Mystery Caller wants his son, who has just started secondary school, to have a cheap phone that can be used for emergency contact whenever he is away from home. He also wants a decent contract for it. What deals can the networks offer?
5: Virgin
The most frustrating part of our conversation came towards the end. I queried Seddy about blocking adult content on the phone. She couldn’t quite understand this and I had to explain what it was several times
Manner – 2/5
Understanding – 3/5
Knowledge – 3/5
Helpfulness – 2/5
Clarity – 2/5
Overall – 2/5
Total – 14/30
4: O2
Leanne’s pitch was vague and I had to prompt her to give exact model names, which she initially referred to as a “Samsung”, “Nokia” and “Alcatel.” She didn’t do a good job of convincing me why I should buy any of the devices
Manner – 3/5
Understanding – 2/5
Knowledge – 3/5
Helpfulness – 3/5
Clarity – 3/5
Overall – 3/5
Total – 17/30
3: Vodafone
I asked if Miriam could tell me more specs and she spent a while searching for them. It turned out she was looking through another website, but couldn’t get the specs because her computer was being slow
Manner – 3/5
Understanding – 4/5
Knowledge – 3/5
Helpfulness – 4/5
Clarity – 3/5
Overall – 4/5
Total – 21/30
2: EE
Lynn explained WiFi Calling allows my phone to make or receive calls using an available WiFi connection whenever my phone reception is bad
Manner – 3/5
Understanding – 4/5
Knowledge – 4/5
Helpfulness – 4/5
Clarity – 3/5
Overall – 4/5
Total – 22/30
1: Three
I asked Joe if Three could put a limit on my son’s call usage and he told me that Three is the only network that would enable me to do that
Manner – 5/5
Understanding – 5/5
Knowledge – 5/5
Helpfulness – 5/5
Clarity – 5/5
Overall – 5/5
Total – 30/30
Summary
Mystery Caller wanted a cheap phone for his son that can be used as an emergency contact whenever he’s away from home.
Seddy from Virgin was very rude and I was really frustrated by the fact I had to explain some really simple information to her. It felt like we were going around in circles.
Leanne from O2 displayed a reasonable amount of knowledge, but wasn’t really all that convincing when selling devices to me.
Miriam ruined her recommendation by spending ages trying to find the specs of her preferred phone for me. I’m not really going to take a recommendation seriously when you don’t know much about it yourself.
Lynn from EE showed great initiative by pushing the EE brand and advising why the Harrier was such an ideal choice. She also did a good job of pushing other EE products, such as WiFi calling and the EE phone app.
Joe takes top spot, however, because he used his own personal experiences to really sell me the advantages of the Samsung Galaxy J1. He sounded like he really knew about the products he was selling to me.
Full article in Mobile News issue 597 (September 14, 2015).
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