Life is a beach with insights

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at giffgaff?

Being the ‘Head of Insights’ at giffgaff is a bit like being the ‘Head Sunseeker ’ at the beach. What does that mean you ask yourself? Putting it plainly - when I gather insights I do so according to my personal take on insight, which is “finding fundamental truths in a way that changes understanding and results in a fresh perspective”. In a nutshell I’m somewhat addicted to learning and to imparting that knowledge. In order to make sure the business is sustainable I need to maintain strong relationships with the people who can turn my insight into action. In practical terms, my career is based on gathering and synthesising a lot of data and making observations about the world of telecommunications. The hardest part is convincing my colleagues that their instincts are either correct or baseless so they can act based on those insights.

How did you start your journey at giffgaff and what has it been like so far?

Part of the fun of going to the beach is watching the other beach goers. You’ll have some people with dogs, kids building sandcastles that will get knocked down in an hour, people who have no interest in coming out of the shade or people who have far too much on to show, and then that one person who you know is going to be sunburnt by the afternoon. Similarly at giffgaff, you have people that receive insights in different ways. You have the purest (yours truly) who rely on insights and how to gather them. You have the cherry pickers - those that understand which insights will benefit them and their roles specifically. And then you’ve got people in the business, who thanks to the nature of their job, can crack on blissfully unaware of insights full stop. What I’ve found is that everybody learns at their own pace at giffgaff.

Experience and working with insights has taught us that whilst we’ve always been a brand with a younger target audience, we’re growing at pace and now have a cross-generational reach. Being so close to our insights - being an insight-led brand means some of our first giffgaffers are no longer the younger generation. giffgaff wasn’t the only one to grow up. So have our members.

How do we do insights differently at giffgaff?

giffgaff stands out from the other big telecommunications providers because even though we’re still a maturing company, we’re like a sponge - soaking in all the information we’re privy to thanks to our wonderful members. At giffgaff customers are called ‘members’ to demonstrate that they are part of a club, and to express our gratitude and appreciation to them. Similar to a beach club, members are offered a unique, attractive experience, otherwise why join in the first place?

I’ve observed that giffgaff’s members are almost minor stakeholders in the business development and have a say in how our products are created. Let’s look at what our Head of Advertising Abi Pearl recently pulled off. In 2020 Abi decided to not only use insights gathered from our members but featured some of them directly in giffgaff’s advertising. It wasn’t even about recruiting people to ‘act’ as brand ambassadors.. Abi started with the insights at hand, by looking at trends forming in the (Business Intelligence) BI data feeds. After a few qualitative focus groups, Abi discovered that members’ experiences resonated with what she wanted the UK to hear. A few weeks later our first member voice was heard on air, followed by a second and a third, all thanks to using insights from member experiences.

One project/thing that you’ve done at giffgaff that you are particularly proud of

giffgaff’s relationship with its members has in turn influenced my relationship with my colleagues at giffgaff and at O2 as well. giffgaff is part of the O2 Telefonica UK portfolio. Part of giffgaff’s success is that giffgaff product owners can more easily step into the shoes of the member. Our CEO Ash Schofield has a great piece of advice about stakeholder relationships, which is to see things from the perspective of your boss’s boss. And he’s right. I’ve made it my job to not constrain myself simply by understanding the Pay-as-you-go market that giffgaff operates in but to understand the PayMonthly, SIMO, quadplay, connected device and European markets which Telefonica operates in. It’s tricky to pick just one project I’ve been most proud of, as I’ve been a chief architect and driver on several joint giffgaff O2 projects. Among them is an ongoing project with Yonder Consulting to better understand the consumer space that O2 and giffgaff operate in when it comes to that crucial moment: “Who will be my new telco provider?” Having that joint insight works for both companies, by adding two lenses and spending less time being divisive. Keeping millions of people connected across the UK is no mean feat. But by strengthening our relationships with the consumer and each other helps us to build products that fit with each other and with what customers need, particularly in an ever increasingly complex and competitive world.

What would you like to say about giffgaff’s brand culture

In keeping with navigating today’s complexities, the open-mindedness of giffgaff’s culture has kept it successful. The Product, Commercial, Business and Marketing teams are always willing to learn and adapt to the situation that presents itself. Whilst giffgaff has traditionally been thought of as a less expensive provider we haven’t shied away from offering well-positioned and competitive high-end products as well. As it turns out for some people the price of flexibility is worth a few pounds more than at the till. giffgaff’s products are designed for changing life circumstances, offering value and flexibility. Depending on varying lifestyle factors, people’s data usage can go up and down throughout a year or more. With the introduction of more and more data heavy video streaming apps, the introduction of 5G and the rise of the gig economy, the need to switch your tariff on demand has never been more relevant.

When giffgaff started over a decade ago, none of these things were even a twinkle in our eyes, so like many we’ve had to flex and adapt. Luckily for me being in an insight-hungry organisation makes my job pretty secure. However, that in itself comes with challenges to always approach new situations with an open mind: grounded in objective reality, absolutely, but open to build robust new systems to answer new consumer problems but also build a few sandcastles as well.

What advice would you like to give to someone wanting to join the world of insights or is looking for a career switch?

Leading on the basis of well-informed insights is in my nature. I don’t see my job as work. Whilst I continue to perfect my craft of gathering and synthesising insights, I’m simultaneously learning that the ability to build and maintain relationships makes insight-gathering that much more effective. I’m far more inclined to hire someone who shows passion for forming strong relationships and who can reset their old assumptions and reimagine a better world than someone who has endless stories about how they heroically saved the day.

At giffgaff, connectivity and technology provide us and our members fundamental truths about the world we live in. Which is why we’re better equipped to remake our lives or to get back to my beach analogy - help us build more sandcastles after the tides of change recede.