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| TalkTalk's special: Free live calls for the elderly |
| Saturday, 17 April 2010 13:07 |
 Charlie Dunstone has a great idea for 30-50% of those who can afford broadband, are able to read and likely to be interested. His employees will make a scheduled weekly 5 minute call to any elderly subscriber who'd like a contact with the outside world. They'll look up local information, explain the service, or just chat about sports or the telly. It's a small gesture, but likely appreciated by many who rarely get out. If it brings new customers this will be good business for Charlie. Since TalkTalk (the Carphone Warehouse spinoff that's #2 in the UK) can schedule the calls, an employee should be able to do 10-20/hour (many won't be home), making the cost per $1-2/call, $4-8 per customer. The service typically goes for $28 or more, and this is directly targeted at the largest base of prospective new customers.
Affordability is by far the biggest obstacle to broadband takeup. A huge but unmentioned factor is that 20-40% of those who don't take broadband are functionally illiterate. A huge proportion of those remaining prospects are elderly, possibly as many as half.
We'll Call You is an innovative way to involve them. Here's the announcement.
February 18th, 2010 Pensioners living alone passes four million mark The number of people over 65 who live alone has passed the 4 million milestone new figures(1) reveal. Overall the number of people living alone has reached 8.7 million, meaning that about one in three of all homes are single person households. In 2005 twenty nine per cent of homes were single person households. In 1971 it was 20 per cent. Now older people who live alone are to be offered a friendly weekly phone call from phone and broadband company TalkTalk. The free service, called We’ll Call You, is designed to provide older people a guaranteed weekly natter. The calls will be made by TalkTalk staff. It is hoped that each team caller will form a bond with their We’ll Call You contacts. The nature of the calls, which last no more than five minutes, is up to the contact; they can use them to discuss the news, gossip about the week’s TV or just to have a chat about whatever takes their fancy. They can also ask their TalkTalk caller to look up information for them about local services. At the very least the caller will check that everything is all right. They will never use the call to sell a TalkTalk product or service. “We’re not trying to replace social services and charities but our research shows that the service we’re providing meets a need which is not currently being met,” said TalkTalk’s communications director Mark Schmid. “With the number of older people living alone passing the four million mark the launch of our service is very timely. “Knowing that there will be a phone call from a friendly, familiar voice at a fixed time each week and that you can talk to them about anything you like is something that a lot of people value. “We install communications equipment in millions of homes and our next generation network carries billions of bits of data every day, but for many people, the most important piece of communications ‘kit’ is a human voice. The We’ll Call You service is designed to ensure everyone has someone to chat to at least once a week.” TalkTalk is the UK’s biggest provider of broadband to homes. |
| Last Updated on Saturday, 17 April 2010 15:01 |