Mobile Operator Giffgaff Pays Members for Community Participation

Giffgaff is a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO for those who like acronyms) with a customer community focus. They rely on their members to do advertising for them and even to answer support questions. They enable this model by paying real money to customers for performing different activities. Each point you earn is worth a penny of real money and here are some of the rewards you can earn:

• 50 points: Send your friends an email about giffgaff
• 500 points: Send somebody a SIM card and they activate it
• Variable points for participating in the community

The community participation is interesting. I dug a little deeper and found out that each month they reward customers based on their level of participation. The rationale and explanation is explained in this blog post and here's what it boils down to:

• Band 1: Top Contributors get 3,947 points
• Band 2: Average Contributors get 1,071 points
• Band 3: Low Contributors get 248 points
• Band 4: Non-Contributors get 0 points

I do understand that making £40 a month for effectively being an excellent support representative does fall below minimum wage in most countries. However, it is a substantial amount of money for what is generally considered a free activity. It's not a way to make a living but it does make customers feel like they are being rewarded for helping out when they do. And this is how their community has benefitted (Here is the full blog post):

• 43% of their customers are getting a Payback
• The average payback is just over £14
• The biggest payback is an amazing £654
• 26% have earned £5 payback by getting a friend to join
• 29% have earned payback by helping in the forum

That last one is interesting because it means at least 29% of their customers actively use the forums. Does this mean you have to pay people to use your community now? I don't think so but it does mean that one option you have when considering how to improve your community participation and quality is good old-fashioned cash.