“Call Time” on Communication Industry Customer Service: Macquarie Telecom

The industry response to the latest TIO complaints figures showed a dangerous complacency, and suggested regulators and policy makers will soon need to “call time” and intervene more aggressively to protect customers, Group Executive, Macquarie Telecom Luke Clifton said today.

“The industry response has been to congratulate itself on a year-on-year fall of less than 10 percent, rather than focus on the alarming 25 percent increase in the last quarter of the year,” Mr Clifton says.

“The absolute number of customer service complaints – more than 112,000 – remains eye-popping and the horror last quarter spike means no one in the industry should be looking for silver linings.”

Mr Clifton said industry leaders’ continually talk about customer focus, while cutting investment in service, which meant the industry had no reservoir of good will in the community as the unavoidable disruption of the transition to NBN began to peak.

“I warned months ago that the industry had little time to build some confidence with consumers before millions of people faced the cutover of their fixed line services to NBN,” he said.

“With a network change on such a scale, there will undoubtedly be some unexpected problems, and the rise in NBN-related complaints in the TIO figures show that this moment is now upon us.

“But this industry continues to insult customers by focusing on the ‘good news’ when it should be acknowledging continuing disgraceful levels of complaints.

“Banks, with around a quarter of complaints to their industry watch dogs, are facing calls for a Royal Commission.

Contact:
Luke Clifton 0432 329 144
Karen Ross EA (02) 8221 7384