The fallout from MultiChoice's latest DStv Now streaming service crash on Sunday - it's fourth in the past month - coupled with the pay-TV operator's bad and inadequate communication to DStv customers and the public, is inflicting huge reputational brand damage on not just trust in DStv Now but also in the minds of potential consumers for MultiChoice's stand-alone, commercial DStv streaming service it plans to launch in late-2019.
A growing number of would-be consumers will be reluctant to sign up for and pay for a DStv streaming service from MultiChoice they have to pay for when they see how DStv Now keeps crashing.
Even worse is that potential customers of such a service are seeing how badly MultiChoice behaves by not talking to existing DStv subscribers about what is wrong after something had gone wrong, and failing to provide proper customer-centred communication when it's most needed.
The public sees how MultiChoice deliberately choose to ignore basic consumers' questions, copy-and-paste generic platitudes in terms of stock answers and fails to manage expectations about when a service like DStv Now will be restored after a blackout and service crash.
By 10pm on Sunday night MultiChoice's broken @DStv Now streaming services just keeps flashing. Five hours after asking MultiChoice what went wrong, when it would be fixed etc., the pay-TV operator chose not to answer specific questions in a media enquiry. pic.twitter.com/RmdpPuTdO1— TVwithThinus (@TVwithThinus) May 12, 2019
Calvo Mawela, MultiChoice Group CEO, in 2018 said that the pay-TV company plans to launch a "dishless" DStv streaming-only service offering - similar to DStv Now - in the latter part of 2019.
This stand-alone and commercial DStv streaming version is MultiChoice's next attack beyond the launch of its own subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service Showmax in the growing video streaming wars in South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa where MultiChoice now competes against the likes of primarily Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, as well as a few other smaller players.
Yet MultiChoice is struggling to get its untrustworthy and temperamental DStv Now streaming service and app to work properly.
Making it worse is MultiChoice's terrible crisis communication when DStv Now fails and something goes wrong.
Following Thursday's DStv Now implosion and the resultant anger from DStv subscribers, it doesn't seem as if MultiChoice and its Connected Video division learnt anything about how to handle it better.
On Sunday MultiChoice once again communicated terribly, slow, and to a wholly insufficient level although it already had experience and could have learnt after things went wrong on 15 April with HBO's Game of Thrones on M-Net (DStv 101), again this past week on Thursday, and Friday.
Besides no press statement to explain quickly what had already happened and what MultiChoice is doing to fix it, no answers to media enquiries and no real updates or explanations to DStv subscribers, on Sunday afternoon and into Sunday evening - and knowing full-well that DStv Now crashed and isn't working- a tone-deaf MultiChoice on social media kept pushing out programming marketing, telling viewers to watch various programmes on "#DStvNow" that they couldn't see.
ALSO READ: 'ERROR 500' ... AGAIN. Furious DStv subscribers slam MultiChoice after its DStv Now streaming service crashes again on Sunday impacting the English Premier League final on SuperSport, The Voice SA on M-Net and other shows.
