Airtel Tisanje Promotion Airtime Bonus Caused Congestion

Airtel Tisanje Draw numbers 

Airtel Malawi says it has stopped giving out airtime bonuses to customers through ongoing ‘Tisanje Promotion’ in a move to prevent network congestion.

The Malawi’s mobile premier, is running Tisanje Promotion where customers are entering the competition once they recharge their phones including sending and receiving Airtel money. But on top of the recharge customers were also getting airtime bonus.

However, customers were surprised since last weekend, receiving text messages from the company announcing “no airtime bonuses in Tisanje Promotion with immediate effect on 1st September 2015”

Masiye Mazaza 

But speaking in an interview, Airtel Malawi defends its decision saying the company wants to maintain quality service and listen to customers.

Airtel Money Marketing Manager Masiye Mazaza, said their call centre was overwhelmed with number of queries on network congestion particularly from customers that are not participating in Tisanje.

“With overwhelming response of over 600 thousand entries in a day, we actually foreseen more of this beyond our expectation and we do not want to have a situation where quality of service is compromised for the customer because of the bonus we are giving.” Said Mazaza

“Other customers that are not participating had raised complaints that these bonuses may be they will congest the network.” He disclosed

He then explained that since the bonuses expires in a day, customers were trying to finish their bonuses even if they do not have an important call, which in the end affected quality of service especially to someone making an important call.

“We do not want to compromise the quality of service which touches on everybody; those that are participating in the promotion and those that are not participating. Each one of them must still have a quality service at the end of the day.” He said

“So, as a listening brand we would want to make sure that we please our customers. We maintain the quality of the service but without changing the entry mechanics for the promotion because for one to enter they simply need to do the recharge and they will still earn the points that we promised.” Said Mazaza

Then Mazaza assured customers that though the company has decided to remove the bonuses for the Tisanje, this will not affect customers from earning their points once they recharge their phones.

“The bonus was just a token of appreciation on top of entry, for a customer to win in this promotion it just takes them to recharge and also to send and to receive money.

Though he mentioned that the company still has capacity to contain the problem even if it arises, but emphasized that it was necessary to listen to customers at the same time preventing possible occurrence.

When Aitel was launching Tisanje Promotion on 31st July 2015, Airtel Money Country Director, Francis Matseketsa assured customers that the company had already looked into issues of network congestion.