John Linton ....copy them.
Exetel has done, for a company of its size, a lot of innovation over its existence but we have really struggled to come up with really attractive ADSL plans over the last year or so. We have tried many different things over the last two years but have been unable to match Telstra's ever escalating "win back" programs nor TPG's "unlimited" packaging with their 'pretend' telephone service. We simply couldn't find a way of overcoming Telstra's marketing budgets nor could we bring ourselves to adopt the tactics of the scummier ADSL providers in terms of under provisioning and under resourcing provisioning and support facilities. That left very little leeway and practically no real paths to follow other than to just let the residential business we have built over the past seven years gradually decline - which still might be the best option. It's very difficult to make any real decisions under such circumstances.
So having watched the inexorable progress of Telstra's "win back" programs based on throwing lots of money at our customers to get them to change we almost reached the stage of saying there's nothing more we can do and we will have to give up on trying to convince our customers and prospective customers that "all that glistens is not gold" and that contended networks, poor quality support and expensive or fraudulent "add ons" are not really delivering what they think they will. We came to the 'brilliant' realisation that if the marketplaces we address think that either TPG's or Telstra Retail's offers are the best in the ADSL market then we should simply combine the appealing features of both (large downloads from TPG and 'win back' money from Telstra) minus TPG's contended network and minus Telstra's high priced add ons.
Too easy. So we found a way that we could do something like that and if we can persuade one or more third parties to work sensibly with us to make it happen we will offer to both new users and our current customers 'copies' of TPG's plans with $200 or so cash "win back" (for new customers) or "loyalty bonuses" (for current customers). So that would mean that we would give away as much cash as Telstra is offering (it may well have gone up recently but we have no real way of finding out) and as much download as TPG is offering (without having to use the sub-standard TPG network). Of course we don't have even TPG's marketing dollars (let alone Telstra's) so it is not a lay
down misere by any means that such a thing would be successful but we
will try out some elements of these ideas later today.
Will it work? I don't really know but no-one in Exetel has any ideas on how we can address the realities of the current markets so combining the principal attractions of the two current major 'market leaders' may well be the next best thing. If we can put the various 'logistics' in place we will provide a new range of plans (prefixed SOPJ) some time in the not too distant future. It is a strange feeling to become a copier rather than an innovative thinker but it's clear that no amount of innovative thinking can address a monopolist's cash give aways and the 'general' ADSL buyer appears to believe that all networks are equal in performance and that prompt and competent support is something they will never need and has no value to them so the only criterion for supplier selection is price. Fair enough.
We'll just have to wait and see.
Copyright © Exetel Pty Ltd 2011
ABN 350 979 865 46