SMARTY
Transcending the Telco Op Model
Building a venture to forge a new definition of value for SMARTY customers
Project overview
After two decades of exponential growth, the mobile sector in the UK had plateaued. It was becoming known for complicated offers, inflexible plans, unfair charges and poor customer service. When Three UK, one of the country’s ‘big four’ networks, saw an opportunity to reinvent the market, they enlisted frog to help conceive, launch and scale SMARTY: a new venture built around radical simplicity and elevated customer experience.
In six months, the frog team helped Three UK go from big idea to a new consumer mobile brand and business, live in the market. SMARTY, a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), was launched with a 'Simple, honest mobile' proposition and a streamlined focus on digital and SIM-only services, no physical retail or extraneous products. The brand also introduced a unique 'Money Back' structure on unused data. Since inception, SMARTY has always had an independent tech stack and a separate profit and loss accounting—while still being able to draw on Three UK’s existing infrastructure. This independence has allowed SMARTY to adapt and pivot quickly to the needs of their customers and the market.
SMARTY has now been live and scaling for four years, with frog continuing to work as a strategic partner and integral part of the operating team. Most recently, frog has helped SMARTY successfully navigate the turbulence from infrastructure changes, increased competition and intensifying price competition. The team developed a robust, three horizon growth strategy rooted in deep commercial analysis into SMARTY’s current and future business model, whilst leveraging insights from the nuanced connections within its ‘Brilliant Basics’ customer base. It was also crucial to factor in emerging innovations from the telco category: new engagement models and transformative technological developments, namely the embedding of AI into the network and the vast increase in speed of 5G. Equipped with a new set of growth KPIs, SMARTY is positioned to evolve its business model, provide a new definition of value for its customers and continue to outpace the competition.
frog has been a great partner for SMARTY from our inception through to the current day—their capabilities across business strategy, design excellence and technical delivery have played a major role in our success.
Disrupting telco conventions
frog's work with SMARTY to disrupt the conventions of an overly complex and commoditized sector is underpinned by four pillars.
- Digital-only, SIM-only: Remove all clutter and complexity: SMARTY stands out among competitors as a highly optimized, digital-only, SIM-only brand and experience.
- Agile Technology: Start lean, scale up fast: In six months, the SMARTY tech team had a cloud-native web app up and running. It has now matured into an enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure, resilient enough to handle rapidly increasing volumes of traffic. Supporting SMARTY’s ‘test and learn’ ethos to continuously improve the experience, the web team regularly runs A/B testing to improve conversion, retention and understanding of customer interactions.
- Experience-led: Take note of feedback: SMARTY provides value to customers by listening carefully and often to their views on how to improve. Never straying far from its ethos, SMARTY has grown through word-of-mouth, with its customers proactively sharing their satisfaction with others.
- Build capacity alongside product: Fuse expertise: SMARTY has been a multi-company, multi-geography design partnership from its outset: fusing frog’s expertise in design and technology with Three UK’s telco experience to launch and scale the new product in market. Digital marketing analytics, mobile app development, billing and network provisioning teams all unite to deliver the digital experience.
Next era of growth
Project highlights
Directions for growth
Challenge
SMARTY’s mission has always been to find radical new ways to put mobile customers first. Following a swift build, launch and scale, the next opportunity was to grow the business while retaining SMARTY'S purpose, customer base and innovative differentiation in the telco market.
Hypothesis-led testing
Solution
The frog team’s pre-existing knowledge of the organization meant they could rapidly develop working hypotheses on how to give SMARTY customers what they want—and ultimately grow the business further. To test, refine and validate emerging theories, the team used a blend of secondary research, stakeholder interviews, focus groups and customer diaries.
Equipped for new value plays
Outcome
A probing, hypothesis-led approach led to rapid empirical insights and the development of a solid growth strategy. The team delivered an actionable technology roadmap to ensure SMARTY can move toward new value plays for the group market—individuals using their own SIM under a shared account—which had previously been underserved.
frog and SMARTY have developed a customer-centric approach that features data-only plans.
frog and SMARTY have developed a customer-centric approach that features data-only plans.
Special offers, without long contract commitments, differentiates SMARTY from their competitors.
Working with frog on our five-year growth strategy was a great experience—just the right balance of collaboration and direction, with a really strong end output that now shapes all our short, mid and long term planning.
Meeting and exceeding goals
With minimal marketing spend, SMARTY’s growth has been remarkable, relying on brilliant branding, quality experiences and word-of-mouth to hyper-scale. Whilst details are confidential, the customer base now exceeds all expectations and SMARTY is viewed as the growth engine for all of Three UK. Further, SMARTY has highest NPS in the industry and a Trustpilot score of 4.2 out of 5.
Visit the frog archives to learn more about the launch of SMARTY.
