Dear Godfrey Motsa - MTN SA CEO

<p>Dear MTN Executives</p> <p> </p> <p>I thank you for the service we (your loyal customers) have received to date.</p> <p> </p> <p>The MTN brand has played a significant part in improving our lives. We have grown from having very little, to being able to connect with family, in having access to online repositories of information, helping our kids with imperative educational information, staying connected with work\life and being happy. MTN is an integral part of our society where the services we receive from MTN facilitate and complement our complex yet high energy lifestyle. We are now living in a connected world, from ordering an Uber, to acquiring food, reviewing critical work emails and having a video call with the teacher at school. In essence, we are now so dependent on technology in our digital driven world, that a lack of access can have a very disruptive effect on our lives.</p> <p> </p> <p>It is this latter statement that is of concern to me.</p> <p> </p> <p>I am absolutely appalled at the lack of process evolution at MTN where simple things just don’t work to have the customer’s best interests at heart. I cannot fathom how MTN (as a global enterprise) designs processes that suit the traditional forms of management thinking. I (as your loyal customer), should never be left stranded at an airport because MTN’s credit policy is inflexible to a point where your scoring of me as an individual lacks purpose. I should never be in a position where I can’t get home because I cannot access an App, neither am I able to call home from my mobile and explain to my family about the dilemma I am in. I should never be in a position where I am unable to contact MTN to find out why I cannot use my mobile because my access to the network was disabled. In essence, no human being should be left disconnected from the world because MTN chose to apply a policy that no call centre agent can explain or that it would take 7 days at a minimum to receive formal feedback. I cannot understand why a policy of such a nature would be promulgated onto your users, where the user can’t even buy a data bundle just to connect to the outside world and have some part of his\her life resolved. I am perturbed by the lack of accountability, broad sense of inaccurate yet poor judgement and a general non interest in your users.</p> <p> </p> <p>More importantly, have you even considered the impact your execution of poor policies have on a home?</p> <p> </p> <p>For me, you have just not disrupted 2-3 days in my life (excluding the formal feedback I am awaiting), you have also disrupted potentially 2-3 other users in my home that are also dependent on telephony service providers. In a broader sense, your disruption impacts the economic value of spending from a household, not just the user that was impacted. The user and the family is now so wary about the issue created by MTN that having to use your service when travelling has now become a topical debate.</p> <p> </p> <p>As you may be wondering, why would I take the time to write this letter, instead of sending a complaint?</p> <p> </p> <p>In my humble, I do not believe my complaint would be of any value to the listener. The MTN representative doesn’t understand the level of disruption your actions have caused, neither would the person be concerned about how best to solve this issue for future users. More importantly, Corporate South Africa doesn’t have a culture of solving operational processes that matter, neither has it been on any agenda shared via our media reporting structures. At best, I would speculate that an issue of this nature would probably take 6-12 months to resolve, pending off course whether senior executives were looking into the problem or not.</p> <p> </p> <p>There is also no reason to care about this letter, you may as well have your public relations representative attach the standard media response so as to deflect readers from the core issue. Should you not want to engage and admit your inefficiencies, I would happily ignore MTN and move over to some other network whom I hope would have a much more prudent approach to operational processes.</p> <p> </p> <p>I have a preference for the ‘sunshine yellow’ however, I am starting to wonder whether the ‘warmth of red’ is the better option.</p> <p> </p> <p>Kind regards,</p> <p>Anonymous</p>