O2 offers £2 million to channel partners

O2 is today announcing an additional £2 million of funding investment for partners to help further grow their businesses. The funding will be available in the first six months of 2010 to all current partners and new ones that decide to join the O2 network.

In order to maintain its market-leading position and continue to grow its customer base, O2 is providing incremental investment for incremental connections. The funding will help partners continue to leverage high-value customers, including iPhone and BlackBerry, in addition to increasing overall sales.

The £2 million funding is in addition to any funding O2 is pushing into the channel currently. For example, if a partner sells a BlackBerry smartphone connection then O2 will pay an incremental £100 per connection on top of what they are receiving already.

Ben Dowd, Telefonica O2 Business Sales Director, comments: ‘Our channel partners are critical to our success and we have a strong belief in them as a community. As such, we invest a lot of money each year supporting the partner channel and have seen the results of that investment in terms of constant and continuing growth. This additional fund shows our appetite to help secure the future success and profitability of our entire partner channel. Ultimately, we are taking the pain away for our customers and providing them with access to the very best technology.’

In addition, O2 is set to hand over more customers acquired through direct sales channels to Centre of Excellence partners who commit loyalty to the network and provide excellent customer service. This is on top of the 100,000 customers already handed to O2’s Centre of Excellence partners earlier this year. These partners have increased this customer base by 18% during one of the toughest trading years. In addition, the churn rate through these partners has dropped by 6 per cent in the past 12 months.

O2’s Centre of Excellence is open to those partners that meet strict criteria and are keen to form closer alignment with O2. Centre of Excellence partners benefit from a dedicated O2 Business Team providing support across sales, customer service and marketing, helping them better meet the needs of their customers.

Dowd continues: ‘Not only are we making a serious commitment to giving our current and prospective partners a fantastic incentive to secure more business in the first half of 2010, but we trust them so much we’re giving them access to our customers. Customers want to be managed locally and our partners do a better job for them on a local level.‘

Existing partners should speak to their O2 representative. New partners can engage directly with O2 or through the Centre of Excellence distributors. For more information, please contact O2 via O2PartnerComms@o2.com.

Dowd concludes: ‘We want to put clear blue water between us and the competition and look forward to all partners taking us up on this offer.’