Proximus

Context

While running interviews for other Proximus projects, I kept hearing the same complaint, project after project: Proximus is expensive, and you never know what you'll actually pay. With the operator's NPS stalling, I proposed turning it into a research track of its own, to check whether the way prices and promotions were announced, in print and on the web, was feeding that distrust. I ran the audit, the benchmark and the interviews, then wrote the recommendations.

Objectives

• Put internal assumptions to the test — "our promotions are clear", "a price ending in .99 performs better", "promotions are what make people switch operator".
• Measure the effort required — how many calculations does it take to know your final price, and for how long it applies?
• Benchmark the market — how VOO, Orange, Telenet, Scarlet and Free display their prices and promotions.

Approach

• Purchase journey audit — four residential packs (Tuttimus, Familus, Epic Combo, Minimus) and the SME pages. On Familus, the same pack showed €77.99 in the comparison table, no price on its own page, €69 in the sticky header, and hinted at €59 on the summary. Often the price changed again when opening the offer details: it adapted to the visitor's profile, or an unexplained rule kicked in.
• Evaluation frameworks — Bastien & Scapin ergonomic criteria (guidance, consistency, explicit control) and Nielsen's heuristics, backed by reading on the psychology of numbers and pricing.
• Five-operator benchmark — VOO, Orange, Telenet, Scarlet and Free, compared on net price, stated savings, round prices and displayed promotion length.
• Eight bilingual interviews — four in French, four in Dutch, with competitors' customers, run in pairs (one leads, one takes notes), followed by a collective unpacking on the wall.
• Evidence-based recommendations — each display principle backed by a source: sale price to the right of the struck-through price, total savings stated, round prices, one word for one promotion.

What the interviews showed

• "It's a trap" — small print and hard-to-find conditions make every promotion read as a scam.
• Nobody knows what they'll pay once the promotion ends — is the web discount already applied? What about month four? A price that changes between the page and its details settles the doubt for good.
• €10 for three months moves nobody — to switch operator, participants mentioned savings of €70 to €150.
• Words matter — "All in" suggests unlimited; "webdeal" means nothing to most, participants say "web promo".
• Switching operator takes time — two to three weeks of thinking it over, longer for a family.

Results

• Assumptions settled — six findings validated; "our promotions are clear" did not hold up against users.
• "Webdeal" dropped — the term left the copy from the very next promotion.
• Price display principles — handed to the teams redesigning the product pages: a net price, identical at every step, with its duration.
• Second research round — sixteen interviews in December 2019, eight Proximus customers and eight who had left for a competitor, to validate the remaining points.