Would you risk it for a year’s supply of chicken nuggets?

Telecoms is a funny old industry to be working in. It encompasses not only traditional voice services (such as your home phone and phone on your desk in your office) and internet services. It also traverses the air waves in mobile form, giving us mobility that we all rely on every day in both business and our personal lives.

I watch with interest programmes like The Martin Lewis Money Show and see how people can haggle to get better deals from their supplier and if needs be, a new supplier. However, I have never seen Martin Lewis mention chicken nuggets as a reason to stay with your network provider. Interestingly, John Legere, who just so happens to be CEO of T-Mobile US, has just done that to a young chap from Nevada, Carter Wilkinson, if he was to switch to his network away from his current AT&T contract.

This poor chap only tweeted asking his favourite fast food chain in the US, Wendy’s, how many retweets it would take to get a year’s supply of chicken nuggets for free. For his sins, he has now been tempted by a switch to T-Mobile, while United Airlines are offering him a flight to any Wendy’s in the cities they serve. Not bad when all he wanted was chicken nuggets.

Whilst the story is on the wilder side, it did make me think about how telecoms, especially mobile telecoms, has become this type of industry. Businesses offer great deals to get you onto their network, hoping add-ons like an iPad mini, a TV or cheap iPhone will tempt you to move. It has moved away from the service you would expect to “what can I get?”

I’m a strong believer that if something looks too good to be true, it usually is. Whilst a year’s worth of chicken nuggets looks good, what effects would it have on your productivity if the only network you can get in your house is AT&T? 

The key to me is the service. Is it what I want and expect? Do I value it as much as I pay for it? What is the cost of changing supplier? What impact is it going to have on me? All things we need to consider for our users in a business environment. A small impact on one person may have massive impact on another.

On a brighter note, at the time of writing, the tweet has had 2.3m retweets (I am just about to retweet myself). Let’s help Carter get to his goal.

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