Hey there giffgaffers.
This is just a quick note to let you know that we have just run our first goodybag review session between the community team and Mark, who looks after giffgaff's goodybag offers as Product Manager. We'll be running this session every two months from here on out. This process was inspired by this
Idea by solid247 and our desire to get your goodybag feedback to the right person and share the results back to you.
We decided to go down a slightly different path than originally conceived. We did this because in order for us to have an honest conversation about goodybags and member ideas around goodybags, we need to be able to freely discuss issues that are commercially sensitive, directly compare ourselves to competitors and talk about future plans that are still confidential. We also need to be able discuss financial implications and member numbers. As I hope you can understand, having the same conversation in public is unfortunately not something we can do without it becoming quite vague and lot less productive.
We will, however, share the results of this goodybag conversation and tell you which Ideas made it into the meeting so you can talk about them and share your feedback here.
Since this is going to be a regular session, I should be able to give you about a week or two of notice about which goodybag Ideas are currently on track to go into the meeting for some last minute feedback and discussion. For this first session, we based the conversation on the votes and feedback on the Ideas themselves. You can also always comment on goodybag Ideas on the Ideas board directly and I recommend you do so on any goodybag Ideas you feel strongly about.
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To make a long story short (too late), here are the goodybag Ideas that we discussed in the meeting and the results of those conversations:
A goodybag primarily for texts and voice, without data
We feel that our current offering across the range is competitive and with the included free giffgaff to giffgaff calls, the minutes allowance is actually higher than it may seem initially. Data is also something that is becoming more and more important in the industry, so to remove it entirely for a few additional minutes doesn't make sense in the market right now.
Unlimited data at a lower price point
This is a tricky one as I can fully understand why people would want unlimited data at a lower price point. The long and short of it is that this is not something we can offer. There are two main reasons: the cost of data to us as a business and giving unlimited data at such a low price point would make us very attractive to the people most likely to abuse unlimited data which in turn would require us to create stricter policies against data usage or even, ugh, limit people's data speeds. This idea and any future ones around data will need to be carefully considered when it comes to cost and data management to ensure we give the best possible experience to everyone on giffgaff. Expect to see some more questions and discussion around data as we get closer to 4G.
International goodybag & Include international minutes in existing goodybags
Since these Ideas were originally suggested, there have been some significant changes in the market and we've gotten more involved in international minutes/costs. Our current offering is competitive in the market as it stands right now and we've been pleased to see a good response from especially our international student base. To include international minutes in a goodybag (or launching a brand new one) gets a bit tricky. The prices of calls to international destinations can fluctuate pretty wildly. Adjusting the cost against credit is relatively easy for us to do but adjusting against a goodybag would be a lot more complicated, slow and financially risky. For example, if a price of a call is at 8p at the beginning of the month, but jumps to 20p half-way through, we would be operating at a 12p loss for every minute until we could roll out a new goodybag change.
We could potentially look into including a few more 'stable' international locations into goodybags, but this needs further investigation in relation to cost and effort required. Right now, we'll be sticking with the current system but we'll investigate this as an option.
Deleting a goodybag
This idea, and similar ones around editing/re-buying/deleting goodybags is a consistent one that keeps cropping up. More flexibility is always a good thing. This core idea is something we are seriously investigating in 2014: once we have more details, we'll be sure to share it with you all.
Buy a goodybag and credit via text
This, as well as a few other interactions via text are on the radar of Member experience for 2014. There needs to be a few more discussions and prioritisation sessions to figure out which projects make the top of the pile, but this Idea is a contender. We'll let you know if it makes the cut in its current form.
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Thanks for reading and I hope you found this useful. Please let us know in the comments what you think about these goodybag Ideas and remember to visit the Ideas board to vote on or suggest goodybags you'd like to see discussed in the next meeting in April.
