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Investing in Service or Brand?

1 September, 2010 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

Vodafone has been named the most valuable British brand in 2010.

It spends millions of pounds each year sponsoring events such as London Fashion Weekend…. differentiating itself from its competitors in a commodity market.

Do customers care?

If you search twitter for “Vodafone” you quickly discover that customers are only worried about two things:

  1. The products that they offer.
  2. The customer service they provide.

(Fashion doesn’t get a look in)

It is difficult for the telecom giants to differentiate themselves by product, Apple will happily sell the iphone to all of them.

The twitter feedback on their customer service also shows a lack of differentiation, tweets range from “poor service” to “sucks” (their words not mine).

Maybe spending some of that marketing pounds on training customer service agents would create the differentiation Vodafone crave.

Branding will get new customers, but poor service will loose them

Image by Frank Starmer

Filed Under: Blog, Operations Analysis Tagged With: marketing, service differentiation, training, video

About the Author

James Lawther
James Lawther

James Lawther is a middle-aged, middle manager.

To reach this highly elevated position he has worked in numerous industries, from supermarket retailing to tax collecting.  He has had several operational roles, including running the night shift in a frozen pea packing factory and carrying out operational research for a credit card company.

As you can see from his C.V. he has either a wealth of experience or is incapable of holding down a job.  If the latter is true this post isn’t worth a minute of your attention.

Unfortunately, the only way to find out is to read it and decide for yourself.

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