Multinational telecommunication company, MTN, just improved its customer experience with the launch of its Whatsapp chatbot which will enable users to easily top up their phones with airtime.
This development was disclosed recently by Mr Mapula Bodibe, MTN Group’s Executive in charge of Consumer Business. According to him, the new service will also enable customers to check their airtime balance right on Whatsapp.
Reason behind this development
Effort to improve self-service – According to Mr Bodibe, companies are continually improving their self-service experiences. It is, therefore, important for MTN to upgrade their overall customer journey.
The company quoted Gartner Research, which said that 25% of customers will use chatbots or virtual customer assistant by 2020 to manage their own accounts.
“It’s imperative that companies focus on improving self-service experiences to retain and grow customers and this is an important step for MTN, in addition to what we are doing to upgrade our overall customer journey.”
Why Whatsapp?
The popular social media channel, WhatsApp, has about 1.5 billion global users (as of January 2019), according to Statista.
Lots of percentage of MTN users use the app, which makes it convenient for the company to deploy to the popular app.
This will help to save time for the customer
According to Mapula, customer-centricity is the driving force behind MTN chat. The need for customers to find a convenient way to solve their issues without calling a service agent or walking to an MTN office is the goal. It will also save the customers time.
“MTN Chat is helping customers simply and seamlessly manage their accounts off a secure and convenient platform they already know and love.”
I hope if I ran out of data I can use this channel to buy airtime still. If I had to use alternative channel to still buy airtime in order to use this channel to buy airtime that makes no sense whatsoever.