Orange boss “ashamed” of how they treated customers

If there’s one thing that many business heads know, it’s that it’s essential to keep customers happy by treating them right. Of course, working hard to ensure that the company brings in profits every year is also near the top of list of priorities, but what business is there to do if you’re running out without customers? When customers begin leaving and cut off their subscription to your services consistently, month after month, then there is definitely something wrong with either your customer service or with your actual services.

For a variety of reasons, Orange has been steadily losing customers every month since November 2007, something that the firm’s head, Bruno Duarte, is “ashamed” of. Orange has launched and announced a variety campaigns and plans, but these haven’t done much to turn the tide for the provider. In May of this year, Orange launched their home broadband campaign to raise awareness on the broadband services that they provided that offered great value for money. That was followed up by an announcement by Orange on their updated plans for mobile broadband, which revamped the mobile packages that they were providing to their subscribers. And just last September, Orange claimed that they were offering the cheapest, unlimited broadband services at just £5, with the connection fees waived.

However, Duarte hopes to see a change in the coming quarters and states that the company had, for the first since November 2007, actually seen an increase in their subscribers last September. Duarte said: “Our objective is to get to a point where we are no longer ashamed of what we are doing to our customers – or, to put it positively, where we are proud of what we are doing to our customers.”

Orange currently has 713,000 reported subscribers. The information was revealed this Wednesday when its parent company, Everything Everywhere, announced their third quarter results. Olaf Swantee, the chief executive of the two other companies also behind Everything Everywhere, France Télécom and Deutsche Telekom, expressed the companies’ commitment to the joint venture between the networks, stating: “Deutsche Telekom and France Télécom want to continue to partner. This is not just a partnership in the UK, it’s a partnership in purchasing, around the network in Poland, and in research and development across the two headquarter teams.”

Duarte is optimistic that Orange will be able to keep up the turnaround, adding: “”We’ve been haemorrhaging customers. But in September we have grown the customer base for the first time since 2007 and I am confident it is going to carry on.”

Source – The Guardian