Broadband, roaming abroad, increasingly advanced services and offers. The needs that individuals and companies intend to satisfy when they choose to rely on a telephone operator are increasingly based on a digitization horizon that puts the internet first, both on landline and mobile.
FIRSTonline asked Quang Ngo Dinh, Marketing Business Manager of Vodafone Italia what the main requests of customers are today, especially in the business sector, and how one of the most important operators in our country tries to respond to constantly evolving needs.
FIRSTonline – Next year Roaming costs will definitely disappear throughout Europe. Vodafone has decided to anticipate the times by eliminating roaming for consumer and business customers. What will be the main advantages in terms of tariffs and what should consumers do when they travel abroad?
QUANG – The internationalization of companies is one of the most important aspects on which Vodafone has decided to focus. In a constantly evolving society, it has become essential for companies to internationalize and digitize their business, a need that we cannot and must not ignore.
Precisely for this reason we have decided to anticipate the European regulation. Thanks to the elimination of roaming, Vodafone customers will work all over the world exactly as they do in Italy, without having to worry about tariffs and their travels. It's not an advantage that can only be reduced to the economic aspect, but it's a novelty that also translates into greater freedom. I no longer have to worry about anything before, during or after my trip abroad. Canceling roaming means being able to behave abroad as if you were in Italy. Companies will have one less problem in carrying out their business internationally. Affordable rates for businesses already existed, but now a new step has been taken. On a practical level, calls, SMS and Giga are also included abroad with Vodafone's Red plans. It will therefore be possible to use the traffic at one's disposal in Italy also abroad. In countries where the Vodafone network is present, SMS and Giga roaming minutes are unlimited based on your national plan. In other countries there is a maximum roaming traffic of 100MB per day.
FIRSTonline – Vodafone has also implemented initiatives for professionals with a VAT number that are not limited to tariff advantages. What does the new “First Class” service offer?
QUANG – For some time now we have created an assistance service dedicated to the world of professionals. Prima Classe is a customized model that responds to the specific requests of our customers. It is an initiative that goes beyond the simple call center service. Each company has a team of personal experts, always the same, at its disposal who take care of managing every need.
In doing so, it is also possible to create a memory of customer needs and the latter are taken over by someone who manages them end to end, with whom a relationship of trust is created over time and who knows the company with whom in detail has the duty to work. Each team is made up of two or three people and is headed by a team leader that Vodafone presents to its customers.
FIRSTonline – Vodafone recently launched the second phase of We Care which, among other things, rewards customer loyalty with free internet gigabytes. Exactly what does it consist of?
QUANG – We Care is a very broad program that concerns companies and individuals and consists of a series of initiatives aimed at Vodafone customers which aims to consolidate and enhance the relationship of trust with customers, through a series of concrete actions, in the areas of connectivity, transparency, recognition of customer loyalty, and the accessibility and effectiveness of the service For example, for the launch of the second phase of the programme, we have chosen to reward customer loyalty by giving away Giga depending on the years spent with Vodafone . Business customers can be rewarded up to 20 Giga.
Furthermore, as regards the latter, we extend to everyone the possibility of surfing with the 4G network and Fiber technology. All plans, therefore, include fiber up to 500 Mpbs. The Roaming free service and the Guaranteed Network are also programs included in We Care. It is a way of rewarding the ongoing relationship that is created between Vodafone and the companies.
FIRSTonline – Speaking of "Rete Garantita", the service with which companies will be able to monitor the network performance of their Sims, what will be the tangible benefits of this "supervision"?
QUANG – Guaranteed Network is a service aimed at VAT numbers and companies that will start in mid-June. What we will do is guarantee and certify the network for customers. Through the My Vodafone Business App it will be possible to check the network performance of company voice SIMs, monitoring the percentage of successful calls made.
What we intend to do is guarantee a standard of reliability equal to 96%. The customer will have the opportunity to view the report on the quality of calls made, navigation on the fast 4G network, directly measuring the speed of the network through the speed test. In case of interruptions or performances below the guarantee threshold we guarantee a refund. It is a promise we make to our customers because it seems right to us that a company that counts on us should be able to count on a fast and reliable network.
FIRSTonline – Fewer and fewer customers use "vocal" customer service, preferring Apps, websites and social networks. How has the way Vodafone deals with them changed?
QUANG – The relationship with the customer has always been one of the pillars of our strategy. On the one hand, through our competence centers and the Prima Classe service, which we mentioned previously, we guarantee our support to customers in the traditional way, one of our great strengths, on the other we are witnessing the trend of many customers who, increasingly, they appreciate digital means. Thanks to the latter, not only has the number of interactions increased, but also their frequency. Through the App, for example, you can check the remaining credit, the remaining Giga, the SMS sent, etc. Without digital these checks would have been much less frequent.
The My Vodafone and My Vodafone business applications have become the main interaction channel for our customers. Through these we can also better identify their needs and respond promptly. The site and the various social networks on which we are active also contribute to improving our relationship with customers. Through our present channels Facebook, Twitter and YouTube we reached about 840 thousand interactions per month.
FIRSTonline – We cannot ignore one of the key themes of the last period. How is Vodafone facing the "national battle" of the fiber and what will be the challenges for the near future?
QUANG – It's a good battle, it's a battle to help companies digitise. Today fiber is the first request we receive from our customers, it has become an essential condition for carrying on their business. According to Ernst & Young's research “Ultra Broadband Observatory on Small and Medium Enterprise segments, more than half of companies would like a bandwidth speed 10 times higher than what they have.
We want to bring broadband, fiber, to as many businesses as possible. We have launched the offer of fiber optic connectivity up to 500 Mega in the cities where we have an FTTH network, namely in Milan, Bologna and Turin. In the other cities we are increasing fiber coverage to 100 Mega. Thanks to the agreement signed with Enel last year, we will be able to further expand our coverage and we have already activated the first 1 Gbps customers in Perugia.
In this context, our flagship offer is what we call e.box. The offer with landline, mobile and internet in a single solution which includes roaming in Europe, 4G and fiber optics up to 500 Mbps included and an integrated service of your choice between 1 Tb of cloud storage space and Mobile Pos. Our The aim is to shorten the gap between what the company already has in terms of fiber and what it would like to have.
