Okay, if you dn’t live in the UK you won’t understand the gravity of this situation: Imagine you are a non-techie person and one of your numerous gadgets breaks down or maybe is just stuck, what do you do? Apart from calling the product helpline, which most of us know to be rudimentary, you’ll end up calling your friends for help. The tech-support situation has been pathetic in UK, though it’s been gradually looked after in last couple of years.
Virgin has entered the market with Virgin Digital Help. They have a existent mobile and internet user base of millions of users in UK, so they are pretty sure this service will be grabbed soon as it’s launched. Here is what they offer:-
- Free- For most common technical problems they have released one hundred detailed self-help guides.
- Paid-For £2.99/month you can get access to over seventy thousand guides covering issues not covered by teh free guides. You’ll also get a free copy of AVG Anti Virus ( which you can get for free anyway).
- Paid- For £90 per hour you can call a technician sent to your house if the issues can’t be solved with the guides.
Strategy wise Virgin is slightly late in launching this service. Close competitors , such as, Comet has launched Comet onCall, and Carphone Warehouse’ GeekSquad has been out for a while. We just need to wait and see whether BT follows suite or not.