A tale of two campaigns: TIO's and Telstra's E-mail
Cornered! - Telecommunications blog
by Stuart Corner   
Friday, 21 November 2008
By virtue of its size alone Telstra is the subject of more complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman than any other telco. So when the TIO, concerned by the rapidly escalating volume of complaints, launches a campaign and promises to work with the industry to get the numbers down, what does Telstra do? Issue a press release in support? No, it launches an advertising campaign that is almost inviting consumers to complain - about the mobile services of its competitors. Opportunism perhaps?

Launching the TIO's campaign, dubbed Connect.Resolve , the Ombudsman, Deirdre O'Donnell, said: "Complaints to the TIO rose from 102,463 in 2006/07 to 149,742 [in 2007/08] the largest increase in the past 10 years. The TIO recorded 268,645 complaint issues in 2007/08, an increase of 61 percent from 2006/07. Customer service is now the top complaint issue – with 52,527 complaint issues recorded in 2007/08, and another 28,821 complaint issues recorded about complaint handling."

She explained that a key plank of the campaign was collaboration with the telcos. "We will provide our biggest members each month of the campaign with our data on customer service and complaint handling complaints. We will provide not just data but also the voices of their customers through our case studies.

"We will provide advice about best practice complaint handling, along with training and guidance on request - grounded in our experience as complaint handlers ourselves. We will continue to dialogue with our members and make sure we use their feedback to help improve the customer intelligence we provide them with.

"At the end of the campaign we will issue a public report. Our hope is that this will reflect improvements in customer experiences over the life of the campaign and a commensurate decrease in the complaints received by the TIO."

All good stuff, and it would have been good to see some signs of support from the service providers against whom these complaints are made. For, at the end of the day, it is they alone who can reduce the volume of complaints to the TIO. So far as I know, all have been silent.

Telstra's unrelated press release today could, of course, be pure coincidence. It heralded the launch of an advertising campaign "highlighting how some consumers suffer when they use inferior competitor mobile networks which have fewer transmission towers, deliver slower speeds and operate using less optimal radio frequencies."

"Telstra's research shows some consumers are disillusioned after buying other companies' 3G services, not realising they revert to 2G in large tracts of Australia, or that their existing 3G device is not compatible across their operator's entire footprint," Amanda Johnston-Pell, executive director, brands & marketing communications, said.

And if consumers are not happy their first recourse should be to their supplier. They are not likely to get much joy if the service does not perform as expected - its limitations would have been well spelt out had they read the small print.

But how well was their complaint dealt with? Was the customer service up to snuff? Thanks to Connect.Resolve they should be well aware of what to expect in this regard.

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