Dtac To Try Soft-sell Approach

[george]

DTAC to try soft-sell approach

Total Access Communication (DTAC) plans to boost awareness of its Happy pre-paid mobile phone card with a new customer-friendly approach.

The “Por D”, or moderate, concept will set the direction for the second-largest cell-phone operator this year and ensure that the Happy brand becomes the preferred choice of users, co-CEOs Sigve Brekke and Vichai Bencharongkul said yesterday.

As an example of the soft-sell strategy, DTAC would not rush users into using up their call credit so that they would have to buy more refills, said Thana Thienachariya, director of the pre-paid phone unit.

“We’ll customise our products and services to fit users’ daily usage patterns and budgets,” he said.

The launch of Baby SIM cards also reflects the Por D philosophy, he said.

For Bt199, Baby SIM cards can extend expiry periods of refill cards by around 10 days, which would please people who mainly receive calls rather than make them.

Thana said three million Baby SIM cards have already been sold since early this month.

“All our products and service developments throughout the year will be based on the Por D concept,” Thana said. “But Por D doesn’t mean we’re cheap. We have to differentiate ourselves,” Brekke said.

Happy will focus on teens and some 10 million potential customers in the provinces.

DTAC has notched up 6.55 million customers as of December and hopes to add 1.2 million new subscribers this year.

Average monthly revenue per DTAC user was Bt1,188 for post-paid and Bt236 for pre-paid plans in the third quarter of last year, up from Bt1,148 and Bt210 in the first quarter.

A telecom industry source said clear differences were beginning to emerge between the marketing styles of DTAC and market leader Advanced Info Service (AIS).

“While AIS has deployed a host of luxury services for premium customers, DTAC has taken a more middle road line to tap the mass market,” he said.

DTAC plans to use Bt8 billion of cash flow to upgrade and expand its network to increase capacity by 1.5 million users to 8.5 million this year.

TA Orange, the nation’s third-largest cell-phone operator, yesterday said that this year it would act vigorously to woo new users and rolled out its first multimedia messaging service (MMS) to cash in on current trends. AIS has 13 million subscribers and TA Orange has around 1.9 million.

--The Nation 2004-02-18

[huski]

dtac sucks big time, the service is the worst in bangkok...the only reason i keep being abused is my phone number is good.

they had a good deal when they sold the 800 baht card that gave customers 1000 minutes <200 free>, but those cards are gone.