Hell freezes over. Etisalat gets onto Twitter and Facebook. We think. [Updated]

Posted by Bhavishya Kanjhan on Apr 12, 2010 in Default | 0 comments

Anyone who has spent time in the UAE knows its leading telco Etisalat isn’t the most forward or  consumer-centric type of company.
Infamous for overcharging and underdelivering, Etisalat hasn’t quite been the case study in Customer service either. That’s why when a company whose public ‘relations’ strategy to most crises is to stay silent gets on to Social Media platforms, one can’t help rub their eyes in disbelief. And then some more.

For the short period of time it has been around, Du – the other telco in the UAE –  has been doing a brilliant job of connecting and engaging the local community and can be used as a local, if not global best practise example.

Etisalat seemed to have registered the account @EtisalatUAE on 20th January 2010 but has only started tweeting on 11th April 2010. In addition they also have a Facebook page and a blog which can be found at etisalatuae.blogspot.com.

There has been a lot of frustration against Etisalat a lot of which has been channelised on Twitter by irate (ex)customers over the past few months. That’s why you can only imagine when Etisalat first start tweeting, most reactions ranged from hatred to indifference. Tweets started pouring in that dissed the account’s following strategy, the Twitter interface it was using and so on and so forth. My TweetDeck smelled of the same hostility that had been dished out to Barasti for its now infamous ‘NICE NICE BABY’ fiasco.

But sanity kicked in soon enough and calls to give Etisalat a chance to prove itself started coming up. For its part, Etisalat started following more people and made steady progress with customer service . Hell, they even responded to Du’s welcome tweet with a thank you tweet of their own. Most people wouldn’t have bet on that.

While there remains a healthy dose of skepticism among the twitter community on whether this campaign is indeed done by Etisalat (given the lack of a PR announcement) or is an elaborate hoax/scam, I for one am hopeful; hopeful that Etisalat can change its ways and not burn the customers that it still has. Their efforts on social media will only be successful if they are authentic and if they are to be authentic, the change needs to come from within and from a higher level.

Turning things around is going to be a mountain of a task but it seems like they have taken the first step in a right direction. Let’s hope they can now walk the walk.

Update: Tom Gara from The National has confirmed that the twitter account is indeed official

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