Mobile Internet Community Consultation

[#1]

Here at giffgaff we like to do things differently. You may have spotted our invitation to participate in a conversation about mobile internet, where we invited our members to discuss the set up of our £10 goodybag.

We’re really pleased with the amount of discussion, debate and thought that was put in and we’d really like to thank everyone who got involved to help shape the changes which will come in from November.

As not everyone was able to get involved in a discussion about Mobile Internet - I thought I should write a quick Blog post that summarise the steps we took and hopefully helps to illustrate just how different giffgaff does things.

I’m certainly not aware of any telecommunications company, let alone any other UK business that involves invites their entire memberbase to discuses price changes, and if there was one, that actually listens.

Starting the conversation:

We want to involve our members in key decisions, giving as much information about our challenges, commercial environment (where practical, this is a public forum after all and we don’t want to give away our trade secrets) and details about the pre-activity we had already completed via research etc which gave our members the opportunity to assess 3 options presented to discuss and rate these options in terms of suitability.

We wanted to run this discussion for 10 days – and I expected to be busy! The thread and discussions can be found here.

Discussion about the leading option:

As the discussion progressed it was clear one of the options stood out - introducing a new goodybag and reducing the mobile internet within the £10 goodybag. The discussion then moved on to question if there was further flexibility within this option – the key items were was it possible to increase the mobile internet allowance in the £10 goodybag from 750MB to 1GB, if it was possible to change the price point to £12 or £12.50, and if it would then be possible to tether on the £10 goodybag.

Re-evaluation as a result of the discussion:

These 3 items were put back into the mix to see if they would be commercially viable, given what we were trying to achieve.

The result:

The consultation ran for ten days and receiving an overwhelming amount of feedback. We received almost 8,000 responses to the official consultation thread and over 85,000 views! As a result of listening to our community, we were able to come up with the following solution, which will be in place from November.

From the original options that were presented the community discussion influenced 3 changes: 750MB to 1GB, including tethering on the £10 goodybag and also changing the price point from £13 to £12 for the new goodybag.

From November (date TBC, we’ll communicate with at least 30 days notice)

£10 goodybag (change)	£12 goodybag  (new)
250 UK Minutes Unlimited UK texts 1GB Mobile Internet (Tethering will be allowed)	250 UK Minutes Unlimited UK texts Unlimited Mobile Internet (Tethering will not be allowed)

While we may not have followed the original format, we could see from the responses that the vast majority of the community (89% in fact) suggested the proposed option 3 would be their preferred choice. Given all the feedback we were then able to improve that option and we are confident this is the ideal solution.

While we don’t have a final date for when this change is planned, it will most likely start in November. We will provide an update on this later, making sure to give at least 30 days notice.

Again, thank you to everyone who took part!

Gregg

[#2]

thanks gregg at least its not £13 i appreciate that  

[#3]

Thanks Gregg, great work :-)

[#4]

That perfect gregg well done everyone who contributed ,, happy days

[#5]

And thanking you gregg for listening :-) This £12:00 is much more acceptable than the initial proposal, for the unlimited one.

[#6]

I only venture into goodybags the odd time I'm pleased to see it won't be any more costly as even in the month I hammered my bag I used less than 1G might have to consider a Jailbreak if I wanted to tether but I have a samba sim in my iPad so there really isn't any need. Suits me

[#7]

i wish i could of joined in but the site won't let me look past page one. when will i be able to use the site proper

[#8]

I would still appriciate a response from Giffgaff to the point, that their 3 options did not make any sense (as option 1 + 2 had no advantage over option 3 for anybody), and an overwhelming majority for option 3 was therefore the only possible outcome of this consultation. So Giffgaff did you just not realise that before (than say so), or was the whole consultation a fake set-up to only give the impression of involving your customers?

[#9]

I would say £12 is perfectly reasonable for unlimited data, and it is competing with Three which probably has small margins on their unlimited data. 

Thank you giffgaff, for listening and keeping us informed.

[#10]

Nice end result Gregg .... I'm happy with that. Whilst I wasn't the only one to suggest it .... thankyou for listening to the request of upping from 750mb to 1GB. And a fantastic effort by the Educators collating the information from the discussion ... WELL DONE to all involved Not forgetting of course .. All of my fellow giffgaffers out there!!

[#11]

I do wonder how many people held off commenting on the actual consultation thread and expected to have the chance to vote for something in a poll that was mentioned at the beginning of the whole thing.

Not every member is comfortable with sharing their views publically for a variety of reasons but may have wanted to have their say in the decision,

Whilst 8000 comments is a brilliant achievement and shouldn't be ignored at all, it is not fully representative of the whole customer base.

For future consultations can we ensure that if a poll is mentioned then it happens as proposed.