Good Idea! Now find a better one.

Cingular and Verizon have been bragging about their networks for years. We’ve all heard their various slogans ad nauseum.

Obviously, they made a couple bucks and snagged a few customers through their aggressive, nationwide advertising.

The result? Cingular claims 54 million subscribers and Verizon claims 53 million. That’s billions of phone calls they need to handle. And more often than not the calls get through without incident.

(I realize that we all can’t stand our cell phone providers, but bear with me here, this isn’t about carping, this is about ideas.)

But beyond their size and success, the real question is how deep into the customer experience do their marketing and branding messages penetrate?

Once you’re a customer of Cingular or Verizon with their reliable networks, what do you see? Does every interaction with their products and services remind you of their quality and reliability? Do you see them working to improve your service?

It’s quite reasonable to use the size, capacity and reliability of their network in their marketing. Via Advergirl: Cingular’s dropped call campaign is quite interesting (at left). But why not reinforce this in concrete ways for each customer whose actually using the network?

Let’s face it, when you see someone making an effort, you’re more inclined to give them a pass when something breaks because you know they’re working hard fix it.

So, what visible actions could Cingular and Verizon take to reinforce their self promoted image of reliability and deflect the blame and anger when their systems inevitably hiccup or fail?

• Select phones for their networks that have the best antenna/reception.
• Work with cell phone makers to make branded phones with tangible differences from other providers.
• Not just a logo on the phone:
• Request a version of the phone with a larger, more powerful antenna
• Make small tradeoffs between reception and battery life.
• The same model phone should always perform better if purchased through Cingular or Verizon.
• Rate all phones by their reception
• If someone want the sexiest phone with the worst reception, Fine.
• But if they want the best reception and the fewest dropped calls, help them make an expert decision.
• Sell indoor wireless coverage systems to be installed at home to give perfect reception at home, in the condo or in the back yard.
• Whenever a customer has poor reception or a dropped call, give them a button on their phone that tags the location where the problem occurred and files a support ticket with customer service.
• Allow customers to track these tickets right along side their minute usage and billing. As each problem is solved or addressed notify the customer the same way UPS, FedEx or DHL tracks packages.
• Treat poor reception and dropped calls as a golden opportunityto show your commitment to improving your network.
• Keep a log of what cell towers a customer most frequently uses and notify them of upgrades.
• Ask them to participate in evaluating the performance of the upgrades.
• Let them see objective data that shows the improvement.
• Test the aftermarket antenna boosters and offer the best of the best with each phone.

The point here is simply that brilliant creativity shouldn’t all go to the flashy ad campaign. Give the customer experience some love too.