Blog articles

Attention.....you can’t break the internet

tom — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:08:39 GMT

Radio legend Sir Terry Wogan and BBC Radio 2 have launched a ‘Get connected campaign’ a guide to the older (and wiser) communities online. The BBC’s aim is to help more of their Radio 2 listeners get online and understand digital technology better, or avoid getting left behind.

We’re big believers in supporting anyone using the internet, after all, one of our members is 112 years old (okay, so that’s obviously a mistype), but Terry’s top tips for getting online leaves little room for much digital dignity – one of which is ‘you can’t break it’.

She’ll kill me for this, but my mum is in her 50’s (sorry mum) and she’s a Facebook fanatic, she books all her holidays online and has absolutely no fear that she may break the internet. On the other hand, giffgaff’s Claire (Loyalty and Retention Manager) said her Grandma (who's over 80 and signs off her emails 'Gmax') teaches her Mum how to use the internet, which is a turn up for the books.

So do you think the BBC are right that 50 plus year olds have a lack of knowledge about the internet? What experiences have you had with friends or family members? Does your Nan still stick a tenner in your birthday card, or does she use PayPal and send you an e-card?

People powering our Marketing

tom — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 22:49:19 GMT

We are people powered - we involve our members in our business and reward them for their efforts. True to our word, we kicked off giffgaff’s Tool Hire when we launched in November. As you know we don’t do mega advertising, so we can pass these savings onto to you. Tool Hire’s aim was to spread the word about giffgaff and make us famous.

Tool hire is closed for the time being but we have had loads of people hire one of our twelve tools (like The Poo Handler, The Gimp and The Cuddle Monster), and post their videos on You Tube. In return for taking part they received a V.I.G SIM (Very Important giffgaffer) which gave them free UK calls and texts for a whole year. We believe in the meaning of our name ‘mutuality’, you help us and we’ll help you.

The results of Tool Hire can be seen here . Some made us laugh, others cry, and some were just, well, a little worrying.

The V.I.G SIM’s are great, but we're also offering 5 x £5,000 prizes and who doesn’t want five grand? The prize categories are:

1) Highest number of views on YouTube

2) Funniest, as voted by the giffgaff community

3) Greatest number of votes from the giffgaff community

4) Most tweeted on Twitter(#giffgaff5k)

5) Best use of the tool, as voted by the giffgaff team

We'll be announcing the winners in April, so there is still plenty of time for the video makers and stars to promote their video to bag themselves £5k.

We expect the next couple of weeks to be busy, don't miss out on the action, follow us on Twitter and become a giffgaff fan on Facebook.

If you have taken part in Tool Hire and want to know more information on the prizes click here for full details. Plus if you want some tips and advice from the community about how to promote your video or giffgaff, head to the forum.

Good luck,

Tom

P.S. just dropped my SIM into a Nokia 3210…retro classic.

What do you really hate about mobile networks?!

vincent — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 09:10:27 GMT

A few weeks ago we posted the question to our community to see where we could improve or find any pitfalls we should avoid. And of course to just have a right old rant about some of the experiences we’ve all been having

It was very interesting for us to see some of the comments that came back, because a lot of it was exactly why we set up giffgaff. Beneath are a few examples of what the community hated the most.

Trick202: I hate the fact that they (mobile networks) love shouting about the latest handset they can flog you - but don't bother to support it, or support their customer services people by training them on it.

The lack of technical and specific knowledge of phones was something came up more than once. As t3chy said:

t3chy: screw call centres too, I know more about phones than them.

Obviously as giffgaff we don’t actually sell any phones with our SIM cards, but I guess we do have to support the legacy left by other networks, because people still use the phones they got with their original contracts. But when people buy phones straight off the shelf does the support lie with the network or with manufacturer? A good example of that failing recently is the Nexus One. So, although we don’t actually sell phones, we still try to support all formats by rewarding our excellent community for the many great answers they provide, as well as having our own support database. To me, giffgaff is a shining example of how things should work and how a community can come together to help each other.

A lot of people highlighted the huge number of different call-packages on offer. So much so, it’s simply impossible to keep track of what is the best deal, even at the same provider!

Jpc: Tricksey packages that make your head spin trying to remember all the catches. Top up by so much, get such and such free. Great when it works. Orange, you stink.

t3chy on Orange: Even on pay-n-go, you add a tenner for free texts, but there is a clause that means if you actually send one of those free texts, they kill your cat.

The general consensus is that although packages are not necessarily bad, the sheer amount of different packages on offer is mind boggling and very confusing. This is something we wholeheartedly agree with here at giffgaff. And that’s why we launched with a very simple tariff structure. But at the same time we’ve had many calls for action from the community to provide bundles, or packages; however you want to call them. So I guess the challenge for us is to provide something as simple as our tariff structure and apply that to packages. And I’m pleased to say, this is something we are currently working on.

Customer support is another thing which, unsurprisingly, was commented on a lot, how calls are handled, the waiting queues, etc.

Jameswilson: Call centres, great respect to all those working there, but I just don't want to have to call you, neither do I want you to call me. A smoothly operated Network should be able and want to run on minimal contact with its customers. Call centres should only be for major issues and as such should be staffed by knowledgeable experts, rather than poorly trained but well meaning people from overseas.

Ethani99: The most annoying thing is the 30 minute phone calls to 0870 numbers which you end up being transferred to 5 different departments only to go back to the first department and be told that they are right and you are wrong, God I hate that happening!

Thankfully we’ve kept the structure at giffgaff rather simple. If we look at our statistics, we can see that 99% of all issues that our members have raised have been answered by the community. There were of course a few which didn’t, but they were escalated and quickly solved for the most part. No phone calls have to be made, unless it is one of us calling you to sort something out. So no waiting around in long phone queues, tapping in this or that number, and no 15 different departments to get involved. Sorted!

Bigfatbball2: in general companies who don't give a **bleep** because they know they f****ed you over via the T&Cs and they are making bucket loads of cash for there share holders forgetting to ever give a **bleep** about there customers'.

I’d like to just say here that we do give a *bleep* about our members But let’s be honest, I think all companies say that in their marketing spiel. Hopefully the amount of changes we’ve already applied after receiving feedback from the community speaks well for us. Of course, if there is anything else we can do, please let us know on the forums, and you can be damn sure you’ll get a response.

Terrasofta: Rip-off basic tariffs (on-net, geo, cross-net, sms) -- giff making a good start, but could go even lower

At the moment I’m not sure we should go even lower. Aside from what we feel are fantastic basic prices and free on net calls/data, you get the added benefit of being rewarded for your contribution. This is something no other mobile network does. And it gives you the option to not only make great savings, but to actually make cold hard cash. So when you combine those two elements we think we are offering the best value. And if you like bundles, I’m sure you’ll be pleased with what is coming in the near future.

I think overall we’re heading in the right direction with giffgaff, but without the continuous feedback and support from our community we wouldn’t be in the fantastic place we are now. So with that I would like to thank you all for the great contributions and effort you’ve all put into giffgaff and long may it continue!

Many thanks,

Vincent

Ps. should you want to continue our discussion on ‘What you really hate about mobile networks’, you can do so here.

160 characters can say so much – the lost art of text messaging

tom — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:29:27 GMT

When Matti Makkonen (the founding father of the text message) ‘invented’ the SMS (Short message service), in the early 80’s, I doubt he ever thought it would become one of the world’s most used communication methods, or that 2.4 billion people would send and receive an SMS (text to you or I).

The beauty of a text message, like Twitter, is the restriction in characters. It is an art to communicate any message in a maximum of 160 characters, like a modern sonnet, the text can convey things that you may not be able to say to someone face to face. But, if the recent press is to be believed, the simple, eloquent and wonderful text message has been hijacked for evil and dastardly means.

The well publicised activities of Ashley Cole, Tiger Woods (who now has a i-phone text app named after him), Vernon Kay and not forgetting the previous misdemeanours of David Beckham and Shane Warne (allegedly) would have us believe, a text is the choice of sportsman and TV personalities who are talented, yet morally loose with a mobile phone.

The Sunday Times Style Supplement, coined the phrase 'sexting' (probably not top of mind for Makkonen’s as he mused over transporting messages at minimal cost) to describe just such illicit textual communication; but our relationship with our mobile and text messaging goes much deeper. Dawn Porter in today’s Stylist magazine says 57% of men don’t see a problem with illicit 'sexting', that may be because as The Sunday Times comments "...(the) mobile phone is a totally dedicated personal communication device" so why not send a ‘risky’ pic of yourself to a women who just happens not to be your wife…oh because it is WRONG.

But all is not lost for the humble text. That girl with the lovely hair from the L’Oreal adverts, Cheryl Cole, is carrying the torch for correct use of the text message (I guess…). Cheryl reportedly used less than the 160 character limit to inform Ashley that maybe, it was love on the rocks with no ice, and that he probably should book the nearest Travel Lodge.

All is not lost for Ashley and co either, after the Bentleys, Cristal and (possible) expensive divorces, why not get yourself and your text 'friends' on giffgaff, at least that way the texts will be free...Ashley, you can thank me for this advice by giving me World Cup tickets.

Let's end on a rallying cry, to reclaim the text message for good and noble deeds, and while we are at it, picture messaging. If you can say it in only 160 characters then it is an art in itself and after all sending a colleague a photo of the beautiful beach you’re sitting on, knowing they are in the monthly finance review, is priceless.

So fight back against those trying to ruin the text – after all I received a text I received at 3.12am on Sunday morning:

“Using a crisp bag as a duvet , a shoe as a pillow and I think the Penguin army will eventually attack”.

I have no idea what it meant but it was bizarrely funny, and it (probably) won’t end up splashed all over the front pages.

giffgaff freaked out about climate change.....

gaffer — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 17:02:57 GMT

Here at giffgaff we're we're passionate about many things - one, which we don't shout about much, is our impact on the environment.

Since moving into our new (actually a very old and second hand) office we've been busying ourselves putting in recycling bins, installing smart electricity meters - we're even going to be installing smart heating so that office space that isn't being used won't be heated.

So it was indeed challenging to read the second to last chapter in Levitt and Dubner's sequal to their fantastically popular book on the freakier side of economics called Superfreakonomics.

Hear are some interesting (and very well researched) facts from the chapter on climate change....

Human activity accounts for just 2 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions - the remainder is generated by natural processes like plant decay.

The worlds ruminants are responsible for 50% more greenhouse gas than the entire global transportation sector.

CO2 is not the major greenhouse gas - its water vapour instead. Current climate models don't know how to model this and various types of cloud.

A doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere (of which remember humans only account for 2% of) traps less than 2% of outgoing heat from the planet.

Atmospheric CO2's half life is roughly 100 years - so even if the world stopped producing CO2 it would be many hundreds of years before it returned to lower levels.

Although they don't deny that warming is actually happening or that it is likely that somehow humans are influencing what's going on the general thrust of the argument is that we really don't know much about why warming is happening and there is quite a bit of evidence to suggest CO2 may not be the main driver.

Indeed, it seems that the recent suggestion from one UK government dept that we could all do the climate a favour by stopping eating red meat and diary products could have hit the nail on the head.

So where does that leave giffgaff and other companies that want to be good global citizens? Should we aim to reduce our CO2 footprint or not? I think the good news we can hedge our bets - if humans are generally thought to be negatively impacting the climate then minimising the impact of humans has to be a good thing - and aiming for a low CO2 footprint goes a long way in doing just that.

Fortunately, the mobile industry is a relatively benign one from a CO2 point of view - especially if you factor in the benefit of journeys replaced by calls. On top of that giffgaff has always tried to take a minimalist approach to how we operate our business - so we don't have shops, sell handsets, run huge data or call centres or have a large management team - and of course we piggy back on the back of O2's existing mobile network.

So we'll continue to be frugal even if CO2 turns out not to be as evil as many people think - now, where's my chicken dinner and soya milkshake gotten to......?

Free SIM update...we're listening

tom — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:24:31 GMT

We have been listening to our members and received some feedback on the forum, through Twitter and e-mails.

giffgaff SIM cards have always been free but previously you had to top up when you ordered the SIM. Through feedback it seems this didn’t suit everyone, so instead you can now order a SIM without having to top up first.

So from today you can order a SIM, here and you don’t have to part with any cash, till you have the SIM card and are ready to get started. Sometimes little changes go a long way so if you have a friend who’s thinking about joining giffgaff, feel free to give them a nudge and get a free SIM.

Thanks

giffgaff needs a good slippering!

vincent — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:15:06 GMT

So, we're happily gaffing around in our new Beaconsfield offices for a couple of weeks now. And while we are as happy as little puppies with a new squeaky toy, it seems we've already managed to upset our neighbours a bit...

Whoops, I guess creating the hallway slip 'n slide was taking it one step too far :smileysad: (cardboard boxes from the move come in handy after all... great fun though!)

And so we've had a complaint come in that we make a lot of noise stomping around in our office and the downstairs neighbour would really like it if we could... well... not make so much noise while walking around!

Well, the person in question might just have a small point and here's why:

Aside from our fantastic slip ‘n slide, we had a coat rack assembling competition, after five flat pack assembly coat racks came in and ‘the men’ of the office had to pretend to actually understand the instructions. Seeing as they were made of metal, they made a satisfying clanging noise each time we dropped a piece on the ground… which was a lot.

Us stomping along with 'We will rock you' by Queen, while singing at the top of our voices probably didn't go down too well either. We just might have to adjust our fancy footwork with that one.

Talking about fancy footwork... you just have to see Robbie's impression of Beyonce! Man, he is gooood :smileywink: (perhaps aggravating the situation because he had tap-dancing shoes on...)

Hmmm, just writing this short list, and I haven't even gotten to the end of it by far, does give me an inkling of why we got the complaint in the first place.

Ah well…

As we’re incredibly compassionate, something obviously had to be done about this, as we’d hate to upset anyone! Oh yes, very unlike us, upsetting people ^^

So we came up with the idea of wearing slippers in the office. Sure why not, slippers will help when we finish setting up our American Wrestling ring for daily lunch break bouts! Okay, that last one might not be strictly true, but it would be great fun though :) Ewww, I just had a flash of my co-workers in those spandex wrestling outfits… maybe not such great fun after all…

Quick, back to slippers!

So, yes, slippers. Great idea, why not get some original slippers? Better yet, maybe the giffgaff community fancies designing some cool or silly footwear for us to wear while we’re in the office! So that’s what we decided to do. You lovely giffgaffers can decide what we wear around the office. Well, not completely, just our slippers, but that should be enough for now. You can decide how crazy, wacky or designer-ish our slippers will be. You design them and we will get them made and wear them here. Of course the winning designer will also get a pair of slippers made for them. So be aware of that when you design them. You have to walk around in them too!

I posted the competition up at the end of last week and already we’ve got the first designs in! So a big thank you to stephicino87, ukrides and ethani99! If you also want to get stuck in, please post your artwork here.

We can’t wait to see the results :D

Cheers,

Vincent

Get your friends on giffgaff

tom — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:05:01 GMT

Some good news, from today you can spread the word about giffgaff by ordering multiple SIM’s to give to your friends.

Once logged in, just click on Spread the word and Order more SIM’s, here you can get up to three lovely SIM’s to be sent to you, so you can pass them onto mates.

What’s in it for you? You'll earn 500 payback points when your friend activates and they will get £5 free credit to spend on UK calls and texts. And of course you can call and text all your friends on giffgaff for free, when you top up every three months.

Don’t forget you can also send friends a single SIM in the post or send an e-mail to let them know about giffgaff. Both will earn you payback points as a thank you for spreading the word about giffgaff.

Tom

Update on our people powered marketing

tom — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 18:27:09 GMT

We've had hundreds of films from giffgaffers wanting to get involved in our marketing thanks to our Tool Hire promotion. Bearing mind that everyone who meets the criteria and successfully uploads a video will get free calls and texts to UK mobiles for a year, its not surprising really.

In case you haven't seen any of the tool hire films lately, here's just a flavour of the many great films to have been added recently.

For those LadyGaGa fans out there, the Film Noir outfit appears on a dimly lit and atmospheric street. What starts off as a moody-classic soon evolves into a dance-off and a little argument with an angry security guard! See it here

'Les the Pigeon' features a student from the Saint Martins School who took the initiative to produce their own outfit and add a character, who now even has his own Twitter page. We love it and it has given us a new-found respect for the winged-wonders. See it here

Or are you out shopping and want a cuddle from these lot!? See it here

Watch more of these great videos here...enjoy.

The fish'n'chip verdict on the iPad....

gaffer — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:38:19 GMT

So we’ve had all hype and the pundit’s views on the iPad this week but the giffgaff team have just had a fish and chip lunch and announced their non pundit verdicts…..and they’re not good.

So here are some of the downsides that were circulating round the table….

Poor memory capacity, no Flash player (what? You can’t claim the best browsing experience without that surely?), a SIM card format no one has heard of, not as good for reading books as a “proper” e-reader, locked to the Apple book store, locked to Apple’s chosen network partner, no camera, no USB port and an inability to upgrade hardware and replace the battery.

There are of course the unsaid upsides of “being cool” and the neat UI eye candy. The price would be an upside too if the dollar price translated into pounds using a real world exchange rate – but the likelihood of that is about as high as Apple ever conducting market research.

The concept is spot on – an easy to use, portable, big screen computer – but it only comes just the way that Apple want it to, serviced by a book store and network provider they choose.

It’s much the same with many other smartphones - Blackberries, Palms etc but what is smart about it? Hasn’t the web itself – the thing all these devices purport to access in the best possible way – taught the world that open standards and customer engagement are the best ways to breed the best services – would Wikipedia, Tripadvisor and the like be here now if the people that built the web tried to control what went on it?

Many of these companies would argue that bundling the applications with the device gives them extra revenue streams that ultimately allows them to sell the device at a cheaper price – they may well be right but that doesn’t erase the fact that what they are doing, in a small way, is limiting personal freedom. Why shouldn’t we all have the right to be able to use a device which we have paid for in the way we want to?

An alternative economic argument is that bundling services and devices in a restricted way reduces competition and that in turn helps to keep prices higher than they would otherwise be. That’s clearly the argument that has won the day in some countries such as France where only selling locked devices is illegal.

So why don’t you tell us what you think and vote on whether device manufacturers should be allowed to restrict how we use their wares – just click here.

giffgaff HQ moves to Beaconsfield

robatgiffgaff — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:56:35 GMT

On Monday, the giffgaff team moved into new offices in the picturesque town of Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. The building we’re in is a beautiful timber-framed converted rectory, in the heart of Beaconsfield Old Town and dates its origins back to the 16^th Century.

We were previously based in O2's offices in Slough and the new environment will help us continue to develop our own strong sense of culture and identity. The biggest change is that we’ve gone from a large open-plan arrangement, to a number of creative spaces throughout the building. There are many excellent reasons for choosing Beaconsfield as our location, just look at our wonderful new neighbours such as Angelina Jolie, isn't that reason enough? ;)

In the building there's a communal meeting room, kitchen (complete with awesome new coffee machine) and a welcome area where guests can work on sofas, in front of a grand fireplace. There's a very open and warm feel about the space and there's a real sense of how exciting it will be to work here. The team has been settling in and getting to know the town well, including the local pub (we can strongly recommend the food).

I’ve uploaded some pics, so you can check out giffgaff’s new home for yourself. As you'll see, we still need to 'giffgaff' it with branding and get some art on the walls, but at least we're in!

So, what do you think of our new digs?

Feel free to send us any housewarming presents.

Rob

Our hands-on review of Google's new Nexus One phone

robatgiffgaff — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:12:45 GMT

Here's our first video review, featuring Google's new Nexus One phone. We hope you enjoy!

Rob

The best UK Internet allowance with giffgaff

kimatgiffgaff — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:20:51 GMT

Many giffgaffers have posted comments on our forums, blog and twitter talking about how happy they are to have free Internet with us until the end of May.Yes, we are quite proud of being the only mobile network offering free Internet but best value is sometimes not enough. What about our fair usage?

To help put things into context I thought it was important to understand what we mean by "fair usage". I’ve been through the T&Cs of all our competitors (so you don't have to...) and tried to check their limits for free or unlimited Internet:

Vodafone is not offering a free Internet bundle or reward. They charge it at 50p per day up to a maximum of 25MB.
Orange allows you 500MB per month with their Dolphin plan.
T-Mobile gives you 40MB per day with their “free texts and Internet for life” top-up reward.
Virgin goes up to 1GB per month.
3-Mobile gives you 150MB for every top-up until it runs out.
O2 does not specify what their fair usage is.

So what's giffgaff's limit? 100MB per day! Yuhhuuuu! This roughly equates to:

Visiting 2.000 websites a day.
Checking your facebook home page 6.000 times a day.
Tweeting 96.000 times a day. That is more than a Tweet per second for 24 hours!

Just watch out with your downloads, YouTube and Spotify usage and you're unlikely to reach that daily 100MB limit. Happy surfing giffgaffers.

From SIM card to Slalom

robatgiffgaff — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 19:24:33 GMT

Your giffgaff SIM card is pretty clever. Yes, it gives you free data until May and great quality calls and texts matching the UK’s lowest prices, but it’s also capable of a lot more too. If you’re anything like us and love to head off to the slopes for a bit of skiing action, there are some great apps that you can use with your giffgaff SIM card, to track your off-piste prowess.

One example is SportsDo (www.sportsdo.net), an app that you can download on to a compatible mobile that delivers real-time readings, such as speed and distance travelled during your time on the slopes. Back at the chalet, you can also transfer your stats to a PC and play out your route on Microsoft Virtual Earth. You can even broadcast your activities to the web portal, so that envious friends and family can see what you’ve been up to - can anyone say ‘après ski’?.

The app works on Window or Java-based handsets that either have built-in GPS, or can be combined with a small GPS device that you can connect via Bluetooth. You can use their free trial to make sure it works correctly with your setup.

Let us know of any other sporting apps for your mobile that you can recommend.

It's Payback Time....

gaffer — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:09:20 GMT

Lots of excitement here today as we’ve just sent out our first Payback statements – that’s our scheme for rewarding the members that have helped giffgaff.

I spoke last week about the fantastic level of involvement we’ve had on our forums and that’s been reflected in the Payback points earned by our members – the top contributors were awarded nearly 4000 points for their efforts in December which will be worth £40 when Payback points are converted to cash in May.

We’ve also had a good start to our Send a SIM programme – by sending a SIM card to a friend members can earn 500 points for every SIM that activates and their friends get a £5 airtime bonus too.

If you want to get involved its easy – just visit our payback pages to see what you can do and how many points you can earn.

And finally….. our Google Nexus One handset arrived today. Initial impression is pretty good – especially if you use gmail to run your life. Look out for our video review next week.

You won't miss the muzac: Member Service at giffgaff

robbie28 — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:14:31 GMT

So... we're a mobile company with no call centre.....d'uh?

Well here’s a thought: if call centres are so important for customer service why do so many of us hate calling them?

Yes, call centres can work well - like the one that fixed my Dyson at the weekend (long story), but they are no longer the only way to provide premium support. And they are often not even the method of choice for customers. Too often a call centre experience means hearing "please select from the following 9 options"; then long minutes of orchestral Coldplay followed by “Your call is important to us. All of our agents are busy. Please hold for the next available agent..”

And when you do get to speak to someone, often you won’t get the answers you need. Especially in a field like Mobile Services where technology advances so fast and spreads so widely that it’s impossible for even well trained call centre staff to know everything (like whether the SONY T610 needs an https or a plain http WAP gateway to enable GPRS for instance).

We believe there is a better way – one that’s cheaper for us to run (which means lower prices for you) and yet also gives a high level of service that will often be more informed, more useful, and more accessible than you could get from a call centre.

The key is to make use of the expertise and helpfulness out there already in the giffgaff member community, 24/7. No one person needs to know everything, instead we can tap the specific knowledge and passion of hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of individuals. All we do is provide ways to bring it all together. And, unlike any other mobile service provider, we reward members for helping out - by awarding Payback Points that can be redeemed for cash twice a year.

Here’s how it works. Whenever you have a query or problem there are 3 ways to get an answer:

1) Find it in our forum. The forum is where members post questions and other members provide the answers... 24/7. You can find the forum by clicking on Community. It’s best to start by typing your question into the search box to see if your question has already been answered. Or you can go directly to the relevant board. Ask the Community is the main section and has hundreds of help and support topics, while Top Tips has great guides created by members.

2) Find it in our knowledge base. This is the section of the site called giffgaff answers . It’s a database of information organised in a question and answer format like the FAQ s you’ll see on other sites. We are constantly updating and adding to this base of information, including adding information provided by giffgaff members. You can browse giffgaff answers 24/7 by clicking the category listing; or you can search for a specific question by entering your search term on the Support homepage.

3) Contact a giffgaff agent. Once you've ordered a SIM you can send confidential queries e.g. billing or payment details, to one of our small team of advisors by logging into giffgaff.com, clicking Support and then clicking the Ask an Agent link. We have a turnaround time of 24 hours for queries sent this way, and you can keep track of everything you’ve asked and what we’ve replied in the messages section of Support. The giffgaff agents also browse the forum and help out sometimes by giving definitive answers to questions that are getting bogged down.

So much for the theory, but is it working? Yes. Like a charm. So far we have had hundreds of queries raised in the forum and only two have been escalated to our agent team because they didn’t get answered quickly enough. And the more questions that get answered the greater the likelihood you’ll find your answer in seconds rather than waiting on the phone. Plus, the average time to get an answer to a brand new question in the forum is about 7 hours, which is way ahead of the industry benchmark of 20 hours; and many questions are answered much faster.

Not only that, some of our members have already gone above and beyond by creating brilliant support material without any prompting by us. Check out this ‘guide to getting giffgaffed’ which was created by member bigfatbball2. Or this guide to unlocking created by ethani99. It's not surprising then that 20% of our registered users actively participated in the forum in the 6 weeks between launch and the end of 2009 (compared to an industry benchmark of 1%).

This is one reason why we prefer the term Member Service rather than Customer Service, because when you want an answer you don't have to listen to muzac, and you don't speak to a stanger in call centre - you are helped by another member with a giffgaff SIM just like you. That’s real people power.

Robbie Hearn

Chief of Member Experience

Happy new year to the giffgaff community

gaffer — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 14:54:33 GMT

It’s a new year and there’s lots new things happening at giffgaff already – especially for our community of members.

We launched our “send a SIM ” feature just before Christmas and this was a big step for us as a business. Being people powered is about giving our members opportunities to help grow and run giffgaff – so now if you like what we do you can send your friends one of our SIMs.

The great thing is that in addition to being able to call for free between you and your friend, your friend gets a £5 airtime gift from giffgaff and you get 500 Payback points worth £5 too.

There’s been a bit of debate on our forum about why ALL new members can’t get the £5 – there are two reasons for this. First off – if we gave it to everyone then there would be some folks who would be tempted to order a new SIM every time the £5 ran out – clearly not smart business for giffgaff! Secondly – we really wanted to make these friend SIMs easy for our members to recommend – and we think it’s great if our members can offer potential new customers a better deal than giffgaff can!

Over Christmas we’ve been working hard on preparing our first Payback update where we’ll be telling all our members how many Payback points they earned in December. We’ve been really encouraged by the involvement we’ve had from our members – over 20% have been actively involved in the community areas of our website. The industry benchmark for involvement is only 1% so we’re really pleased that our community approach has been proven to be really resonating with our members.

In fact everywhere I look I’m seeing examples of where the community is really making a difference – here’s an example. Recent legislation has brought down the cost of roaming calls in the EU – but what we had missed is that the European Free Trade Association countries had mirrored the initiative – and this had led us to price roaming calls higher in these countries than we needed to. So thanks to the feedback from andy0 we’re now making plans to reduce roaming prices in Switzerland, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein to be in line with the lower EU rates.

We’re continuing to build up our resources for the community too – in January we’ll be releasing ideas management and voting features – so community generated ideas can be managed properly and the community itself can vote on what the best ideas are. We’ve also grown the giffgaff team to include a dedicated community manager – Vincent Boon has joined the team from Sony (where he managed the European gaming forums). He’ll be making sure the forum continues to be an interesting place to be and that we continue to listen closely to what’s being said there.

Mike

Meet the giffgaff member service team (At Derry!)

robatgiffgaff — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 09:51:45 GMT

We’d like to introduce you to a few more giffgaff-staffers; the small yet needed member service staff – those friendly folks that deal with your issues and queries. And again, we’ve also included a LKF (Little Known Fact) to make it a bit more personal. So please join me in welcoming the member service team:

Conor Tasker-Lynch, Customer Service Administrator:

Conor previously worked with MasterCard, on the Tuxedo project. Conor’s typical line of work to begin with was in Human Resources but he gladly jumped ship in Sept 09, in the early days of giffgaff to help set-up. Conor is now a team leader and our back bone for the giffgaff customer service team. LKF: Conor has a strange habit of losing his shoes when he goes out? And then finding them in the strangest places like the roof of his house.

Shaun McGrory, Customer Service Administrator:

Shaun started off as a customer service advisor working for SKY TV. He was then promoted to Team Leader and in Sept 09, while giffgaff was still in its infancy; Shaun was asked to join giffgaff, knowing little about it but wanting a new challenge. He is now a team leader for our giffgaff customer service team just like Conor. LKF: Shaun has an older brother (Nicknamed Fats) that was knocked down by an Ice-cream van. We kid you not.

Nigel Campbell, Trainer/Customer Service Advisor:

As well as being a trainer, Nigel is also another customer service advisor helping you with your queries. He previously worked as a trainer for Sky TV but has gladly come across to join the rest of us here at giffgaff. He’s our computer guru in the team and knows anything worth knowing about forums. LKF: Some say he was born in the Matrix, and that he can only read the giffgaff forum in binary…Yes…it’s the Megatron! (His Nickname)

Simon Barrow, Customer Service Advisor:

Simon was spotted a few months back as a great Sky TV agent, and so, after a few tests, got the chance to come across to giffgaff, as one of two new agents. As an agent, he felt at ease talking to Sky customer’s and could have talked all day. LKF: He was once referred to as Silver Tongue by a Sky customer because his ability to talk and talk – a nickname that just happened to stick.

Danielle Travers, Customer Service Advisor:

Danielle, the only girl at customer services, again, was doing great as an agent for Sky TV and so, after doing a few tests, alongside Simon, got the opportunity to come across to giffgaff. She, like the others, is one of those people that are making your journey with giffgaff as smooth as possible. LKF: The highlight of Danielle’s Christmas was getting a Marmite bear – not her laptop or Sat Nav, but her Marmite bear (a little teddy bear holding a tub of marmite!?)

We'll have more postings on member services for you soon.

Rob

Announcing our "handiest giffgaffers"

clairekav — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:14:25 GMT

Giffgaff rewards the handiest giffgaffers with V.I.G SIMs, giving them free calls and texts for a whole year. Congratulations to Bigfatbball2, Andy0, Ethani99, Borobabe and Phil8715!

giffgaff's voicemail

robatgiffgaff — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:12:27 GMT

Those of you already using your giffgaff SIM, will be familiar with the Newcastle tone as the ‘voice’ of giffgaff, whenever you pick up your phone messages. Our voicemail system was recorded with Tom Oldham, who also provided the voice over for our ‘What is giffgaff?’ film.

Our objective was to provide a voicemail that was positive and straightforward, both in tone and language. We initiated the project back in September and recorded all of the speech during 5 separate sessions. The starting point was to review a framework of prompts and really develop the language and terminology to make it feel much more human and conversational. Because the prompts are recorded as separate sound files, one of the biggest challenges was to ensure the tone of each prompts flowed naturally together. There were some amusing out-takes from the sessions, where Tom has added his own good humour. We’ve left a few in, for the keen-eared amongst you. My favourite one is “Sorry, I don’t know how to break it to you ... but that PIN’s incorrect.” Hopefully that’s one that you won’t hear too often!

What may surprise you is the depth and complex nature of all the different prompts on the system. Many people only hear the prompts related to listening to voicemail, but there are a number of additional and helpful features in the system. For example, if you’re going on holiday and won’t have your mobile switched on all the time, you have the ability to set up a temporary message so that any callers know you won’t be available. Very handy so your friends and loved ones know you’re not intentionally ignoring them.

But I think we've got an opportunity for our voicemail system to continue to evolve, in the same way giffgaff does, through its community. Perhaps we could introduce recorded greetings from our members in some way. What are your thoughts?

I’d be interested in your views.