General Discussion is more valuable than H&S !
on: 09/07/2018 | 20:20
H&S is extremely useful, of course, but I reckon GD might have more value, because it provides customers a reason to stick around and stay with giffgaff longer term.
The H&S forum gives users with a problem a quick-fix, but often that might very well be their last interaction with the community.
I reckon there are lots of giffgaff members that spend time on the GD forum, whereas without it they may have moved over to a different network.
I mention this because often I notice a certain amount of scorn towards GD, along with the opinion that its somehow less valuable than other parts of the community.
The thing is, customer retention is extremely valuable!
Alongside Payback I'd guesstimate that GD is responsible for retaining more long-term customers than H&S, by a long margin.
Of course I don't have access to the metrics to prove or disprove this theory, it's just a hunch.
What do you think?
on: 09/07/2018 | 21:06
without payback general discussion would lose a lot of contributers
on: 09/07/2018 | 21:14
An interesting theory but as you say,without the relevant stats it's impossible to reach a conclusion.
I can give you the figures for H&S usage,there are 3000 help requests a week + or - about 5% from week to week but we have no way of knowing how many of the 3000 members per week go on to stay with giffgaff for a long time because their problem has been solved.
How many members would you say regularly inhabit GD?Althougn I very seldom post there I usualy browse the first 50 threads ( I use a 50 threads per page linear layout) to see what's happening and I've always thought that there is quite a small pool of really prolific posters there but there's no way to tell how many members spend a lot of time in GD even if they don't post a great deal.
on: 09/07/2018 | 21:45 - edited: 09/07/2018 | 21:48
A lot of very good points made already here.
GD certainly has its place as an important forum, I'm sure it does encourage retention in partnership with payback, it's certainly what kept me with giffgaff in my early days.
It's no secret that many are simply here for the payback and being paid to chat is a perfect why to keep people on board. Would GD be used the same way if payback wasn't given is certainly an interesting idea. I'd like to think we'd see less one word responses in sticked threads at least 😂😂
@woodyuk does make a very valid point that although a lot of people use GD during their time as part of the community, a pool of prolific posters (I like that description btw) do dominate and its hard to establish just how many use that forum and stay because of it.
Equally there's many people who don't even use giffgaff as their main provider but use the forums to collect payback and simply keep a sim active by sending a text once every few months, which brings us back to GD being used to get payback without being a proper giffgaff user, so although keeps retention, doesn't promote growth. I haven't topped up since activating this sim 2 almost 3 years ago, although the new goodybags might actually change that. 
Edit: I've had this sim longer than I though! Almost time for my 3 year sticker 🎉
on: 09/07/2018 | 21:51 - edited: 16/07/2018 | 10:22
extreme_one wrote:
H&S is extremely useful, of course, but I reckon GD might have more value, because it provides customers a reason to stick around and stay with giffgaff longer term.
The H&S forum gives users with a problem a quick-fix, but often that might very well be their last interaction with the community.
I reckon there are lots of giffgaff members that spend time on the GD forum, whereas without it they may have moved over to a different network.
I mention this because often I notice a certain amount of scorn towards GD, along with the opinion that its somehow less valuable than other parts of the community.
The thing is, customer retention is extremely valuable!
Alongside Payback I'd guesstimate that GD is responsible for retaining more long-term customers than H&S, by a long margin.
Of course I don't have access to the metrics to prove or disprove this theory, it's just a hunch.
What do you think?
A lot could depend on what is meant by members and/or customers 
Considering anyone can post in GD without being a gg customer or even having an active gg sim I can't see how it would encourage anyone not to move networks
Also considering GD payback isn't restricted to a minimum spend on goodybags or PAYG etc can it really be valuable for customer retention?
I suspect that many if not the majority of GD only payback recipients use other networks as their main provider.
on: 09/07/2018 | 22:57
nominate wrote:
A lot could depend on what is meant by members and/or customers
What's the difference, really?
on: 09/07/2018 | 23:19 - edited: 09/07/2018 | 23:23
extreme_one wrote:
nominate wrote:
A lot could depend on what is meant by members and/or customers
What's the difference, really?
That's what I wondered
Maybe a customer could be someone who generates positive revenue/income for giffgaff by buying goodybags or frequently topping-up etc and a member could be anyone who posts on the forums?
on: 10/07/2018 | 08:33
One thing you've probably never thought of, people might decide to join giffgaff upon arriving on the GD forum from a search engine search. As the topics can be completely random - especially mine, which could be anything from baking bannock bread to keeping shrimp and Thai micro crabs, aurora pics and looking at the Moon or Pleiades cluster through a telescope. 
People are much less likely to arrive at the forum from those that create Trump threads and copy and pasted news stories, which there are a lot of these days.