24.07.2024
Study provides current findings on consumer preferences:O2 sharpens its positioning as a particularly customer-friendly telecommunications brand
The O2 brand is continuing on its path of understanding the needs of its customers particularly precisely and developing suitable products. Unlike in the past, O2 will in future talk explicitly about how the brand responds to customers wishes - and how this can be done even better in the future. A representative consumer survey shows that there is a discrepancy between what customers want and what telecommunications providers promise and how they are perceived. O2 is addressing a key customer wish with a cost transparency campaign entitled “O2 Pay Stop”, which is being launched at the start of the O2 positioning.
A recent representative survey of consumers in Germany commissioned by the telecommunications brand O2 provides an insight into the specific offers they want from their telecommunications providers.
The strongest desire is for transparent pricing, such as no hidden price increases or additional costs, followed by a reliable and fast connection at home and on the move. In third place, consumers long for satisfactory and fast solutions to their problems. The results hardly differ between providers or brands.
The study also indicates that existing offers are not sufficiently well known, for example when it comes to price transparency. In future, O2 therefore wants to talk more about how the brand responds to the wishes of its customers and how new offers can be designed even better for their benefit.
Andreas Laukenmann, O2 Telefónica
”As an industry, we may not have listened enough in the past to what consumers want from us. O2 has always been very customer-orientated, has made fair offers and has constantly changed the market with new, customer-oriented products. In future, we will place this even more strongly than before at the centre of our communication and raise our customer orientation to a new level. The motto is: We not only do good things for our customers, we now also talk about them. In this way, we are increasing transparency in the market for consumers,” says Andreas Laukenmann, O2 Telefónica's Board Member for Private Customers and thus responsible for the O2 brand.
Cost transparency and fairness with “O2 Pay Stop”
The study shows that one of the biggest wishes is more cost transparency. With the “O2 Pay Stop” and the associated broad-based campaign, O2 is emphasising its own fairness, from which customers have long benefited. O2 has been offering separate contracts for the tariff and the mobile device for 15 years. Once the handset has been paid off, the payment ends automatically without the customer having to do anything. “This is anything but a matter of course in the telecommunications industry,” says Andreas Laukenmann.
“O2 Pay Stop” is the first campaign under the new basic idea of O2 brand communication “Why not?”. O2 has set itself the goal of questioning the conventions of the telecommunications industry and changing them with concrete offers. “O2 Pay Stop is the beginning. In the coming months, we will take up further customer wishes, present our solutions, develop new products and actively talk about them. We will show that trust and sympathy can be the defining concepts in the relationship between telecommunications provider and customer,” says Andreas Laukenmann.
Focus on customers for 20 years
O2 has always been close to people's needs with innovative products
With its core brand O2, O2 Telefónica has focused on customer orientation since the brand was founded. With products such as O2 Homezone, the mobile landline number, or O2 Grow, the automatic increase in monthly data volume, O2 has been close to people's needs from the very beginning. In addition, O2 Telefónica has invested more than ten billion euros in the expansion of its network and services over the past ten years. Both have received multiple awards.
“Our success proves us right: We have continuously increased the number of O2 contract customers in recent years, and in the last five years alone we have increased the number of new customers by more than 16 percent. At one percent, the churn rate is at a historically low level,” says Laukenmann. “With our consistent customer focus, we will continue to improve the perception of our core brand O2 step by step, win over new customers and further increase the loyalty of existing users. In this way, we will generate sustainable and profitable growth for O2 Telefónica,” says Laukenmann.
Background to the study
In June and July 2024, 2,000 customers of all German mobile communications providers were surveyed by market research company Kantar on behalf of O2 as part of focus group interviews and a representative survey. The results provide information about the most important customer needs as well as age and gender differences.
| 1) | “O2 Pay Stop” means that the customer has paid off the end device in full at the end of the hardware installment payment and the hardware costs no longer apply. The total amount of the installments plus the down payment for the device corresponds to the one-off price of this device at O2. The obligation to pay in installments ends automatically at the end of the agreed term. |