More Iphone

Simplicity is a sim only deal which means you get just a sim and not a handset.

This deal benefits people who are happy with their current phone or people that are not in the UK for long periods of time.

This also tends to benefit older people who have no intention of getting a new phone but they like to make a fair few calls and pay as you go is costing them a fortune.

The other huge benefit of the simplicity deal is if you’re waiting for a handset to come out but would like to upgrade you tariff you can upgrade to a sim only deal.

When the phone you wanted is in store you can then upgrade onto a 12 or 18 month contract and pay an extra £10 a month to get a new handset.

A Sim only deal works like a contract as you need to have a credit or debit card for the two different checks that we do.

The first check is an address check where we verify that the details that you give us are registered with your bank.

The second check is your actual credit check.

Also with the sim only deal all your bills must be paid via direct debit.

A Sim only deal gives you more flexibility than a contract as it’s a month by month agreement. Where if your finances change and you decide that you don’t want to be paying for a contract each month you just write to O2 giving them 30 days notice and after those 30 days your agreement with us will end. As apposed to when your on a 12 month contract and you decide 6 months in that you don’t want the hassle.

Then you would have to pay for the remaining 6 months of line rental.

So whats the price range on Simplicity I hear you say?

It ranges from as little as £15 a month up to £60 a month.

£15 a month will get you 200 mins and 200 texts this is the equivalent to our £25 18 month contract.

For £25 on a simplicity contract you will now get 600 mins and 500 texts plus the choice of Unlimited texts to any UK network or Unlimited o2 to o2 calls (which can be used anytime) this has replaced our long weekends promotion.

Im sorry I have to rant today.

Well there was three of us in today, myself, Colin and Charlotte.

Am I right in thinking that during the day we are allowed to eat?

Today this blonde girl that’s been into our store many times, comes in to top up her phone and for some reason she has a bee in her bonnet because we haven’t seen to her the minute she walks through the door.

So as there is three of us in and Charlotte is on lunch that therefore leaves two of us to see to however many customers come through the door.

At the time she came in we were both deep in conversation with people.

I was explaining to a couple about phone memory and that you can expand the memory on certain handsets and not on others and that different phones and manufacturers take different memory cards.

Basically the advantages and disadvantages for example: You can print photos that you have on a phone with a memory card as you can put the card into your computer or alternatively take it into boots. Also if you have a lot of contacts you can store them on your sim, phone memory and on a memory card which you can therefore back up on a computer.

When the young lady in question huffs over to me and says sorry! Can you do my top up? So I apologised to the couple and spoke to the young lady.

Then she starts saying “what’s wrong with this store I always have to wait ages, I never have to wait ages in the Bluewater store.”

I told her how untrue that was and that we were short staffed as there was only three of us. To which she responds “where’s the third person?” I know I probably sounded sarcastic but I had to reply “On lunch, we are allowed to eat these days”.

I thought in the UK we were used to queuing I know most of us complain about it but huffing and puffing does not make you get seen any quicker.

So please if you go into a small store with only two people and lots of customers be patient, you will be seen to eventually.

The iphone

There has been talk for months and now its finally confirmed that O2 will be the network to bring you the revolutionary phone which is also a wide screen ipod.

This means that you can make a call by simply tapping in the name or number in your address book, favourites or call log. This is a touch controlled handset that lets you enjoy listening to music, audio books, TV and videos on a 3.5 inch display.

Well what do we think…..

I’m really not sure what I think at the moment, the idea of the iphone is amazing but so was the idea of the Nokia N95 and look how over hyped that has been, with its constant problems and the poor battery life.

If it works well I think this can be an amazing leader for O2.

As so many people have been talking about the iphone and as we are the only network to have it surely that will mean more customers for us and bad news for our competition.

I have been speaking to my colleagues about what they think and just like me they’re not sure whether its being over hyped I guess we won’t know that until we have some to play with and to sell.
The only other point that came up was how expensive it is to get the iphone with it coming on £35+ contracts but still costing a fee of £269. 
My first thought was ipod’s are cheaper than that alone…but I do also see why someone would want the iphone as you wouldn’t need your phone and your ipod as its combined.

I will be updating this blog again with more thoughts from my colleagues.

Today is going to be a great day.

I have a bit of a problem to sort out but it shouldn't be too difficult.

I signed a customer up yesterday to one of our new Simplicity deals. These are the new month by month contracts that basically means all you'd have to do if you wanted to cancel would be to give O2 one month's notice as it's a month by month SIM-only contract. Which means you get a SIM and either use a phone that you're already happy with or you buy a handset only at a 30% reduced price.

The problem for me is my customer needs his phone unlocked and I have constantly called the number orange have for dealing with unlock codes but it's useless - all it does is ring and ring then ring off.

So I decide to send an email to my area to try and get some other ideas on how to solve this problem. Before I hear back my colleague Christina has an idea to loan my customer a loan phone in the mean time, as Orange told him it would take them ten days to send him the code.

Blinding idea. Why didn't I think of that? I had a few responses from people from various stores including my area manager who is in fact legendary for being the saviour and helping avoid a cancellation.

The day was so so really, it seemed to be quite busy for the wrong reasons we had many enquires about our Simplicity deals but everyone seemed to have some sort of get out clause in why they didn't want to take such an amazing deal, and the Pre-pay upgrade that I tried to convert into a SIM-only deal mainly calls abroad so this wouldn't have saved him any money.

After going for a well deserved early lunch I get back on the shop floor and hope to work some magic. I feel like I've been talking and talking about Simplicity with not much selling until an older man and his wife come in asking whether we can offer the Online Simplicity deals these are the same one month contracts but online do very different offers to us in the store. The customer was looking at the online 25- for £25 you get 600 mins 1000 texts and our long weekend minutes which are free calls every Saturday, Sunday and Monday in the store we only offer half those text messages.

To what I respond yeah we can do this for you in the store but they will do the credit check with you on the phone and send you the SIM in the post within a few days. So I find the deals the customer was mentioning online and once they are happy I call the online team and put the order through they talk to me for a few minutes before talking to the customer. In the meantime I run around the store asking all my colleagues whether they know what plu code I use for the online sim only. The plu code is how I put the item through the till and how it shows on our weekly figures as to what we have done.

I even called our other store they had no clue either so I had to just put it through with any old online plu ha now that's professional eh?

After that the day seemed to just drag for the last part I swear from 4pm till 5pm we probably had one customer.

As we'd closed the door and Christina had declared the tills the old guy from upstairs who is quite simply the most annoying person ever. I swear he says the same silly questions like “I’ve deleted a saved message is there anyway I can get it back”. And “Can o2 send me a copy of my phone usage” for a pay as you go phone. Was outside expecting us to let him in for a top up, we were closed and the tills were cashed up so we therefore couldn't let him in. I swear because we've helped him out a few times he thinks he can take advantage of us. Well it's not going to happen.

I am a part time Sales Professional for o2 where I basically sell phones ha. Sounds easy, it can be but it isn‘t always. After a few well deserved days off I am back in our small store on the high street in Kent. As I haven’t been around for a few days, I make myself a well needed cuppa before finding out what our figures are for the week to date.

As a store we are set targets to sell certain things for example new contracts- meaning as a store and as individuals we must connect a certain amount of people each week to o2. 
My individual target is 3 new and 1 sim only a week. We also have a target for how many customers we can keep on o2 meaning how many we upgrade to a new contract each week again my target is 3. The other areas are sim packs meaning new sim cards for pay as you go customers. New pre pay and upgrading pre pay- where a customer that is continuing to stay on o2 can upgrade and either get an amount off a phone or a certain amount credited to their phone within 14 days.

Hitting or missing or targets shows whether as individuals we are worthy of a pay rise and as a store it calculates how much bonus we do or don’t get after the 3 months.

We are now on six new contracts which isn't bad considering we finished on six last week. The main focuses are new contracts, upgrades, Pre pay new and Pre pay upgrades, Sim cards and Top up‘s.

 We will lose a day due to the o2 premiere so these next two days are vital if we want to hit target on our new contracts. As a company o2 have given us all the day off to go to the o2 arena at the dome, for a trial run show. So we can then therefore let our customers know what to expect from the o2 as an entertainment venue.

Our mornings are always quiet as we're a small store, so it gives us a chance to get many jobs done before the rush, giving us more time to spend with our customers.

Funny story…there's a knock to our back door which must be the delivery so me being me I open the back door forgetting Christina (She’s the French girl I work with, you’ll hear me talk about her quite a bit. She’s a comical character because she’s very ditzy, and she tends to blame her French for that even though she’s lived in England for ten years or so.) doesn't have the code. So we're stuck with a buzzing sound until Tanya (She’s my manager she‘s a Jekyll and Hyde sort of person. One minute she‘s everyone‘s best friend and the next she can be seen to be fake. So I never really know how to take her) arrives. Luckily for our sanity the alarm switches itself off.

Well not an exciting start what with the deafening buzzing sound, my next trick is to sift through the last few days emails.

I thought it was strange that a guy was asking for such a girlie handset especially as he said he was getting a new phone for himself as we don‘t normally get many guys wanting the Prada especially as it’s a touch screen phone. So I showed him the LG Prada handset- I'd never played with it before as we havent got this on a demo.

The touch screen was much better than I thought it would be, as the LG Chocolate was a nightmare and because of the many faults o2 discontinued the handset.

The customer is happy with the LG Prada so I get to processing the upgrade on the computer but it just says error. Ok! I can deal with this our retail team maybe able to access it…sadly for me and my customer they cannot. So I have to send my poor customer away for an hour or so.

In an hours time I check the system to see if it works…it seems to be working so I test it out but I accidentally upgrade the customer to some random non existent Motorola.

So after lots of stressing from me, I call retail and see how I can rectify the situation before my customer returns. I manage to rectify the situation and my customer returns and leaves happily.

It's not even Thursday and the "Say no to drugs, say yes to life" band are back they're a combination of swing and 60s and I swear we hear the same songs every time they return. They are an average bunch of guys between 30s and 40s who all dress the same in blue trousers and safari tops. I don’t mind the odd Rat pack song in fact I love “Ain’t that a kick in the head” but do they never change their set list. But some days they do get a good old crowd out in the high street, all ages jiving.

The last few hours are the longest and when we near close the annoying old guy from upstairs decides to come in. He’s harmless enough but I swear he always asks questions about things on his phone, when he normally shows us what he wants to do so it never makes any sense as to why he needs our help. So with the jangling of the keys, he thanks us and leaves the store. 

Home time!!