Rogers Wireless Goes Down-market with Chatr

I hadn't intended to say anything more about Rogers Wireless' plans for their new Chatr brand, until I read this article. If these Rogers' executives are being honest in this interview about their marketing objectives, they believe that the new entrants are aiming at the budget end of the market.

This may be true of Public Mobile, which has stated they are after the urban, budget consumer, but it is less true of Wind Mobile. If this is indeed Rogers' competitive objective, I believe they are making a mistake. The mistake is in conflating two very different groups of consumers:

1. Those who can't afford to pay; and,
2. Those who want to pay less and get more.

Lower-priced plans, it is true, can appeal to both groups. However, the fact that the new entrants are offering lower prices and better terms does not mean they are all after the first group of consumers. For example, what may be true of Public Mobile is not true of Wind Mobile which is offering data plans and some higher-end phones. Wind is going after Rogers' bread and butter market, but with lower prices and better customer service. Both of these attributes appeal to the second group of consumers, but may also prove attractive to the first group.

While Rogers Wireless may be willing to compete on price with the Chatr brand, I have to wonder why they have not done so already under the Fido brand, and whether they will ever address the second problem area: customer service. Their current system (much to my own dismay and that of so many of their customers across all of their services, not just wireless) is focused more on avoiding customer service to reduce operating costs. I had a chuckle when I read this gem from the Globe and Mail interview:

[But] as we looked at some of the customers that left Roger to go to [new entrants], and it was a smaller number than we ever imagined it to be, but we still called them: Why would they leave us?

Rogers actually called a customer to ask them what they thought of Rogers' service? That's unbelievable. Perhaps they conducted a spot survey of a few defectors, but their time would be much better spent engaging with existing customers before they make the decision to leave.