Hello (Insert Your Mobile Carrier Here)???
Talking with Amit tonight, I posed my current question of the week about my (and all) wireless carriers:
“Why don’t I get an email when a new cool phone is added to the lineup?”
Better yet:
“Why don’t they ask me if I like my current phone?”
Are new customers that important to the carriers? The margin on handsets is massive. Each carrier spends millions of dollars a year on online aquisition campaigns, celebrity tv endorsments, and sponsoring massive events like the Vans Warpped Tour (Cingular was plastered all over everything at Warped SF yesterday). These millions of dollars are saturating the new subscriber market and creating massive amounts of un-needed noise.
What about their BEST customers? The customers that, as Amit pointed out, spend thousands of dollars a year on new technology. Then go tell their friends about it. I’ve personally seen what can happen when you talk enough about say, your Sony Ericson T610. An absolutely fabulous phone, which all of the carriers have stopped carrying. Did they ever ask me how much I liked it? Or how many of my friends went out and bought one after I had been raving about it for months? Or, best yet, how interested I am in something even remotely similar to it? Nope.
How about the new Treo? T-Mobile isn’t offering it yet. I can’t even ask for an email about it, or any other new phone from T-Mobile. Yet, if I check the blogosphere, I know that it’s coming.
All of the carriers could take a clue from this line of thinking. In a world where they cared about the customers that have attained. They’d ask me who I am, what kind of phones I am interested in and, if I’d like to be contacted when they’ve either released something or have something new on the horizon. After they had that information, they’d figure out if I was a boomer, or a generation xyz’er.
If I’m a boomer, they’d find phones with simple features, and big buttons. Because, if I’m a boomer, I probably don’t need the newest in java and mobile gaming technology, or even a camera on my phone. If I’m a gen xyz technophile, they’d find me the newest and cutting edge cameraphones with downloadable java games, and the best text messaging interface on earth. Or, If I’m a combination of both, they’d find me the coolest $500 plus phone on the market from the greatest designers on earth, because I want to be sure to have the best phone that exists.
They’d take all of this market data, and they’d send me an email about these phones, and I’d be happy to get the email. Because my cell phone is the only thing that stays with me no matter where I am every single minute, of every day. Even when I am sleeping.
Amazon?
