remix 9.2
- Business Hours - Work In The Electricity Industry, After Hours - DJ/Turntablist - Will Scratch Vinyl For Free'
- What's next??? S3?

richms

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#300865 21-Feb-2010 23:18

Yet for those of us not south of taupo, its all been hearsay rather than experiencing problems ourselves.

Certainly not failed on me every time I have tried it.

Richard rich.ms

JasonDarwin

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#300866 21-Feb-2010 23:23

One of my suppliers has just switched to Vodafone. About 20 handsets. They had been with Telecom for at least 12 years I've dealt with them.

harrylin

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#300868 21-Feb-2010 23:40

Everybody I know here talks and knows about XT outage. So the brand damage has been huge recently. I don't know how telecom can fix it. It's been a big failure. I won't be moving to vodafone because xt is superior to vodafone in signal strength and speed. But, ordinary people won't care about 3G, they care about txting and receiving calls. What they need is signal and sending and receiving txts. Business people are the ones who need to be well looked after, and they use lots of service and spend a lot of money on mobile bills. So the main target should be business people rather than general public. Young people only care about txting, they can't afford to switch carriers and they don't spend much on calls. So use some incentives to attract more business users back.

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