Archive: Ideas

As we know, the goodybags with unlimited internet don't allow tethering, for obvious misuse reasons.   What would be cool, would be to be able to add, say, £2.50 a month to the price of a goodybag, to allow 250MB of tethering, for the lighter user who just wants to surf on their iPad for 10 minutes each day on the park-and-ride bus ;-) ... View more

Replacement of the Unreported Service Issue Thread Problem : the Unreported Service thread is intended to be used only when a member notices a recurring possible service issue on the Help and Support forum. The requirement is that five links with the issue should be posted for an Educator to investigate and then, if necessary, act upon. Educators are subscribed to the thread so help should always be at hand. However, this thread is now used as a general dumping ground for isolated issues, complaints and general questions. To all intents and purposes it doesn’t work. Idea : my idea is simply to change the thread so that if someone feels they have reason to alert an Educator to a potential service issue they would have to complete a form not dissimilar to an agent form. As illustrated below, the member would be required to select a category and then supply the links to threads reporting a problem. This would prevent the thread from being cluttered in the way it is now and make it easier for members to check to see if there are any reports of potential problems.    Below is a suggestion of how I envisage the form might look in the thread. As always, feedback and support is welcome   *Edited to address the points @gordie10 has raised.  Yes, I would envisage that after the form has been sent a post would appear as normal to show that a potential problem has been flagged up and any reply from an Educator would appear for members to read. Without that there would be no point as no one would know if anyone had spotted or raised an issue, or the outcome of reporting it. The form would be the only way to post in the thread. Overall, I think the thread should end up looking similar to the current version ; the main difference being there would no longer be individual service issue reports and  complaints burying everything, thus making it easier to read.  ... View more

Is there any chance that giffgaff are able to implement the pop up 'info panel' option when you hover over a members name. I have seen this used on another mobile network's Lithium based community site beginning with V     This would offer an 'at a glance' way of seeing members community details when browsing threads without the need to click away from the thread being read, and could actually be used as an alternative to the profile badges that did end up spliting community opinion down the middle.   This could tie in quite nicely with the planned refresh of the community page 'look and feel' that is aiming for a cleaner and more streamlined view of the community. ... View more

Idea 'in a nutshell' Issue: It's a big, confusing world out there when you're new! Often you don't know anything or anyone when you start somewhere new. Solution: Every new GiffGaff member should be able to choose to have a 'buddy'.   Main benefit to: …the new GiffGaffer The new GiffGaffer has a single point of contact for their first few days. Help might include how to set up their account, to joining in with the community to getting help on what to do about issues. …Agents and Educators Time will be freed up to concentrate on the stuff that helps everyone or to deal with the newcomers with problems. …volunteer ‘buddies’ Kudos and/or payback points could reward those who do a good job. …community pages the community pages will become more powerful by containing common problems, questions, updates and areas of interest to all GiffGaffers. There will be less ‘noise’ caused by new people just trying to find answers.  …GiffGaff A free way to maximise help for new customers by empowering community members (unlimited resource) and reducing the amount of ways Agents and Technical teams (finite resource) need to simultaneously divide themselves. It promotes the fact that GiffGaff is people powered, builds a better experience for new customers and in general provides an all-round positive feeling!   Reason for suggestion I'm a new GiffGaffer who hit a major issue on the day I joined (7-Feb 2012).  I’d had no time to learn how to navigate the community pages and use Agents, and had no idea about the Educators.  I needed someone to help me figure out what was normal, what I needed to get fixed and how to go about doing it.  Luckily, I got chatting to another GiffGaff member, who helped me to cut through the confusion.  He didn’t have all the answers, but just having someone who has been around for longer than you is a good start!     That's the idea! (I've added more detail below...)     Idea in a bit more detail There’s a lot to take in when you join a new service (and it’s not always easy to find out what you need to know), whether things go smoothly or whether things go wrong! The ‘buddy’ will be a volunteer from the GiffGaff community. The ‘buddy’ will be the one person a new GiffGaffer can ask any question to. The ‘buddy’ will probably know the regular stuff; not everything, but they may well know someone who does, or at least the best way to get to an answer. The ‘buddy’ might expect to be called upon to help out the newcomer for their first 18 days to a month – basically until they’re settled. There could be a community page for ‘buddies’ to discuss common issues or share experiences.   Differentiators (from current offering and previous suggestions) The interactivity of this idea is the crucial part.  Other ideas suggested (introductory emails, texts...) are either passive and/or depend on finite GiffGaff resources.  It will improve new customers' experiences of joining GiffGaff who aren't used to dealing with a system where you don't just pick up a phone and speak to someone. It helps to promote mutual giving and support the infrastructure and values upon which (I think) GiffGaff operates. ... View more

Hi all, there's a few ideas about community badges for completing tasks and doing things in the community (for example Marys here) but this is a little different. Various sites like Dropbox have a tutorial based achievement feature where you're rewarded for completing tasks associated with the core functionality of the service.    Would it be feasible for giffgaff to have something similar? In Dropbox it's in a section labelled getting started and works on the idea of issuing challenges to the user, for giffgaff it could be:   set up a reccuring goodybag, queue a goodybag, post in the community, give a kudos or accept a solution Access giffgaff.com on a mobile Follow us on Twitter/Facebook or share your refferal link. Or things to that effect, challenges or achievements designed to introduce new users to the features and functionality of the mobile side as well as the community side. Below is the Dropbog getting started section using a challenge/ reward system as a tutorial.     And another similar example on the Steam platform     I couldn't speculate on the cost or effort involved in this but it would ideally be a part of the giffgaff.com member dashboard (so not reliant on Lithium).   The benefits are that you could immediately make new members aware of and using features such as reccuring goodybags, immediately get them posting and accepting solutions/kudosing on the community and sharing giffgaff on Twitter. Anything you'd want to encourage and think new members ought to know upon joining.   The reward could if you wanted follow Dropbox and offer traditional rewards (possibly payback points?) but could just as easily be a badge based rewards system. Leave a half finished challenge on someones dahboard with empty badge spaces and 90% of people will want to fill it and find their way around the site and features nicely. ... View more

Here's a suggestion for a weekly giffgaff podcast. I prefer audio podcasts but video could work too.   Every day Hazel has been posting industry updates from the giffgaff insights manager. They range from new devices, network shenaigans and whatever's happening in the mobile industry. Giffgaff has a lot of people that work in the mobile industry that can have a pretty good jabber about stuff like that.   Weekly topic. There's always something to talk about in mobile. One week a segment about mobile gaming, the next about 4g,the week after. Network backhaul, mobile security, community projects, Google IO or the new iPhone, developing mobile apps. There's really an abundance of topics.   One of the biggest reasons for giffgaff not to do a podcast in the past is the singular topic; giffgaff. Thre's only so much you can talk about and a single topic each week doesn't allow for much scope. The industry update and the giffgaff staff in the industry is an excellent opportunity for a broad, expert podcast that can focus on all things mobile as well as all things giffgaff.     The benefits are that it'd be good. Real insights from people in the industry about things going on in the industry as well as things going on at giffgaff. Also has the opportunity to get into podcast apps or iTunes and extend beyong the community as a reliable mobile news source.   The cost: Three or four Rode podcasters will cost you about £150 each, they're pretty much industry standard but the Blue snowball or the Blu Yeti are excellent microphones too. The best of budget microphones.   Probably a CDN to distribute the podcast. For only an audio podcast you're looking at a very low cost. Libsyn is a decent choice.         ... View more

There are currently Hot Ideas, Top Ideas, and New Ideas on the ideas board, but most of the Top Ideas have been implemented! That's all well and good, and shows how much GaffGaff listens... but wouldn't it be good for the Top Ideas to show top unimplemented ideas? Perhaps split off another tab for Realised Ideas? ... View more

How's this for a feel good? So basically in my giffgaff, just under your profile name and number, just above payback, there would be a box, quite a simple small one, but one that will leave you in awe of the giffgaffing-gafftastical savings that you have earned so far.   And it'd look a little something like this:     UPDATE: For those who wouldn't want this....     But it's basic point is to show each user how much money they've saved using goodybags and using the giffgaff to giffgaff calls and texts.   This would help loyalty and also would be a very useful tool for promoting giffgaff if users showed it to their friends and family who were thinking of joining but unsure.   The information used to fill the box would be the same information used to fill in our monthly savings emails, but would just be cumulative. However as it may be difficult to work out how much the older members have saved over time or to do this for everyone overall, I would propose instead that it at least shows how much you saved last month, but slap bang on your profile right in your face :P so you're always reminded of how great it is here.   Technicals: - If it could be real time that would be amazing (i.e. after every call you use on a goodybag or text you send the number changes) but I'm not sure how doable that is - If it could be overall since you joined that would create the biggest impact, but I'm not sure hwo doable that is, so what you saved last month would be cool too if the main one isn't possible. Just have to see guys.   I also propose that the user who saves the most each month wins a prize (but that's much more of a flexible point, I doubt that would happen :P )   But anyway, what do you guys think? I reckon it'd be a powerful propaganda and loyalty tool. Plus just a useful feel good stat to see every time you log in :)   Bear in mind this is just an idea, I have no idea how easy to implement it would be, but I reckon it would be a very powerful tool. Giffgaff, I leave it to you :)   But anyway, what do you guys think? :) ... View more

Hi all,   When you’ve ordered SIM cards from giffgaff to share with friends, you may have received the new flyers that you can share with your friends. They’re great – But there’s one issue that could be affecting the business model: Presentation.   The issue: When you receive the SIM pack, you’re asked to cut the flyer in half with scissors to share with your friends. And there’s your problem – Cutting. Unless you have a guillotine in the house hold, you’ll never be dead straight. As a result of this, it makes sharing the flyers with friends look a bit poor. Nothing says join giffgaff like a messy first impression, right? How would you feel if you wanted to join giffgaff and got this through the post?       The proposal: The solution is actually very simple – Cut out the middle man, i.e. cutting the flyer yourself. This is where I propose giffgaff use a ‘tear and share’ system. For those of you that know about perforated cutting – It’s where a machine comes along and punches lines in the paper to make it tear-able. Like your notepad that allows you to pull pages out easily? I feel by using this same technique – It will give giffgaff the look and first impression they deserve.   Show me more: Graze – (a business dedicated to delivering healthy snacks) use this method for grabbing new recruits and it works very well, see below:     As you can see they use small tear and share methods so I can share this with friends. This could easily be implemented with giffgaff’s flyers by adding a perforated line here:       The main advantages of this idea are the following:   Much more professional first impression More efficient for members to spread the flyers Flyers can still be produced in bulk –  Only one more stage is added to the printing process More customers – Due to the ‘tacky’ first impression being eliminated. Thank you for reading this idea, your support and comments are greatly appreciated.   James. ... View more

In response to the thread Should/Could calls to 101 be free on giffgaff, I'd like to propose this idea:   If the phone has credit, irrespective of any goodybag, the 15p charge is applied as normal.   If there is no credit, but a goodybag is in place with minutes, a charge of 2 minutes is applied to the goodybag, irrespective of call duration. (Why 2 minutes? Voicemail is 8p or 1 minute.)  That would allow callers who only use goodybags and no credit to be able to call 101 if they need to. ... View more

Giffgaff Recruit Manager   The Idea   I have thought for a while now that someone should have come up with this idea, but they haven't - so I'm going to share it with you. The graphics aren't great but hopefully you'll get the idea! [Click on images to see them fullscreen]     My idea is to have a Giffgaff 'Recruit Manager' under 'Spread Giffgaff'. The Recruit Manager is a place where you can simply manage your recruits and visually track your progress.   It sets your orders into different categories and sub categories within them to refine results. There are small icons on the right hand side, as you will notice, that are the steps that you are going through to reach your goal - an activation! Icons change from a dull, grey to a happy vibrant white or yellow when the task has completed.   From an URL order there are 3 steps:   - Sim dispatched - Sim received - Sim Activated   From a HOME order (Sim order to your home to then give out) there are 4 steps:   - Sim dispatched - Sim received (at your home) - Sim given - Sim activated   When hovering over an icon a box appears to tell you what the icon means - much like My eBay.         When the Sim Given icon is clicked upon, a box appears to change the status of this. You can only change the status of the second last icon (home order) - Sim Given and you can insert the name of the person you have given it too (if known). The rest change automatically when giffgaff mark them as so The Sim Arrived is an estimate. (Second icon)   There is also a Conversion Rate section (top image) that calculates the percentage of Sims that you have actually given and URL orders that have been activated.   Edit: There could also be a sort button, to order by date (Thanks to billythekid)   I believe this 'Recruit Manager' would not be awfully difficult to implement and would be a valuable tool for the eager recruiter!   Please leave kudos if you support the idea :) Feedback is always welcome!   Tom   ... View more

There are a handful of useful forum searches that I use on regular basis and it would be nice to have these easier to access and use.    For instances all your own accepted solution can be found using this method as posted by darrenpainter which requires changing the user id to your own to get a personalised list of accepted solutions. http://community.giffgaff.com/t5/giffgaff-Top-Tips/List-your-Solutions-by-post/td-p/3763293   There are also other useful searches to find threads and posts authored as posted by sloz here. http://community.giffgaff.com/t5/giffgaff-Top-Tips/View-own-posts-and-topics-in-a-particular-forums/...   All these links are simple searches but currently require that you manually change the user id to your own.   So my idea is to included a link on the My settings which then links to a  simple widget with a clickable list of the various searches (inserting your own id into the relevant place).       Personalised Search Widget Simply click the following links to get your own personalised searches.   Accepted Solutions Topics posted in Help Forum Posts in Help Forum Ideas posted Idea comments posted Topics posted in Contribute Forum etc, etc.   I think this should be easily possible with the help of the Dev Hub team and I've been encouraged to post this as an idea by alex_w  (so giffgaff seem interested).    So comments and support gratefully welcomed :)     ... View more

Would it be possible to run a crowdsourced map showing areas with outages.   Possibly twitter based?   I'm thinking something similar to the Uk snow map system, which uses feedback from users of twitter to report when snow is seen in the area. This to me seems a very quick way for Giff Gaff to establish problems, check the locality of the issue and resolve the issues. I have included a link below to the UK snow map for an idea of exactly what i'm trying to describe.   http://uksnowmap.com/ I'm not sure what this would involve, but seemed to me a quick and easy way to see any issues. ... View more

Hello all :)   After getting involved in the "Guiding principles for Ideas in 2014" thread it occured to me.   Why not have giffgaff deliver a personalised package to each member stating ideas they might be interested in?   This way members get to know and support ideas they'd like which leads to a better experience with giffgaff for them. This could be sent out monthly by email (Like your monthly usage statement) depending on the areas of giffgaff you frequent most often. So if there was a way giffgaff could identify the areas you had been really involved in, such as the 4G consultations, they could possibly send you a link to the idea "4G at no extra cost" which is actually under consideration at the moment. A mock up message could go:   Hello *insert username* at giffgaff we encourage our members to get involved and help giffgaff get better by suggesting ideas. Since you've been involved in *insert activity* we think you might like to support these ideas *insert links to ideas*   Members could opt in by accepting "You're happy to get info and offers from giffgaff" in your contact permissions. Maybe this personalised package could be sent with your monthly usage statement. If giffgaff offered this package to each member the ideas board would really light up and get going. It's possible that ideas that loads of giffgaffers would love are being ignored because they simply don't know about them! So in conclusion:   Every month giffgaff should send out a personalised package to each member with links to ideas they might like to support depending on their recent activity. This message could be included with the monthly usage statement and they could even complement each other if there was a proposal to increase minutes on a certain goodybag or what not.   Thank you for taking your time to read this; I'd really love to hear any awesome ideas or suggestions you guys have about this :) Thank you to @hazel22 for encouraging me to propose this idea :D    Edit: Spelling & Grammar   ... View more

ok so following on from this discussion in contribute http://community.giffgaff.com/t5/Contribute-Innovation-Promotion/Duplicates-here-there-and-everywhere/td-p/8729144 hazel pointed out that lithium's own forum has a built in search when typing a subject title to a post so the idea is that when your making a new post and typing the title this search will bring up previous threads with similar words within it this may hopefully reduce the amount of duplicates we see but also create a better experience for us as members. rather than my initial suggestion of limiting it to the idea and top tips it could perhaps be rolled out across all forum sections but that will be up to giffgaff to decide if its needed in all or just a few my only issue is that i dont know if its a mobile friendly feature, if its not then oh well it will still be very beneficial. ... View more

The £5 goodybags should be a completely different colour than each other to stop poor sighted people making mistakes and buying the wrong £5 goodybags ... View more

I am happy and amazed to see so many ideas posted in which it is suggested that for one reason or another giffgaff/giffgaff community should be planting trees.   My suggestion is a simple one: why not offer a new Payback option that is towards a giffgaff fund specifically for tree planting?   As @helen_leigh suggested: a giffgaff wood to visit! Anyone? ... View more

Afternoon all :)   I would like to propose that giffgaff revisit the idea of being able to manage email subscriptions, so members can find and organise those threads they want updates on more easily.  I have 29 pages of thread subscriptions and want to delete some however this is very time consuming as there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for the order it is currently in.   This idea has been posted before back in 2011 by wollac11 http://community.giffgaff.com/t5/Submit-Great-giffgaff-Ideas/Email-subscriptions-sorting-amp-search/idi-p/819065. However it didn’t get taken forward because it didn’t reach the magic number of 10 kudos (I know we now need 20 kudos!) so it is currently in the ideas vault.   However, should it receive sufficient interest giffgaff will revisit it :)   From when I have posted this in contribute http://community.giffgaff.com/t5/Contribute-Innovation-Promotion/Wouldn-t-it-be-good-to-manage-our-thread-subscriptions-more/m-p/8712272#M235484 the consensus is that some sort of organisation would be useful. Thanks mr_mitch, philiplittle40 and sanwich for your comments  :)   I think it would be useful to have the option of ordering posts by: Chronological order by OP or the most recent post The type of forum e.g. blog, contribute, off topic, help etc. Those threads marked solved/unsolved (applicable threads only) Alphabetical by subject/title/keyword I’ve also posted this on the developers hub thread to see if anyone knows if this is possible http://community.giffgaff.com/t5/Contribute-Innovation-Promotion/Developers-Hub-Get-Involved/td-p/7794232/page/16.  I still don’t know the answer to this yet and won’t get a response from giffgaff until this idea is posted here and gets enough support with 20 kudos.   So, what do you think?  Comments most welcome, whether you support the idea or not  :)   Thanks everyone,   N4tz ... View more

This idea is similar to:  Expand-quot-Do-you-want-to-hear-about-us-quot-options   Except I'd like the option of being able to control which texts we receive from giffgaff not just emails.   After asking for help from the community on how to disable SMS's which I do not deem important SMS-from-43431-and-quot-Do-you-want-to-hear-about-us it seems it's not possible.   I've already disabled Contact permissions on My Details and Balance Notifications under Phone Settings.    OK, I accept they are not that often, on average once every week or two, compared to  every day when I first joined and hadn't disable marketing preferences. But the ones that still come through from 43431 I still don't find useful nor important.    Examples of the ones that still come through are: "Hi your goodybag is about to expire on xxx. If you haven't already, go to giffgaff.com to set your goodybag to recur." - I already know this and my goodybag is already recurring...   "Thanks for helping giffgaff in xxx, so far you've earned £x.xx. Check out your latest recommended plan at My giffgaff. Cheers". - I already received an email summarising this.   So I'd like the option of what type of SMS's (and emails) I can receive: - marketing - goodybag expiry - balance alerts - low balance - important announcements   In this case, I'd only like to receive very important annoucements by text. By this I mean, where giffgaff really need me (not want) to take action concerning the topic of the SMS. Random example of what an important message might be: "your account will be terminated unless you topup in the next 10 days".    Receiving an SMS or phone call, to me, is more direct and normally means I need to take action. I prefer to receive general information by email which I can check at my own leisure. I also travel a lot and have my phone switched on for emergencies. So I hate when I'm in a different time zone and get a text (or worse a phone call) from the UK which wakes me up in the middle of the night, for a bit of sales and marketing.   Contact preferences, should be enhanced to include email/SMS preference and giffgaff should properly categorise what is considered as important announcements.      ... View more