Wi-Tribe Consumer Panel - Day 0

My initial contact with Wi-tribe has stretched for over 6 six months. I first made contact with them when the service was first launched, and although the service reps were courteous and friendly, the experience wasn’t very good. The reason for that was the lack of response from Witribe when they found out my area didn’t come under their coverage. I registered my details at their website as well as left it with one of their reps at the Nazimabad outlet but they didn’t even so much as send an acknowledgement note. That was six months ago.

About two weeks ago, they left a flyer in my housing society to announce their arrival in the area with the business card of one of their reps attached. Still no effort to contact me. In contrast, the Qubee rep not only contacted me on his own accord but also offered to waive off the activation charges as a special offer especially for this area. When I expressed apprehensions about the quality of service, he gave me phone number and address of two of his customers in my area to verify the quality of service. No such initiative from Witribe. So yes, they need to spruce up their sales tactics.



When I did contact the person whose card was attached with the flyer and told him about the offer from Qubee, expecting something extra from Witribe as well, he offered to waive off the security deposit only if I referred another person, otherwise nothing at all. I guess the Witribe folks are a bit too confident in the wake of their recent extravagant marketing campaign with a brand repositioning of ‘connect to change’.



In spite of all these minor glitches, I decided to give them a try. So I called the guy again and told him I wanted the connection. This was afternoon. He promised to install the very same night. Late evening I called again to verify the time he would be coming and this time he said he would arrive by 10pm. I again called just before 10 and this time he said that he wouldn’t get free until 1am in the morning, but was willing to come over even late at night. I asked him to come over the second day. However, the same thing went on for the next two days (during which I had serious doubts about whether to really go until on the night of the fourth day- the 1st of January 2010, he finally came over at 11.30pm.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t one of those ‘All’s well that ends well’. As soon as the guy installed the CPE, trouble started. First, the signal strength was low at 2 bar (maximum is five). Then the device started getting hung up which the rep called as ‘decamping’ or something.
About the signal strength, the guy assured that even 2 bar was enough to get proper coverage provided the signals were stable and not varying much.

Anyway, he reminded me that I had the option of canceling the service and getting all the money back within seven days if I wasn’t satisfied. In that case as well, the guy activated my account at 11pm on the 1st, which meant I literally had only six days left to test the service.
Not the best of starts, definitely.

What is Wi-Tribe Consumer Panel?

‘ A longitudinal study that gathers data from the same sample of individuals or households over time is called a consumer panel. A consumer panel that consists of a group of people who record their purchasing habits in a diary over time will provide the marketer with a continuous stream of information about the brand and product class. Diary data that are recorded regularly over an extended period enable the investigator to track repeat-purchase behavior and changes in purchasing and usage habits along with changes in price, special promotions, or other aspects of marketing strategy.’
-Exploring Market Research by William G. Zikmund

The Wi-Tribe consumer panel will be an unsolicited one-man team comprising of myself (it may expand as time goes on). Conventionally, a marketer from the brand team analyzes the diaries maintained by the consumer panel subjects and based on them comes up with marketing strategies. In this case I’ll be the lawyer as well as the jury. i.e I’ll be analyzing my own experience with the brand, and based on those insights offer to the Wi-Tribe marketing team ways to delve deeper into the consumer mindset. It’s going to be like the people meter (pioneered by AC Nielsen), an internet meter to be more apt.
Consumer panels and people meter surveys are an extremely secretive process unbeknownst to the general public. This is the first time in the history of mankind that a consumer panel diary is being made public, that too on the universal mass medium – the internet.

Note:
This is an unsolicited consumer panel which is neither endorsed nor influenced by Wi-Tribe or any of its competitors. It is a uniquely independent and totally unbiased review of how this brand holds up in real-life situations for a consumer as opposed to a static review of its features.