Happy Easter Monday to you all, and I hope that the rains on Sunday night completed the cleansing process from the festivities, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and from the feast of the Goddess Ester (depending on which side you lean)… I am one who embraces all religious doctrines an faiths.
So over the last few days I have started receiving a message from MTN Uganda, to physcially visit a service center to verify my sim card registration, well this is only the 3rd cycle for selected customers whose details were screwed up during cycle 2, and I guess I am one of the lucky few with time to waste.
This is a followup to the 2013 recommendations for Simcard Registration https://ssmusoke.com/2013/03/12/uganda-simcard-registration-alternate-approach/ which apparently were not providing sufficient value 😉
Anyway after having to make 10 calls this morning, the reminder message, a hardcoded IVR message, has left me frustrated, but also wondering, why do I have to physically visit the service center, it is 2019!
Rather than complain all the time, I focused my anger with support from my trusted colleagues at Styx Technology Group (http://styxte.ch) we got to protoyping a quick and dirty solution to this mess. What MTN and the regulator need are my National ID details, since they will scan the ID or take a photo of it, take a photo of me then I will have to wait 2-3 days,
A frugal innovation can be:
- Mobile App front end to capture data that is needed
- A backend system – doesn’t matter what it is – can even reuse the exisiting simcard registration database they have with processes to complete the verification flow, and link into the audit process that triggered this verification
- A verification process, which can be done by the app automatically, or using a backup USSD channel. This follows 2FA (two factor authentication to prevent mis-use)
- A notification that the verificatio process has been completed and *197# can be leveraged to check status.
This method is not for everyone, but provides a solution for those of us who may not be able to line up and waste 2-3 hours in line to do just this…
Some mobile screenshots from the design team
Thoughts and additions are welcome!!!
UPDATE 1: One of the team members asked me, so does this solve your problem? How do you know which numbers are listed on your NIN that has been provided? Leading to iteration 2 of the Phone Numbers screen allowing the display of existing numbers with functionality to remove currently registered numbers…
