#1393 2009 · Giffgaff (O2/Telefonica) · Mobile telephony / community service
Giffgaff's customers answer its support calls — and get paid for it
问题
Call centers cost operators a fortune, and customers hate queueing in them
背景
Mobile virtual network operators rent capacity and live on thin margins, and the standard cost structure — call centers, retail stores — would erase the price advantage an MVNO exists to offer. O2 created Giffgaff in 2009 (beta in November, public launch six months later) as a SIM-only brand for customers the main network missed, and it omitted the costliest assumption entirely: there is no call center.
Support runs on the community forum: members ask questions and other members answer, with the company's own staff stepping in only where community action cannot. Participation is paid through Payback — points earned for helping, recruiting and contributing ideas, converted twice a year into cash, call credit or charity donations.
换别人会怎么做
Outsource the call center to a cheaper country and script harder — the queue shortens by minutes, the cost stays structural, and nobody loves the brand for it.
他们看到了什么
The people who best understand a customer's problem are other customers. Pay them — cash, credit or charity — for the answers a call center gives badly, and support flips from biggest cost to deepest loyalty.
那一手
The economic substitution is precise: paid agents become rewarded members. By the end of 2010 the community had answered 8,000 questions with an average of five responses each, within about three minutes against an industry standard of fifteen; later, 5,000-6,000 active members kept typical response times near 90 seconds. Payback has distributed more than £10 million — a fraction of the call-center cost it replaces — while Giffgaff Labs harvests product ideas (over 660 since launch).
为什么管用
Members answer faster because thousands are online at once, not a queue of agents — three minutes versus fifteen in 2010, ninety seconds once the community matured — and better, because they own the product and speak as users, not script-readers. Payback converts each act of help into loyalty: helpers have standing, earnings and friends inside the brand, so churn collapses on the very cohort that handles the tickets. The £10 million-plus paid out buys service capacity, product ideas and evangelism simultaneously — three things a call center delivers none of.
值了多少
Support answered in ~3 minutes vs 15 industry-wide (2010), ~90 seconds later; over £10m paid in Payback; 660+ member product ideas
什么时候会失灵
It presumes a product whose users can genuinely help each other — complex, regulated or safety-critical issues still need staffed escalation, and wrong peer answers carry brand risk. Payback must feel fair: if rewards skew to a visible few (early top earners took £900 against a community average near zero), the many doing quiet help drift away. And the model is culture-dependent — it works where enough members identify with the brand, and starves in transactional customer bases.
后来呢
Giffgaff grew into one of the UK's best-scoring operators on satisfaction and word-of-mouth metrics and became the reference case for member-run service; telcos and fintechs have since copied community-first support with paid rewards.
资料来源
- [1]2011: giffgaff, Launching New Brands (case study)The Marketing Society, 2011marketingsociety.com
- [2]How Giffgaff's alternative loyalty approach saves a fortuneMarketing Week, 2014marketingweek.com