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Clare Francis: It was two years ago last month that Talk Talk, the home phone provider owned by Carphone Warehouse, entered the broadband market with its free broadband offer. It was hugely popular, but as many of you will remember there was a lot of problems and customer service issues at first, and judging by some of the post on our forums some of you are still having problems. We have come to Talk Talk's head office today to speak to Marketing Director Dominic Stinton, and just ask him whether or not people can still trust the brand and what they have been doing to improve and overcome their difficulties, and ask them what lies ahead in the future.
Q1: Dominic, thanks for sparing the time with us today. It's now two years since Talk Talk first entered the broadband market, what's changed in that time?
I think that masses have changed really from the way in which people use the internet, to the number of competitors in the marketplace now. Two years ago you didn't have Sky doing broadband, there was no Virgin Media; now you've got a market which is dominated by the big guns like BT and Virgin Media, Sky etc., spending an absolute fortune on acquisitions, trying to acquire new customers. You've also got people who expect broadband to be on like a tap in the house really, so I think just a couple of years ago there would have been a lot of dial-up customers, so that's almost like you were watching the clock - so you'd log in, and you'd think 'I've been on for an hour now, I'd better log out again' - now, people expect it to be on tap, like gas or electricity.
Q2: When you launched two years ago you really sort of shook up the market with your free broadband offer, but along with that came some well-documented customer service issues, largely because of the huge demand for the product. I know that you have spent a lot of time and money trying to improve the situation and trying to resolve the problems, but judging by some of the posts on our forums some customers are still encountering problems. What have you done to improve the process and what should they do if they are having difficulties?
We're not ignoring those problems, I mean it's interesting we have our own members forum, so if you go on to the Talk Talk website you look up members forum, we actively encourage people to be open with any problems they're having, so I think that's number one, so we want to be really transparent and understand, we don't just want to pretend there are no problems.
Number two is that we have improved customer service enormously in the year since I've been here, and I mean I can only speak from my own experience. Now certainly when I joined a year ago it was a slightly bumpy kind of provisioning programme, but we have done so much to kind of improve that and I think that in 99% of all cases now when people sign up, modems are getting there on time, go-live dates are all going live when we say they are, so enormous amounts have been done to improve it. We've got a very formidable head of customer services who joined about the same time as me, Jackie O'Leary, and the real focus of the 'Exec', or the board on which I sit on has been very, very much operational in customer services over the past year.
Q3: So people shouldn't be put off from signing up from Talk Talk, because of things that they have read or heard about with regards to customer service issues?
Absolutely not. I mean the thing is [that] perception is a problem of course, and because there were problems two years ago then that hangs around. Now the thing is we've seen, in our own customer satisfaction surveys that we do, we've improved dramatically, but you know you still have that perception hanging around from two years ago. We hear from customers who join us abut what a nightmare they've had, with BT, Orange or Sky, but I think with us it has slightly plagued us.
All I can say is, in terms of 'putting our money where our mouths are' in terms of customer service, is that in October 2007 those very first broadband customers of ours, who had teething problems, all came out of contract. Far less people left our service than we anticipated, which to me proves that it's working and that we have got good customer service.
Q4: What's next for Talk Talk? Obviously you can't really get much cheaper, so if you can't come down in price what else can you do to take the market forward and expand your proposition?
It's a big question, because you know we launched with two massive marketing ideas. First, free calls between Talk Talk customers (that was when we were just a telephone business) then free broadband, so two massive, kind of industry changing initiatives, so how do you follow that?
For me I think the most important thing as a marketer is to listen to our customers really, and give them what they want, so I'm in the process at the moment of spending much more money on research to understand what our customers want, because it is still very early days. Some customers will want a relationship with us, some won't - some will be just happy that it's working in the background, and "that's all I need" - others will want a relationship [though] and I'm interested in those ones who want a relationship, what can we offer them.
We are about value and simplicity, and I think we're about challenging the market, and we're a bit like David and Goliath with BT and Sky, trying to do things differently. How can we provide great products which work well with broadband at a really good price?
Q5: Speed and download caps are becoming much more important with an increasing number of people watching the television through the internet and downloading video games, music and films - is that something that you and other providers are focusing on?
I think so, yes. The iPlayer has obviously been launched, and that has been really, really successful but it is a bit of a problem for us because with all this downloading going on it slows our network down enormously, so there is a lot of discussion between people like ourselves and Virgin Media with the BBC etc. We are slightly being crucified because our customers who are just using their broadband for email or personal finances are seeing the kind of congestion being caused by all this enormous amount of downloading going on, so something is going to have to be done I think in the industry - we need to build a better infrastructure for a start, we need fibre optic cables, the old copper wires are going to start groaning under the weight of downloads.
Q6: Could that affect that price for the customer?
If BT are having to invest in this infrastructure they are going to have to get that capital from somewhere. If they are going to have to invest themselves, they are probably going to have to charge us lot which could be a problem. Hopefully we will all come to some solution together, and as an industry working with the government we can do something that doesn't affect a valued brand like ours, for example.
Clare Francis: Dominic, thanks very much for your time.
