Mobile operator Auchan uses Tweakker to soothe angry Frenchmen

According to French operator Auchan Telecom, it takes roughly 5 minutes for the average French customer to get angry with a call centre. If they call their operator for help, and they’re still not sorted after 300 seconds, all hell breaks loose. In order to ensure that all their problems are fixed within the time, Auchan has signed on with settings expert Tweakker.

What’s Tweakker?

Tweakker began as a website that contained all the information you’d need to get your phone set up for mobile data. The settings required on your phone can be pretty complex to get right if you’re not techie – so you could go to Tweakker, enter your phone model and the operator you wanted to connect to data with, and instructions would be provided.

The next step in the business model (and it’s a step that’s been going quite well for Tweakker) is to make the process automatic and wireless. An operator can integrate the Tweakker service onto their network – when a customer turns on a phone with one of their SIMs in it for the first time, the correct settings are automatically detected and changed wirelessly through Tweakker. The customer doesn’t need to take any action at all – data just works.

Doesn’t it just work anyway?

Sure, if you’re using a supported handset on a Tier 1 carrier. If you buy a phone directly from (for example) O2 or Vodafone, it comes out of the box ready to toll. But a lot of people don’t. Many MVNOs, for example, just sell SIMs, or require people to change the settings on their mobile handset to access data services. Just look at Auchan – it’s an MVNO run by the Auchan retail chain (very much like Tesco… which is also a Tweakker client).

What is Tweakker doing for Auchan?

The process isn’t entirely automated – when a customer calls an Auchan call centre to get their settings correct, Auchan will pull the required information out of the Tweakker database. Then it gets sent to the customer through SMS. The entire process should only take a minute or less.

What we think?

According to a quick office survey here, “Frenchmen” is not a politically correct term. I don’t know – I think it’s all right. I don’t object to being called an “Irishman”. Sexist, maybe, but not racially insensitive. What do you lot think?