Understanding Why People Change Their Technology Use in Protests: User Study on Ebonyi State Mobile Telecommunication Subscribers Experiences

Abstract

The rise in consumers complains against their service/tech providers has empowered government of various nations to set up Consumer Complaint Commissions. Some corporate organizations who wish to handle the complaints of their customers usually set up an in-house/internal customer care centres, a platform through which they attend to their customers’ needs. This research therefore is interested in exploring the reasons for user-protests among the mobile telecommunication subscribers in Ebonyi State, Nigeria against their network service providers. To arrive at this, we designed a research questionnaire to capture the experiences of the subscribers of the 4 major mobile telecommunication network service provider companies operating in the state. The participants were recruited through physical administration of research instrument and social media such as facebook, whatsapp and email platforms with a total of 72 participants feedbacks received. The users responses on the various issues raised on our questionnaire were thematically analyzed and represented using adequate data presentation tools. Our results proved that there are growing numbers of disgruntled customers among subscribers of the various network providers. From our survey, we gathered that 81.90% of the respondents have engaged in protest use at one point or the other against their service providers with MTN network topping the list with 36.50%, followed by GLO network 27%, Airtel network 23.80% and 9 Mobile 12.70%. Finally, we proposed a design prototype named “ Komplain ” that will serve as rallying system for the protest users to use and prosecute their actions. The system can also recommend actions which the protesters may undertake.