Mobile operator Airtel held on December 16, 2015, a press conference to introduce all the solutions it has brought up to respond to the various complaints of its consumers about the quality of its services. Abdramane Diallo, Airtel’s Marketing Director, identified the services concerned as internet billing, direct internet, internet bundles’ validity period, billing of added value services, real-time resolution of complaints, and ease of access to calling center.

Regarding internet billing, customers claim that their bundles expire too quickly. Explained how wrongly set applications could exhaust bundled data, Abdramane Diallo said Airtel developed an auto-management freeware for bundle management. The company also committed to raise awareness of its customers on application management since some of these applications update automatically.

Concerning credit consumption, without prior notification of data exhaustion, Airtel brought up an alert which notifies customers about consumption level for data: 50%, 80%, no more data. Once internet data is exhausted, it will no more automatically pumps from main credit balance. The choice is now optional. Customer can now deactivate that option by sending “STOP” to 103. For those who do not wish to do so, this option costs 50 FCFA. An alert will be received each time consumption begins. As for the validity period of internet bundles, user will receive an alert 10 and 2 days before bundle expires.

For the billing of added value services, customers claimed that credit would vanish after being subscribed, involuntarily. Airtel now allows its customers to cancel subscription any time they wish.

Finally, the issues of delay in solving problems customers encounter and that of difficult access to call center were solved through an awareness-raising campaign on direct access to call center (A call to 127 will help you directly access Airtel Money and Internet) and establishment of new sales points.

Airtel also launched a new SMS service, free and rapid, to attend to subscribers requests. A call to 121 grants access this service.