topic Re: Residential accounts and email in Plusnet Feedback

Residential accounts and email

decomplexity — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 11:21:13 GMT

I am a 'legacy' PN business customer and probably have every combination of PN services in addition to broadband - 'home pages' websites, Preview PAYH websites and PAYH websites, with the first two using PN's traditional email service and the latter using Plesk Qmail.
I recently suggested to a colleague who wanted to change his domestic broadband service that he had a look at PN, with the proviso that the former bundled webspace services had been withdrawn and that if he wanted this from PN on a residential contract he would need to use PAYH.
His reply was "Fine, don't need any webspace, but what about email - there is absolutely no mention on their website of email for residential customers, and even if I were a business customer there is no mention of using an imported domain name as part of my email address rather than PN's default"
I realise that saying what isn't included in a product is not conventional marketing wisdom, but PN are not selling soap powder and a summary page covering what was included and what not included in each of the offerings would be helpful. PN used to provide a detailed table comparing features in each product, but no longer.
Looking at PN's contractual offerings on the PN Home page, my colleague has a point. Or are we both misreading PN's literature? There is lots of Help on setting up email (and webspace for that matter) but no offering!

Re: Residential accounts and email

Oldjim — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 16:15:31 GMT

Moved here as it is clearly a problem with the marketing of the broadband product

Re: Residential accounts and email

adamwalker — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 09:11:15 GMT

decomplexity,
Thanks very much for highlighting this. I completely agree with the points that you have raised there and even though the majority of broadband accounts you can sign up for in the UK include free e-mail we should be transparent about this and not make assumptions on the customer's behalf. Let me know if you disagree but I think that it should be in the FAQ section (following the 'find out more' links on the front page of the portal.

Re: Residential accounts and email

decomplexity — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 14:24:03 GMT

Thanks Adam
I don't think that FAQ is the right place for this information, however.
Apart from the fact that such info would be 'submerged' since the FAQs are otherwise currently 100% broadband, this would not highlight what is and what is not included in each product.

Could I raise a plea again for a complete product comparison table like the ones which used to feature in each of the two product groups (residential and business)?
It is the work of a few hours to assemble an updated version of this which covers all the offerings (residential and business together). Such a table will not necessarily lose PN potential customers since it is usually diabolically difficult to find out from your competitors' websites exactly what they are really offering and I know a number of individuals who have signed up with different vendors and only then finding out that the service didn't suit their needs ("Hello Mr NewlySignedUpCustomer; I agree that our website and T&Cs didn't exactly say that each email is limited to 25 addressees , but...."). You might well gain customers by engendering confidence that what you see is what you will get. You might also induce existing customers to uptrade, e.g. to 832k upload speeds or larger-capacity websites.
Finally, why not put yourelf in the position of a potential customer who is looking for a suitable product on your website or - particularly - one who is newly signed up. The latter sees lots of Help screens and forum posts about website Home pages, CCGI PHP services, Preview, and so on. He or she starts thinking: "There was no mention of these when I signed up and I see no way to elect to get these interesting and valuable services". There is nothing at all wrong about stating: XXXX (legacy accounts only) - provided you state somewhere what a legacy account is!

Re: Residential accounts and email

adamwalker — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:29:21 GMT

I agree completely, I do see what you are saying that this would not take too much work but we can't just push through changes like this in an instant I'm afraid. My mission at the moment is to keep pushing for improvements for the first steps in the customer journey as we need to be setting the right expectations, keeping our offerings transparent and easy to find. I am taking what you say on board and will present this to our content team. As soon as I have some comments back from them I will let you know.