Good morning/afternoon/
evening, you beautiful people!
A little midweek update, writing on one of my favourite topics. A marketing analysis! There was a national outage of network in South Africa for those who were using the connection network, Telkom and the network's response to the outage really struck my interest and this post was born.
Happy reading❣️
There's a term in my field of work that I just learned called, "gilde to leg", and this situation seemed to fit perfectly. They just apologised and gave me data and went on with their regular activities and these actions hold great gravity for me as I value communication and understanding what's going on.
In order to sell something, a product or a brand, you need the trust of your audience. Most people have no clear idea of why the outage happened and what will be done to prevent it in future. Many people hate being unreachable because of the job that they do or just because of FOMO. As a company that sells the idea of connectivity, this looks horrible.
The 1GB data that was given only lasted for one day and not the two days that they claimed it would. Either way, I believe that two days is not proper compensation, especially if a customer is not going to use it to binge watch a series. For some of us 1GB can last about two weeks, possibly longer. I believe they should have made the data valid for two weeks. It will make the consumers see Telkom in a better light, as they use the data over an extended period of time, remembering that this data was freely given by the company as a form of goodwill and public relations, it will help recreate the image of the company. It will also help to make up for the disappointment that consumers have felt and experienced because of the company.
I felt so rushed to finish the data before it expired because I hate wasting anything. 1GB is a lot of data and I do not understand why it claimed to expire the following day, Wednesday, 15 May 2024, which is today and not even the promised 2 days, which would then be tommorrow, Thursday, 16 May 2024. Trust has been fractured as a result of this error or perhaps deceit.
Who has truly gained here? It feels like only Telkom's competitors are rejoicing as some people have hastily switched to other mobile connection companies. When all they had to do was communicate early on. Address consumers by sms and email and give them data that would only expire after two weeks. Then possibly run a small, extentive campaign on how they have improved, after they actually have improved and work on winning consumers' trust and securing brand loyalty. Reminding customers why they have chosen Telkom and why exactly, " Tomorrow starts today".
It's not that hard, because now I feel so unvalued as a customer. This is not how a customer should feel. Before you sell a product or a service, you sell a feeling. You sell the sizzle, not the bacon first. You need to make what you are selling and advertising relate to the needs and wants of your market by making them feel something. That's what I have noticed with good, reputable companies and their products.
Now this will barely affect their market share but it honestly will still make them lose their competitive edge because all they had to do was explain. After conducting thorough research a.k.a. a five minute Google search, I found out that there is actually a reasonable reason for the Internet Outage. Two subsea internet cables, experienced a fault on the East Coast of the African continent, affecting several countries, South Africa included.
Why didn't they formally inform their customers? As a customer it is not my job to find out why a service that I pay for is no longer being delivered. It is my job as a marketer to conduct research, so I did. As a consumer, I would have assumed absolute nonsense and just thought that Telkom couldn't be bothered to let me know what's going on and how this issue will avoided in future.
Having a valid reason is not excuse for lack of communication. In fact, it's all the more reason to keep your consumers informed.
These are just my thoughts, personally as a customer and professional as a marketer.
What are yours?
A/N: This week was so busy that I didn't think that I would be able to have an update but this issue came up and I just had to write about it, lack of sleep or not!
I update every Sunday, 23:00 CAT!
All my love❤️
Ruthy
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