Upselling Done Wrong

Today I received the felt 100th call from my mobile operator. Let’s call them by name: Telekom. Telekom is, by the way, the German mother company of the U.S. T-Mobile.

I am writing this blog post because their upselling strategy is the most annoying I have ever experienced. Here is how their strategy works:

1. Offering Great Offers to their Customers
   I will be honest in this review. The Telekom is adding massive value to their products and I really appreciate some of these free services or give-aways. What the Telekom does is they have regular offers which they call MEGA Deals. If you are a Telekom customer from Germany you can check out their offers here. Here are some deals I received for free during the last 24 months: Evernote Premium (worth 59.99€/year), Wunderlist Premium (worth 59,88€/year), 6-months of Apple Music (worth 59,94€/6-months). These products I use regularly have a total of around 120,00€ which Telekom gives its customers for free. Right now they are offering a 10€ discount if you book a train while being connected to the mobile network. A few weeks ago they gave every mobile customer a free Vapiano meal.
2. Collecting Call Permissions
   Here comes the bad part: somehow you had to agree to receive a few promotion calls by Telekom. I usually don’t have a problem with irregular promotion calls as you can simply say: “No, Thanks”. At least I thought so.
3. Upselling Through Phone & SMS
   What Telekom now does is very annoying. I receive very regular promotion calls from them. They are so annoying that I don’t even pick up the call in the first place. Every now and then I will receive an SMS with App recommendations (for what?).

Telekom strategy seems to be to collect permission of their customers by putting out great free content like Evernote or Vapiano meals. I really appreciate the services Telekom is offering for free and I think it is an amazing and highly successful branding strategy. The problem is the annoying and-and nearly bothering calls of their service centers who try to upsell me on their products and plans.
Here a short screenshot:

Here is my hypothesis: Upselling via phone does not work anymore with millennials or post-millennials. We hate it when someone calls us without our permission. If you want to call us please inform us prior to that via WhatsApp message, Email, or Facebook. Don’t just pick up the phone and call us at times we don’t have the time and pleasure to talk to you. Send us your offers via Email. Don’t call us at random times. Thank you!