How Uganda Communications Commission uses Social Media for consumer empowerment

Abstract

The study set out to establish how Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) uses social media, specifically Twitter and Facebook, for consumer empowerment. It was guided by the following objectives: To explore how UCC uses social media for consumer empowerment; to find out how consumers interact with UCC’s social media handles and; to study the challenges faced by UCC while interacting with consumers using social media. A case study design was adopted. Data was collected using a survey and semi-structured interviews from a total of 80 respondents. Key findings show that UCC consistently disseminates information for consumer education and awareness on its social media pages for example consumer rights, obligations, redress seeking methods, consumer intelligence and vigilance. Furthermore, results showed that consumers interact with UCC using social media by following and liking UCC’s social media handles. It also emerged that high data costs and unanswered queries for the consumers, limited staff and reputation management for the UCC staff in the communications office among others were negatively affecting the UCC brand. The study concluded that UCC’s social media use for consumer empowerment has improved its service delivery. However, critical analysis needs to be done when deciding who to reach using social media and measures should be put in place to curb challenges faced. The study recommends that UCC encourages more consumers to use its social media pages for interaction, UCC gives timely responses to comments and queries raised by consumers on social media to improve consumer empowerment, UCC employs more staff to manage its social media handles and UCC builds technical competence for its social media handlers to prevent or mitigate social media crises.