Message from Robert Finnegan, CEO of Three UK & Ireland


At Three, our mission is to provide a better-connected life for our customers and in these unprecedented times, this could not be more critical. Providing connectivity for our customers while protecting the health and safety of our employees is our top priority.

During this time, as COVID-19 is now strongly impacting our personal lives, our work lives and our communities, I want to assure our employees, our customers and the wider society that we are monitoring developments very closely and taking action throughout the business on a daily basis to protect and support you all.

Given this current situation with Covid-19, our business continuity programme is in full operation and I’d like to share some of the steps we are taking with you.

Our people
The health and safety of our employees and their families and loved ones is of the utmost importance to us here at Three.

Over the past several weeks we have kept our people informed as much as possible regarding Covid-19, as I believe it is our responsibility as a business to ensure clear communication with our employees so we can all overcome this crisis together. We have a dedicated cross-functional team that meets daily to evaluate recent developments, coordinate planning activities and provide guidance to our employees.

Last week, we advised employees to limit any travel as well as face-to-face meetings with external personnel. To minimise the risk of infection in our offices and stores, we have increased the frequency of cleaning in all locations. Social distancing is also a very important concept in the fight against coronavirus and is therefore something that we have strictly enforced in our contact centres, stores and offices as per government advice.

Our stores remain open and our offices currently remain open for critical teams that support our Network and Customers. Office based employees that can work from home will do so until Government advice changes, and now that we have a large remote workforce, we are providing regular advice to them on how best to adapt. Now could not be a more appropriate time for our own employees to embrace Three’s connectivity services.

We also have several support options for employees such as our Employee Assistance Programme and our Digital Doctor service, that may bring some comfort for those who are anxious or concerned at this difficult time.

Our network
We know that our network is vital to keep our customers connected to both their loved ones and their work during this critical time. To best support this and accommodate new growth and demand during these unprecedented times, all non-essential works have been put on hold to protect the stability of our network. We have also increased capacity on the network in order to address the increased data usage.

We have already seen an increase in traffic since last week and we are closely monitoring the trends that are now the new norm and have Business Continuity Planning in place to support our customers and growth demand.

Our network capacity has been assessed and we are confident that we can manage the higher number of calls and data usage over the coming weeks.

Our Customer Care
Our colleagues in customer care and retail are doing an incredible job during a time that is very challenging for everyone to ensure we continue to deliver a best in class service for our customers and I am extremely grateful to them for that.

As part of our business continuity plans, measures have been taken to ensure there will be no disruption to customer services during this critical time.

We are training all our retail staff to be able to support customers through Three Store Now, a new service whereby customers can chat with retail staff while they are using the website. In addition we have trained a number of Contact Centre employees in remote digital support so that if we need to close a centre, our customers are still covered. We also have a wide portfolio of online self-care services that we are now encouraging our customers to use over the coming week.

Our stores
Under the advice of the government, our stores remain open. However, we have enhanced cleaning in place, provided hand sanitiser and are strongly enforcing social distancing which we encourage our customers to respect.

Our customers
The majority of our customers have Three’s Unlimited data offering, which allows them to catch up with loved ones and work effectively without compromise. For our business customers, we are helping to keep their workforces connected from any location, allowing businesses to remain as productive as possible.

We know how important it is for our customers to have easy access to reliable sources of information regarding Covid-19 so from today, those customers that are not on a price plan with Unlimited data will not be charged when visiting the NHS website.    We have introduced a dedicated page on our website to help our customers stay connected during this difficult time – and we have also introduced free delivery on all products.

We are also currently looking at our wider products and services portfolio to understand what other support we can provide to our customers during this time, more details of which will be available later this week.

I know that these are difficult times, but I want to reassure our customers that at Three, we remain fully operational and we do not anticipate disruption of our services to you. I can only commend and thank the commitment of our employees at Three in delivering this. Everyone is going through challenging circumstances at the moment in many ways, yet they are playing their part in helping Three maintain our customer’s ability to “stay connected”.

To everyone, please look after yourselves and your families. Listen to the advice being offered to you by our government and healthcare professionals and stay informed by checking reputable sources. We will come through this together, stronger.

 

Yours sincerely

Robert Finnegan, CEO

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