Looking back, going forward.
MTN asked us to explore and reimagine their end-to-end customer experience across both physical and digital touchpoints. The goal was to turn it into a digitally-led, world-class experience for customers and agents alike. Challenge accepted.
User Experience | Design | Client Partnership
MTN have a lot of employees and even more customers, so it’s no surprise that they interact with their users in many different places. But the problem was that the experience was not always the right shade of yellow, and could’ve used some digital intervention.
Some of it was online, some of it was on paper. Some of it was for the customers, some of it was for the agents. All of it was important.
As user and customer experience experts, we know that for service to be exceptional, it needs to be consistent. With that goal at the end of the line, we set out on a journey to create a bold new digital world for one of the most iconic brands in the country.
We researched. A lot.
Before we could optimise the channels and touchpoints, we needed to identify the things that frustrated users most.
To do that, we needed to see real people in real situations. So we interviewed users, compiled surveys and took our clipboards to three different cities – we even stood awkwardly behind agents while they upgraded contracts.
We ID’d personas.
We identified four key customer personas and one agent persona that represented the full spectrum of MTN users.
Each one was based on the people we interviewed, and unpacked their needs, concerns, goals, and demographics. We even highlighted their emotional states so we could feel what they were feeling.
We found holes.
With these personas in mind, we investigated their current MTN journeys so we could see where they fell short of meeting the customer and agent needs.
We then looked at the journeys that added the most value and saw what we could do better to improve the overall experience.
We looked on/offline.
We looked at digital solutions to bring MTN’s vision to life – that’s kind of our thing. But there were some things in the world of MTN that were not digital, but still crucial parts of the journey.
We identified the problems.
What it all came down to was inconsistency across all channels. Not everyone was getting that warm fuzzy MTN feeling, and limited accessibility meant that people weren’t experiencing that personal connection with the brand.
We solved them.
We looked at local competitors to establish a baseline, global competitors to establish a benchmark, and used our findings to inform a vision and a future-state experience, using digital as a key lever.
We didn’t deliver a product,
we delivered a future.
Our research was layered, our personas were personal, and our current-state journeys highlighted all the gaps. But it’s easy to hand over a thousand pages of analysis – the real magic is what we did with it.
We turned reams of research and 3,280 hours of time into something much more – a vision, a future state, a blueprint for a bold, new digital world for MTN.
With technology ousting many of the competitive advantages enjoyed by telcos, it all becomes about customer experience. And if our blueprint makes the MTN customer experience a brighter shade of yellow, we’ve done our job.
4350
Surveys
We sent out 4,350 surveys asking users what they thought of the current state of their MTN experience. That’s a lot of paper, a lot of time and a lot of valuable info.
150
Interviews
We interviewed nearly 150 people, studied 15 diaries, got insight from 17 business unit stakeholders and went on 15 ethnographic field trips across SA. We’re still tired.
09
Journeys
The end result: we condensed scores of fragmented experiences into nine high-volume, high-value, needs-based journeys that cover the everyday experiences of many MTN users in South Africa.
Client
- MTN
Industry
- Telco
Teams
- UX
- Studio
Partners
- Frontify