#OccupyMTN and How MTN Uganda handled a possible PR disaster
On the 18th of November 2014, MTN Uganda woke up to a tsunami of tweets and posts all over social media complaining about their services.
The tweets under the hash-tag #OccupyMTN varied from jokes and mockery to actual complaints of people who had lost money or data due to a technical fault that MTN faced during an upgrade it conducted.
More than just the technical fault, this felt like an outburst that resulted after a long time of neglecting customer complaints that at the time looked insignificant. As an MTN client myself, I can testify that the network has occasional outages that make it hard to access services at a given time. For example not being able to load data bundles, mobile money network being down, calling a number that you know is available but are told the number is not on the MTN network. The worst part is trying to call customer care and not being able to reach them because the queue is too long.
In some countries, when a huge telecom has an outage like the one MTN had, they would record a mass exodus of clients to the next best service provider because of low tolerance for anything short of an acceptable service. With over 8M customers and still counting, MTN cannot take anything for granted especially at a time when new entrants like SMART telecom and Vodafone are doing their best to claim a share of the Ugandan telecom pie.
The reason #OccupyMTN is a big deal is because MTN is not just any other company. Lets look at a couple of facts why;
- MTN is one of the biggest tax payers in Uganda. As of December 2013 MTN Uganda alone made $400M convert that into Ugx and you would understand why that is huge.
- MTN Uganda boasts of over 10 million customers using their services that range from voice, data, mobile money and other corporate or enterprise solutions.
- MTN has about 3.4M data customers in Uganda when UCC report estimates Ugandan internet users at 8M.
Under the new leadership of Brian Gouldie as new CEO (replacing Mazen Mroue) MTN swiftly moved and responded to the possible PR disaster when they quickly issued a statement on their social media channels and on their website. They further went ahead to investigate whatever the issue was and then made efforts to resolve the issue. Let’s look at how MTN handled this issue and what they did right.
1. Let your customers know that you are aware there is a problem and you are doing something about it. Ignoring the issue and hoping it will go away is not wise
MTN quickly made a statement on Facebook, Twitter and on their website after which the CEO quickly addressed the media on the issue. They apologised for all incovenience caused and assured customers that they are doing something about it.
2. Your customers need to know that you have listened to their complaints and the only way they will know is by your actions
- MTN went ahead and investigated the issue. They identified the problem clearly showing how many customers were affected. MTN went ahead to refund all the customers that had been affected and indeed many customers acknowledged receipt of the refund.
- They gave an alternative means to reach customer care for those who were trying and unable to do so.
3. Use the opportunity to address all other Issues.
In the data fiasco, MTN was also being accused of tax evasion and it was also sued for spamming customers. They used an actual problem to their advantage. After an initial press conference to address the issue, they went back and prepared adequately after which they invited the press to their new business premises at Nyonyi gardens for a press conference.
In the press conference, the CEO had the opportunity to interface with media which helped disseminate a uniform message about their solutions to the recent problem. At this conference, MTN;
- Introduced their content management system (CMS) and assured customers that the power was now in their hands and they were in control of all the SMS’s that they received.
- They launched a new twitter handle to manage the large volume of customers they have online
- They clarified on the Tax evasion issue
- If you are keen, they are now pushing their new campaign “Power In Your Hands” and calling on other networks to follow suite.
That’s how they handle a crisis. I am impressed with how MTN handled the #OccupyMTN issue and even though not everyone is satisfied, they definitely put out a fire with this one.
My only hope is that this is not a one time thing and that they will pay attention to customers needs. I wil be keepig tabs.
