STRATEGIES TO REDUCE CUSTOMER COMPLAINTS AT A TELEPHONE SERVICE PROVIDER IN THE KINSHASA REGION, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Abstract

The new mutations in the telecommunications industry lead to the fast growing of Value Added Service (VAS). However, many operators instead of promoting VAS with the traditional channels of communication and support media have decided to focus the promotion of VAS offers through Below the Line (BTL) channels and targeted the entire base of subscribers regardless of certain sensitive principles. This approach led to significant customers' complaints at a Mobile Telephone Service Provider (MTSP) in the region of Kinshasa in The Democratic Republic of Congo.
The objective of this research was to find strategies to reduce those complaints related to VAS at that MTSP in Kinshasa. The main pillars that oriented the entire research was improving the quality of customers' acquisition by driving segmentation, improving customers usage and retention by building a great customer experience and optimizing communication channels. A sample of 100 customers had been subjected to a questionnaire to collect information for the research. After analysing the data collected from the questionnaire, the key findings to reduce customers' complaints require segmenting the customer base by taking into account the gender and age category in order to acquire the right customers to which the right value proposition will be addressed. In addition, the analysis showed that the current customer experience is destroying value by evoking emotions such as disappointment, dissatisfaction, irritation driven by expensive pricing, unacceptable billing model, and bad quality of VAS offers. This situation could not drive usage and revenue growth but complaints only. Moreover, the analysis showed that the channels of communication were not appropriate and the frequency of communication was annoying for most of complainants.
To overcome that situation, it was recommended that the MTSP has to build a great customer experience, revising pricing as per the profile of customers' segment, moving from the daily recurrent billing to a weekly currently billing and revising the entire communication strategy of VAS offers. Finally, for quick intervention the MTSP has to set up a dedicated service recovery for VAS in order to handle complaints and issues.