Hello.
It is always very interesting to hear people’s opinions about this or that phenomenon, product. Often a detailed review gives more than one could expect, but there is another misfortune here – the emotional review of one person cannot paint the big picture, does not show how other people relate to this event. For example, in the worldview of Apple fans, the company is number one in everything without exception, they sincerely believe that the majority chooses the iPhone, it is the most popular smartphone in the country, and so on. They are surprised that this is not so, and try to prove that everyone else is wrong in some way. Cognitive dissonance covers them from the head.
Today, each person has one or another experience of using mobile communications, someone has several SIM-cards, someone managed to visit different operators. I will not tire of repeating that the perception of the operator is formed over the years, but the most important thing is how he works at your home and at work. According to these two points, an ordinary person evaluates the quality of an operator, everything else fades into the background. In theory, the operator might be the best, but what if you have poor or no reception at home?
Historically, we have developed in such a way that there was a big three operators, then Tele2 appeared and a four was formed. In fact, we can say that we have two deuces – MTS and MegaFon, beeline and Tele2. In many respects, the operators inside the two are similar in one way or another, they are directly comparable.
If we start from the same SMM, then one gets the impression that MTS is beautiful, and all the problems are fictitious. And this is clearly seen in the comments from unknown people who suddenly appear and immediately disappear in the vastness of the network. And the same can be said about any operator with a known margin of error. You write well about the operator, and then the negative pours (order, sold out with giblets!), You write about problems – the reaction is the opposite (competitors ordered). We decided to do some surveys about each of the operators in order to understand your attitude. The questions were as follows:
What is your attitude towards brand X and its knowledge? (multiple answers)
- I know X
- I know well X
- I don’t know x
- The best on the market, handsome
- Same as everyone else
- X? Never
- Was a client of X
- Client X
- Never been to X
In the survey, we have three blocks, in the first we find out how a person evaluates his knowledge of the operator, then his assessment and, finally, we find out whether the person was a client of the operator or not. The third block correlates with the estimates of the first two. Let’s take a look at the results.
It is clear that the sample is typical for our resource, but given the number of participants, it gives a good cut of the perception of operators. Knowledge of operators is always important in order to make an assessment of its quality – both positive and negative. And here a very curious statistic opens up. They did not lead to 100% answers, this does not play a big role for our reasoning.
| beeline | MTS | “Megaphone” | Tele2 | |
| I know very well | 10 % | 10 % | 14 % | 10 % |
| I know well | 13 % | 14 % | 16 % | 13 % |
| Do not know much | 12 % | 5 % | 9 % | 18 % |
The leader in terms of “knowledge” is MegaFon, and if you combine the first and second parameters, you get 30%, while MTS has 24%, and the other two operators have 23% each. Poor knowledge of the operator is not so critical, there is space to work with the audience, to attract it to your side. Knowledge here is not an absolute, that is, it is rather the perception of people, which may be imaginary, not the fact that the respondents know each of the operators well. There were no verification questions, but I think that real knowledge is far behind perception.
Let’s take a look at the third block of questions, here’s what happens.
| beeline | MTS | “Megaphone” | Tele2 | |
| Was a client | 26 % | 20 % | 22 % | 17 % |
| Customer | 24 % | 31 % | 32 % | 23 % |
| Never was | 20 % | 10 % | 18 % | 34 % |
Please note that many have tried MTS, but in Tele2 many have never been customers of the operator, this is also room for growth. In MTS, the potential audience has been greatly exhausted, while the share of customers is maximum. These figures indirectly indicate a wide distribution of SIM-cards, and if we compare living people, it will suddenly turn out that in Russia MegaFon and MTS have approximately comparable audiences. But the number of live and dead SIM-cards differs, pumping the second for the sake of inflated results on paper is MTS’ signature style. All operators indulge in this in one form or another, it’s just that MTS has mastered this trick better than others. Curiously, almost all independent polls show the same shares for MegaFon and MTS.
The stereotype of perception of the beeline stretches from the past, the operator did not invest enough in the development of the network, as a result, it lost people. And in the responses, this failure is clearly visible. But let’s move on to the most important thing, which of the operators is “handsome”, that is, who the respondents are most satisfied with.
| beeline | MTS | “Megaphone” | Tele2 | |
| The best on the market, handsome | 3 % | 5 % | 11 % | 4 % |
| Same as everyone else | 19 % | 20 % | 22 % | 20 % |
| Never | 16 % | 19 % | 6 % | 9 % |
It is possible that the results were influenced by the fact that MegaFon launched the Operator No. 1 campaign, but the numbers are telling – loyalty to the operator is going through the roof, it is higher than for other companies. Everyone else lined up about the same.
I expected that the same number of people would not see the difference between the operators, and it happened. Plus or minus the same level of perception. Strongly against the operator – here it is also curious: MTS is in the lead, please note that this is knowledge that directly follows from the fact that the majority had experience with MTS. With Tele2, many do not have such experience, hence the low level of rejection. But the champion here, of course, is MegaFon, the lowest level of rejection. And this is a very good indicator of brand perception, it looks holistic. MTS attracts attention due to marketing, but the expectations are not backed up by the product, as a result, the perception is multidirectional. Tele2 as the youngest operator is perceived adequately, but the beeline has more likely woken up from the dream of the past and is starting to fight for the perception of the brand.
It will be interesting to periodically run such polls and see the results. I think I will do something similar at the end of the year, at the same time we will evaluate how the answers change. Although it will be difficult to see noticeable changes in such a period if nothing critical happens.
It is definitely not worth taking the results of the survey as the ultimate truth, this is a slice on one resource, and made literally on the knee. But if you look at similar NPS studies, you get a similar picture. Another thing is that operators very often manipulate numbers, show what is beneficial to them. And it is difficult to reproach them for this, after all, each of them is a fan of his team. The results obtained more or less coincide with my view of Russian operators.