Waitrose ISP – now we are truly free

1999-09-10

It is unsurprising that another UK supermarket has joined the free ISP fray. It is interesting that Waitrose are to give phone revenues to charity. What is unique, however, is that Waitrose are not to charge for support.

The UK free ISP market is already burgeoning. Tesco, Virgin, W.H. Smith and a host of others (from newspapers to football clubs) quickly followed a trend started by FreeServe, the now-floated spin-off of electronics retailer Dixons. Whilst free ISPs have been slated for providing a lower quality of service than their paid-for equivalents, the truth is that ISP quality varies widely across the board, paid for or otherwise. It is probably true to say that, in these early days of the Web, people are more accepting of non-optimal service than they will be in ten years time. The fact remains that for a substantial proportion of the UK population, the quality of service that free ISPs can provide is good enough.

The major downside of all these services is that, to date, they have charged for support at a premium rate, for example 50 pence per minute from tesco.net. Now this is nothing personal, as I have worked on both sides of the helpdesk fence – the support role is thankless, problems are often difficult to solve and, to cap it all, customers can be downright rude. From a customer perspective these services can be inefficient and bureaucratic, which wouldn’t be such a problem if the clock wasn’t ticking at a penny a second. To take a recent example (which, honestly, I wouldn’t mention if this Waitrose article hadn’t come along), I called the support desk of a major supermarket free ISP to inform them that I was receiving the email of another subscriber. Following a good five minutes on the phone, I found the procedure for dealing with this situation. Being a community-minded eCitizen I wouldn’t have minded spending the time, but I was riled at being charged at least three quid to help them sort out somebody else’s problems. Get the picture? If support is free, fair enough, but if we are paying then we expect our absolute money’s worth. Don’t we?

Waitrose are offering an email bureau service, which provides for “unlimited email addresses, accessible anywhere in the world” according to the press release. This service, which is still being developed, will be unique in that it allows customers to access their email either from a POP-3 compatible client (such as Microsoft Outlook), or directly from the Internet à la Yahoo or Hotmail. This is a major differentiator which allows users to get the best of all world for Internet access. A major concern to JKD, the company responsible for developing the Web site, and ITG, the service provider, is the recent media storm about Microsoft’s Hotmail service: every effort is being made to ensure that such back doors are not left in Waitrose’s email facilities.

The target audience for the service is the profile Waitrose/John Lewis customer, namely the broadsheet rather than the tabloid reader. Several reasons are touted for this – firstly, it is in keeping with the middle-to-upper class Waitrose branding. Secondly, the keenest users of the Web tend to be from “the thinking classes”. These reasons are only valid for the site content – it is very likely that the thought of free, unlimited support will have a much wider appeal.

The gesture to charity is an interesting one. It will be good for the image of the site, as well as giving customers the feeling that they are giving to good causes, without them having to lift a finger (this will probably appeal to their target audience). It is also good for the charities, of course! But where do Waitrose expect to make their money? This is where things get really interesting.

Waitrose is a supermarket launching onto the Web. It is setting up as an ISP in order to attract prospective customers to its site. Ultimately, though, its revenues will come from its capability to sell its own products via the Web. This, like Iceland’s announcement a few days ago (which included free delivery of goods bought through its site), demonstrates the sea change that is occurring in the supermarket-ISP arena in the UK. The battle is joined: over the next months, expect to see Waitrose, Tesco, Sainsbury, ASDA, Safeway leap-frogging each other with a host of new services, not to get users signed up to their ISP but to get real customers buying real products.

(First published 10 September 1999)