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Oonagh Reidy

Telstra: From Service Nightmare To Personal Shoppers

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They used to be lambasted for their consumer service, or lack of it. But now Telstra have turned to personal shoppers, pledging to give consumers their “undivided service” when they come through their doors.Telstra is offering the “exciting” new personalised service for its Launceston store, where customers can “book an appointment online ahead of time and get personal, undivided service when they arrive in store”.

This is part of the telco’s $1 billion makeover plan, Telstra New, its bid to win back customer support for its often loathed service.
 
Initial customer feedback has been very positive, they said in a statement today.

Personal shopping will enhance the customer’s shopping experience, says Telstra Manager for Northern Tasmania, Michael Patterson. 

“Personal Shopping is a great in-store premium service we’re trialling. It’s designed to allow us to differentiate ourselves and provide better experiences for our customers,” Mr Patterson said.

It will also provide customers with a more targeted, streamlined and convenient shopping experience, say the telco. 

“There are also customers who prefer to talk to their partner or have a think about a purchase, so booking a personal shopping appointment means they can return to the store later and pick up right where they left off,” Mr Patterson said.

 

 “One of the advantages of personal shopping appointments is it gives stores the ability to manage traffic without damaging the customer experience,” he said.             

The Telstra Shop in Launceston is located at Shop 3, 136-142 Brisbane St.

Myer Chase Bargain Lovers From China

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They go by the slogan “my store” but now Myer has decided to go after bargain bin lovers with a new site.

The myfind.com website, operating out of China, which went live on 28 February, is seeking to offer “great value and one-off special buys for online shoppers,” a position that the retailer previously felt was denied to them by the government’s refusal to levy GST on goods sold by competing online rivals under $1000. 

The store, which was never affiliated with heavily discounted goods, appears to be performing a U-turn in its sales strategy, facilitated by the online revolution.

Canberra’s refusal to budge on the issue led them to set up shop out of China. 

“If we can’t beat them we will join them,” lamented Mr Bernie Brookes, Myer’s CEO last year.

“We just want a level playing field. We will take jobs offshore and we will ship product out of China through our internet site, it’s a bloody shame.”

At the moment, there are only two laptop devices on offer, an Acer Aspire 5742 as well as an eMachine, eME732Z , but say they are testing the waters before the discounting site is unleashed fully to consumers. 

It is thus a safe bet to expect more discount devices will bolster its online offering in the coming weeks. The new site is a value-focused online business that is quite different to its existing department store offering, says the retailer.  

The eMachine model is priced very competitively at $498 – over $100 cheaper than other online IT retailers including Techbuy.com or iTech.  

 

The Acer 5742, priced at $697, matches, and in a few cases undercuts rivals, when compared on getprice.com.au, and could see the beginning of the high street retailer carving itself a bigger slice of the Oz electronics market if it maintains this huge price assault.

Indeed, the high street seller says the site will be a testing ground for selling new “low cost ” products and allows it to operate at a far lower cost out of China.  

“Myfind.com presents Myer with the opportunity to test new merchandise and the potential for product and range extensions of our existing department store offering at a lower cost of doing business and working capital investment,” Jo Lynch, Myer’s Corporate Affairs, General Manager told Smarthouse.

“This is an exciting new business for Myer targeting a different, growing consumer segment,” she added.

Over coming weeks the myfind.com site will be fine-tuned before a formal launch supported by marketing activity to drive traffic to the site.

 

Myfind.com is run from offices in both Hong Kong and China. 

The new site is offering delivery for just $10 and is facilitated within 3-5 days via its relationship with China Post in conjunction with Australia Post.  

$999 Acer Revo PC Hits Oz April

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The notebook maker’s first ever full HD media PC centre to retail at $999, the Revo 100, is a collision of media functions in one – including Hi-Def viewing, Smart TV, clear-fi media sharing system and Blu-Ray player.


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The new machine is also configurable with an internal TV tuner and boasts 3 USB ports, a multi-in-one card reader, wireless and wired LAN and is preloaded with a Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit operating system.  

It is powered by AMD Athlon II Neo dual-core processor and also has featuring NVIDIA ION graphics. 

Acer’s Revo will also automatically “discover” compatible devices including Smartphones and netbooks and media players around the house allowing enjoyment of other media content regardless of the source on 1080P full HD entertainment solution.

The Revo can sit two ways – on its removable vertical stand or be placed flat like a game console.       

Its dual-mode wireless touchpad fits into the machine and slides out into either a multi gesture pad or QWERTY keyboard, with lit up keys. The RevoPad is small, highly portable and can be hand held. 

Additional features include support for up to 4 GB of DDR3 memory and large storage capacity of up to 750GB.  It has a multittude of connectivity options including HDMI, dual USB ports and Ethernet audio out.

 

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Sporting a matte black finish, the slim device adds “sleek modern style to your living room,” says its maker.  

“The Revo touchpad/keyboard simply pops out of the chassis giving you hands-on control and frees you to enjoy Smart TV functionality, share your media, all from the comfort of your couch,” says Acer’s Desktop Product Manager, Aaron Jambrovic.

Apple Give Gaming, Hard Drives The Chop

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Now the tech giant is getting personal. Well, in its retail outfits at least.


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They are dumping many of their retail stores’ staples: printers, scanners and hard drives to make way for their personal set up service for Mac’s which kicked off in January. 

When a Mac is purchased, staff set up e-mail, iTunes and other functions in-store, a service which has proved hugely popular and is expanding further, forcing the tech giant to chop some of its displays. 

The maker also run tutorials from their store helping users to learn more about how to use devices..

Many products will be available on request but won’t be displayed in-house and limited stocks will be kept on the premises.  

32 out of 40 games have also been cut from their offering, a section of the business which was said to have been unprofitable for the company, according to The Loop. 

However, gaming ain’t dead and gone – they have been migrated over to the Mac App Store for purchase.                     

Its not clear how well this area will do selling only through online although its game Pixelmator grossed $1m in its first three weeks on sale earlier this year, Steve Jobs’ company said. 

 

This also means the crowds and queues that are synonymous with Apple stores may die down…..for now.

Retailers E-Boom As JB Hi Fi, Dick Smith Fend Off Rivals

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Big name retailers are back, according to the latest Nielsen figures, with Woolies, JB Hi Fi and Dick Smith amongst the top visited sites last year.

And sellers that choose to ignore the net, do it at your peril, the stats counter warns. 

New figures show that some of the biggest names in electronics are fending off rivals in the online race for the consumer dollar. Online now account for 7 per cent of all retail transactions.    

Despite this relatively tame figure, the huge spike in online visitors is phenomenal – JB Hi Fi numbers almost doubled at 42 per cent to 916,000 as did Woolies, recording a whopping 48 percent rise to 1.4m visitors last year, which makes it one of the most visited Aussie e-stores.
 
“Traditional players” are finally making their mark in the online world, fending off competition from marginal players, Nielsen confirmed today. 

Dick Smith and Big W, both also owned by the Woolworths brand, as well as Officeworks, were also among the top ten most visited sites, according to Nielsen’s January traffic data 2011. A total of six Australian bricks and mortar retailers made the top ten list. 

Big W had 796,000 visitors hits while Dick Smith, who earlier this year confirmed it was experienced online growth, had slightly less traffic at 700,000. 

However, the figures relate to visitor numbers only and has no link with sales.  

One retail giant was also notably absent – Harvey Norman.  

 

Late last year and earlier this year its Chairman, Gerry Harvey, along with Myer, David Jones and Solomen Lew’s Just Group was involved in a major public attack on the government for its refusal to levy 10 per cent GST on online goods bought from foreign retailers. 

“Traditional retailers are the ones who have been driving this growth,” says Mark Higginson, analytics director for Nielsen Online. 

And any retailer who is ignoring this booming sales channel, do it at your peril, warns Higginson. 

“The whole global financial crisis and Harvey Norman debate may have had a big effect on this. 

“We’ve seen massive growth in online, and the mainstream retailers have gotten to a point where there is so much going on they can’t ignore it.”

However, despite Aussie retailers success, US sites Amazon and eBay still came out top of the pile with the latter garnering 5.5 million visitors in the past year, although the figure represents a slip back from previous years.

This is followed by Amazon who holds the number two spot with 2.1m Australian visitors. 

The stats monitor also pointed to another major trend: online group buying which it said was also another important way to boost online traffic.

“It’s suddenly a huge business model and shows how this all really works,” says Higginson.

The news comes as Nielsen points to the explosive growth of smartphone users who are choosing to access the net via mobile devices.

 

Nielsen’s latest consumer report shows that mobile internet reached 50% penetration amongst web surfers here, for the first time.

However, other mobile comms including tablets are also singled out as  a “potential gamer changer”, with the body confirming 8 per cent of online audiences here now own such a device.

As well as the staple computer, eReader, connected games devices and some other hybrid forms are also “likely to emerge” say Nielsen.  

NBN V 4G? No Competition, Says Telstra

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Telstra has dismissed the idea of 4G as a threat to fixed line broadband, calling it a “complimentary” source. And the devil is in the detail as far as network management goes, it also revealed.

“We see LTE as just another wireless technology and essentially just another means of carrying traffic,” Mike Wright, Telstra director of network and access technologies, told journalists in Sydney yesterday.  

This is despite Telstra recently launching their 4G LTE service, viewed by many as a possible rival to the yet to be built $36bn fibre cable network. 

“If you talk about NBN and you talk about wireless, they’re absolutely complementary to each other,” he added. 

The country’s biggest telco provider recently said the upgrade of its Next G network to LTE will happen by the end of 2011. 

Long Term Evolution/HSPA+ mobile broadband devices that operate across the 1800MHz and 850MHz spectrum ranges would give customers the benefits of 4G in select locations, allowing speeds as high as 150 megabits a second, the telco said at the LTE launch earlier this year.

“The technology can provide many Australians with faster data speeds, high-quality video conferencing and faster response times when using mobile applications or accessing the internet,” said  CEO David Thodey.

The NBN said last month the purchase of spectrum licences would allow peak speeds of at least 12 megabits per second but will be 50Mbps or 100Mbps at consistent levels.

 

Opposition spokesman on communications Malcolm Turnbull claims LTE and other 4G wireless services make the National Broadband a less viable option given the lower cost and speeds available. 

Last week, the telco also revealed their plan B if the NBN fails to see the light of day, admitting it would still take a “blended” approach, using both fibre and wireless technology . 

“We would perhaps use some fibre to the premises in some circumstances, we would use fibre to the node in some circumstances, and we would continue broadband over copper in some circumstances.” 

Rival carriers VividWireless and Optus are also currently working on development of similar LTE networks. 

Just 12 per cent of Telstra’s customer base currently use wireless as their primary broadband source, although they admit demand is growing. 

 

This comes as Telstra revealed its other major secret: the Devil.

Nicknamed Devil, the software developed by the University of Adelaide, helps the carrier identify potential bottlenecks in its network, thus avoid problems which has plagued rival operators including Vodafone, due to over capacity.

Confirmed: iPhone Goes Pale In Spring

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It has been said white is the new black.
And it looks like Apple could feel the same as its ubiquitous iPhone looks set to sport a paler demeanour from this summer season onwards, which has been confirmed by Apple’s VP of Marketing.


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“The white iPhone will be available this spring (and it is a beauty!).” Phil Schiller confirmed. 

The newly released iPad2, which is available in white, sold 1 million in its first days of release, and could have spurred the maker on into going for a pale shade for phones sooner rather than later. 

The white model was first announced by Steve Jobs at WWDC 2010, Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference back in June last.

Asus $200 Intel Notebook Take On Tablets

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Asus is looking to give tablets a run for their money with the release of a bargain notebook, costing $200-250.

The new release is the latest bid by the notebook makers to drive shipments of its PC’s to 6 million, according to Digitimes.

The knock down priced device is being produced in collaboration with Intel. Other notebook variations are also said to be in the pipeline,  including fashionable designs and cloud based systems.

However, there is no indication where or when the device will hit the market and no other spec details have been received.

The latest drive on low cost notebooks is also looking to distract consumers from the tablets hype, which has gathered even more steam since the launch of the iPad 2 just two weeks ago, which has sold 2 million in the US alone.

However, the brand has moved to make inroads in the high growth tablet market itself – and have made no secret of their ambitious plans for future growth.

CEO Jerry Shen, recently confided to journalists at CeBIT in Germany of his desire to be No.2 in tablets by 2012, talking up innovations like 3D display with SSD storage and quad core processors on its next round of slates.

Asus also cited another “secret weapon” for their upcoming tabs recently which they hope will provide a legitimate challenge against the iPad2.

 

It recently announced additional models in the Eee family of notebooks including its Eee Pad Slider and Transformer, which has just been given an April UK release date, although may not run on Android 3.0 as previously anticipated.