The Virgin Brand !

[paul11974]

This has not been a good week for Sir Richard Branson, but he is unfazed: 'I have set up 350 companies since I started. Not one of those has ever gone bankrupt'

On the face of it, this has not been a good week for the Virgin king. Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Rail lost its Cross Country franchise; his 49pc partner in his Virgin Atlantic airline - Singapore Airlines - wants to bail out, and that on-screen soap opera, Virgin Media, keeps losing customers to arch-rival BSkyB, as the satellite broadcaster's latest figures show.






http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/mai...affdrv07053100

[Mick Fisher]

As long as we don't shoot ourselves in the foot in a major way

Erm...Richard I think you already done that by allowing Ntl to use the Virgin brand.

[paul11974]

LOL

[NTLVictim]

I know how he lost the Virgin Rail deal..the head of the railway selection committee is on VM BB, and he's been traffic shaped.

[Paul]

Unfortunately RB failed to see just how inept the management of NTL was and how bad the disease of incompetence was within NTL. The only way the re-brand would have worked would be if VM had removed the vast majority of NTL management and re-trained all staff properly so that they could actually carry out their roles properly.
NTL management damaged the NTL structure and staff too much for anyone to repair without major problems and massive investment and recruitment.

[piggy]

Originally Posted by Paul

Unfortunately RB failed to see just how inept the management of NTL was and how bad the disease of incompetence was within NTL. The only way the re-brand would have worked would be if VM had removed the vast majority of NTL management and re-trained all staff properly so that they could actually carry out their roles properly.
NTL management damaged the NTL structure and staff too much for anyone to repair without major problems and massive investment and recruitment.

i must agree same staff different t-shirts does not always work

Originally Posted by Paul

re-trained all staff properly so that they could actually carry out their roles properly.
.

Thanks for the vote of confidence

[paul11974]

Originally Posted by Paul

Unfortunately RB failed to see just how inept the management of NTL was and how bad the disease of incompetence was within NTL. The only way the re-brand would have worked would be if VM had removed the vast majority of NTL management and re-trained all staff properly so that they could actually carry out their roles properly.
NTL management damaged the NTL structure and staff too much for anyone to repair without major problems and massive investment and recruitment.

paul that's deep real deep

[David F]

Originally Posted by Bill C

Thanks for the vote of confidence

Lol Bill you know we know you dont need training Maybe you and Stu could be the ones training the muppets though lets face it most the suits need some kinda of training (take training to mean kicking btw )

[9083]

Originally Posted by Paul

Unfortunately RB failed to see just how inept the management of NTL was and how bad the disease of incompetence was within NTL. The only way the re-brand would have worked would be if VM had removed the vast majority of NTL management and re-trained all staff properly so that they could actually carry out their roles properly.
NTL management damaged the NTL structure and staff too much for anyone to repair without major problems and massive investment and recruitment.

You are soooo right Paul.

There has been NO real investment since the digital launch, installers are given un realistic targets are poorly paid and the training is non-existant.

Service Techs in EXNTL havnt had any sort of training since we went from Analogue to Digital.

Its just a case of 'here's a new product fumble your way throo it'.

Cabinets are over subscribed, no audits have been done for years Muxes are fit to busting so doors cannot be shut its a vandals paradise.

All these issues need man power which costs money and have no real return.

Customers deserve more.

[Paul]

Originally Posted by Bill C

Thanks for the vote of confidence

There are obviously some members of staff that know what they are doing or NTL would have imploded a looooooooong time ago Trouble is that NTL had a habit of letting the good staff go or treating them so badly they decided to walk. Very few stuck it out this far

[9083]

Originally Posted by Paul

There are obviously some members of staff that know what they are doing or NTL would have imploded a looooooooong time ago Trouble is that NTL had a habit of letting the good staff go or treating them so badly they decided to walk. Very few stuck it out this far

Again Paul sooo true.
Service techs across the country are working 3/4 Saturdays.
Only once a month do we get to spend a whole weekend with our families. And before anyone jumps in and says tough you get paid for it. When most of us started we only had to work 1 in 4 and the money is still the same.

[awibble]

Im in an ex TW area, and from what i've seen there seems to just be a mess of staff.

I've had 2 different service techs, one will stay till the problem is fixed, even did 3 box swaps on the same day, and spent at least an hour on the phone tring to get it sorted, which he did.

a few days before that the service tech came, said oh its a natinal fault and left after 10 minuites.

Dont get me wrong, but he is the one that should be getting re-trained, and /or replaced.

I feel sorry for the techs and installers as they get so much crap, but its still no excuse for shoddy work.

[Stuart C]

Originally Posted by Paul

Unfortunately RB failed to see just how inept the management of NTL was and how bad the disease of incompetence was within NTL.

Just to correct you on something there. The majority of the management in charge are ex-telewest.

---------- Post added at 08:27 ---------- Previous post was at 08:23 ----------

And guys, you may want to take note of this:

Latest research from YouGov/Brand Index shows that positive perceptions far outweigh negative on most of Virgin's bigger brands.

YouGov polls 700 people daily on different Virgin brands asking them to rate their value, quality, general impressions, corporate reputation, customer satisfaction, buzz and whether they would recommend them to a friend.

Only Virgin Cola underperforms, with a fairly consistent 10pc of pollsters more negative than positive. Contrast that with Virgin Atlantic, where the positives outweigh the negatives by more than 20pc; Virgin Megastores, 10pc-plus; Virgin Mobile, 3pc to 5pc-plus; and Virgin Media, 4pc-plus.

So, Virgin ain't going to go yet..

[andygrif]

That doesn't tell you whether the brand is more or less well perceived than the previous branding though.

And we're talking 4% more people think of Virgin Media as average to very good than think of it as poor to very poor.