Cell Phone company Thinks out of the Box
News.com reports that in Manila, Philippines, Jessica Gazo has found a job as part of a new long-range sales team at the Philippine cellular operator Smart Communications and that too without sitting through a job interview or even submitting a resume.
Gazo, a 33-year-old housewife who lives 600 miles south of Manila in Davao City, is one of more than 100,000 mobile phone users who re-sell Smart’s cellular services through a new prepaid service called Smart Buddy e-Load. With a special $20 chip for her mobile phone, Gazo can transfer bits of air time to her friends’ and acquaintances’ phones–as little as 55 cents (30 pesos) worth.
Since Smart began the program in May, Smart Buddy has exploded in popularity, giving the company a more inexpensive way of distributing service to the country’s poorest, most remote neighborhoods and villages. The first such service of its kind, Smart Buddy marries the latest in cellular commerce with a much older marketing concept of miniature packaging that helped bring middle-class amenities to developing countries decades ago.
“It’s a good idea in encouraging air time,” said Karen Ang, regional telecommunications analyst at Citigroup Smith Barney in Singapore. “It widens the affordability of the product without Smart having to reduce prices.”
While Smart said it was unaware of any similar services outside the Philippines, analysts say the concept behind Smart Buddy could help operators expand not only into rural areas of developing countries like China and India, but among lower-income segments of the population in developed countries like the United States, particularly among teenagers.
It is also hard to find anyone who actually talks on his or her phone. In a nation where the average annual income is less than $1,000, most Filipinos rely instead on cheaper text messaging. “Texting,” as it is known, has cult status in Philippines, and everyone from the poorest student to the loftiest government official uses it. Executives tap out messages during business meetings. When hot news or juicy rumors erupt, they spread like wildfire over the country’s text networks, which have become a kind of handheld national chat room.
Offering cheap text helped Smart’s largest rival, Globe Telecom, to become the largest cellular operator in the country. But Smart has gradually surpassed Globe, taking a 46 percent share of the cellular market, thanks in part to offering innovative new ways to capitalize on texting’s popularity.
In addition to financial information, news and celebrity gossip, some of the text messaging services Smart offers are uniquely Filipino. Safe Taxi, for instance, was developed in response to a rash of assaults by taxi drivers. When Smart’s customers get in a cab, they can send a message to the company’s network recording their taxi’s license-plate number. If they do not send a message again within 30 minutes indicating they have arrived at their destination safely, the network sends a message to a friend or relative alerting them to a potential problem.
Smart will not say just how much air time is being bought over Smart Buddy, but analysts say more than a third of the companies’ prepaid use is already being carried by the service. For Smart, that reduces the need to print and distribute prepaid cards for calls.
Best of all, Smart Buddy buyers can request such a card from re-sellers like Gazo by phone wherever they happen to be. Gazo says she has one customer who lives two hours away. Selling to distant customers means selling on credit, but Gazo said she did not mind.
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