New Orange supremo in drive back to basics
For a man who has spent his entire career in the telecoms industry, it seems strange that Tom Alexander, Orange UK’s newly installed chief executive, should list his first passion as racing cars.
As we travel across London in the back of his chauffer driven BMW 7-series, he tells me he never expected to make it big in business, instead leaving school at sixteen to pursue his dream of becoming a Formula 1 driver. It was a dream that was partly realised: Alexander spent his teens as a professional racing driver, “when he used to be able to keep a car on the track,” his chauffeur chips in.
Whatever you do, don’t say ‘relaunch’
Deciding it was time to get a “proper job” at 21, he took a post at Telia, the Swedish arm of TeliaSonera. What followed was a rapid rise through the telecoms sector, via BT Cellnet, before ending up as chief executive of Richard Branson’s Virgin Mobile in 1999. Charming and animated, Alexander has the same energy as his ex-boss, and shares more than a passing physical resemblance.
The whirlwind of publicity is happening ahead of the relaunch of Orange’s brand next week. Although Alexander has been told by someone in marketing to call it a “refresh”, he keeps slipping up, and it’s obvious that he’s been coaxed out of retirement to try and decontaminate the company’s image. Once the coolest firm in mobile phones, Orange struggled to maintain its market share after France Telecom acquired it from Hutchinson Telecoms in 2000 for £25bn. Some insiders say that the French firm let the business slide while others put it down to complacency from a one-time market leader.
Part of the relaunch is a new marketing campaign, built around the statement “I am”, but it’s odd that the firm should choose a message so open to allegations of pretentiousness; “The Future’s Bright, The Future’s Orange” is a slogan that has hung around the firm’s neck like an albatross as its fortunes have worsened. According to Alexander, it sums up his plan to put the customer back at the heart of the firm, a task that will be no mean feat: Orange has scored dismally in recent consumer satisfaction surveys.
“This is a fantastic brand,” he says, “it convinced me to come out of retirement. But we need to refocus on the consumer, and that involves a mixture of tangible and emotional stuff.” The “tangible stuff” is one of the biggest shake ups in the firm’s history, in which 450 middle managers have been served redundancy. The savings are being spent on more rank and file staff in stores and on bringing back its call centres from India. “I made a decision to stop outsourcing and, although it won’t happen overnight, we are making inroads. The service in India is fine, but it isn’t brilliant. I want to say we’re the best.”
Alexander is also hoping that by increasing the number of frontline staff in the UK, the firm will be able to cultivate a team of ambassadors for the company. Like Branson did at Virgin, he wants to build a structure where staff feel passionate about the brand, extolling its virtues everywhere they go. “It’s going to be a huge motivator having staff in Britain,” he beams, “we’re going to be investing in people – not just technology.
Trying to become a beacon of quality
It’s brand, not technology, where Alexander’s talent lies; at Virgin Mobile he built up the first “virtual” operator which leased its entire network from T Mobile, a business model now used by Tesco Mobile. In a way, his strategy at Orange sounds similar; he’s more than happy to leave research and development to France Telecom – which spends 2 per cent of its profits on innovation – and focus on the firm’s image and the customer’s experience.
“This industry is very good at promising whizzy new technology and over-hyping things like WAP, only to end up disappointing the customer. Of course it is important to innovate, but we have to invest in the basics,” he says. It could be a shrewd strategy; in a market where the products and prices offered by telecoms firms become more similar by the day, Alexander wants Orange to stand out as a beacon of quality. He still has lots of work to do in areas like network coverage, where the firm lags behind its competitors – something Alexander knows he needs to put right. When I tell him that my Orange phone doesn’t work in Blackheath, he seems genuinely concerned.
Orange has never had a problem with the “emotional stuff” but its ability to deliver a competitive service has eroded in recent years. As he bounds from the car to deliver yet another speech, Alexander’s zeal to rescue the firm’s fortunes is palpable. But he has a hard task ahead of him; as soon as the boss is gone, his chauffeur turns to me and says, “my Orange phone doesn’t work in Blackheath either. Annoying, isn’t it?”
CV: Tom Alexander
Tom Alexander joined Orange in January 2008, eighteen months after retiring from business. Prior to that he was CEO of Virgin Mobile from its launch in 1999 until its sale to NTL in 2006. His career in telecoms began in 1986 when he joined Telia in. From there he joined BT Cellnet as Deputy Commercial Director. Alexander is a keen motor racer and was once a member of the British Karting team that won the Commonwealth Championship. He was educated at Millfield school, Somerset, and lives with his wife and two young children.