Jump on the London Underground at Oxford Circus, and you can’t fail to notice the incredible sequence of adverts for Orange and T-Mobile, advertising the ability for their customers to share networks. “T-Mobile customers can now use our signal”, an Orange ad proclaims. “Ditto”, squeaks the adjacent T-Mobile ad.
To the customer, particularly those with occasional poor 2G coverage, this sounds like a huge bonus. Twice the coverage, at no extra cost. It is one of those customer experience ideas that sounds brilliant and straightforward – in theory.
In practice, customers are finding the reality is a lot less than perfect. Logging onto the T-Mobile site to understand more about the change reveals that this is not an instantaneous boost, but requires a sign-up, or opt-in process. Fans of behavioural economics will know that this immediately and significantly reduces take up.
There is a reason for this, revealed following a somewhat laborious sign up process by one of our colleagues. On arriving home, browsing the web as he walked up to his front door, the phone switched from the Orange to the T-Mobile network, boosting from 1 bar to 3 bars. This immediately cut off his 3G access.
Calling Orange Customer Services, he discovered that 3G is not, yet, included in the change, and will not be until early next year.
For avid smartphone users, this immediately negates the benefits of the service, requiring manual switching back and forward depending on whether the user wishes better 2G access, or better 3G access. Instead, he (and the others in the office who had been through the same experience) simply disabled the service.
In a rush to get a service out, Everything Everywhere have created a poor customer experience. Waiting four months would have created something impressive. Instead, expectations were raised but not delivered, and this tarnishes the brand and defeats much of the purpose of a very expensive campaign. Timing is everything, and understanding what your users really want from an experience before creating it is crucial to judging this timing. This is a lesson many service companies should heed.
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Reception is crap with both. Opted in and doesn’t make any difference. Mind you- t’is a blessing for ensuring work life balance!
Totally agree. 10 years ago it would have been great, but today it really has to be 3G or don’t bother.
Having moved 1 month into a 2 year contract and not been able to get a signal at home for the past 10 months, I’ve benefitted enourmously from the merger! Yes it’s only 2G, but better that than no signal at all!
Just a quick update I have been meaning to post for some time. After deciding not to opt into the dual networks, one day without warning my phone automatically switched to using the dual networks anyway. This as expected has led to continual frustration at the lack of 3G and the amount of time my phone now spends on the Orange network, even though previously I hadn’t experienced problems getting reception with t-mobile. A great opportunity to exceed expectations has certainly passed them by.
Another update, everything everywhere has finally announced that they are merging 3G networks. This will take place over the next 4 months region by region. http://www.3g.co.uk/PR/Oct2011/orange-and-t-mobile-combine-their-3g-networks.html