Relevant

We will remain relevant by understanding the strategic telecommunications environment where innovation is key. We will listen and learn from the industry and provide vital complaint data to service providers.

Several key goals were completed under this category, and one, the connect.resolve campaign, was initiated during the course of the year. This year a new division, the Planning and Stakeholder Engagement team, was created, and brings together the Communications, Members Communications and Policy teams under the one umbrella. The formation of this new team, and the creation of a Finance Division were part of an organisational realignment to help the TIO deliver against its strategic goals and cope with significant growth while improving the scalability of the TIO organisational structure (See Our people).

Connect.resolve

In November 2008, the TIO announced its new connect.resolve campaign, which aimed to work collaboratively with the telecommunications industry to improve its standard of complaint handling and customer service.

In the 2007/08 year, complaints about customer service replaced billing-related complaints to become the TIO’s leading complaint issue.

Most of these complaints were about simple matters that could be addressed by system or process changes, or by concentrating on the front line – where the explicit aim for customer service staff is to get it right the first time.

TIO staff involvement

The TIO’s enquiry officers, who deal with these complaints every day, wanted to make sure that as an Ombudsman scheme we highlighted this pattern of complaints to the industry. More important, however, was our desire that the industry responded to its customers’ concerns. When asked what message they wanted to send back to the telecommunications industry, TIO staff said they wanted to see the industry ‘connect with their customer and resolve their concerns fairly and efficiently’.

The statistics from the campaign show an overall stabilisation in complaint numbers, after almost 18 months of sustained growth.

The campaign ran from January to June 2009, and during this time the TIO provided detailed monthly reports to its top 10 members. We chose to focus on our top 10 members because collectively they represent about 90% of our complaints.

Even though as a scheme we have almost 1 000 members, we wanted to focus on the area that could potentially yield the greatest results.

Monthly data for members

Providing monthly data that illustrated common areas of complaint for each company, along with whole of industry data, allowed the senior management of those companies to received business intelligence that could be useful for identifying patterns of customer experience that could be readily addressed.

As well as monthly statistics, we provided examples of customer voices to each of the companies involved in the campaign. These were personal anecdotes, received from callers to the TIO, about their experiences with a particular company.

The statistics from the campaign show an overall stabilisation in complaint numbers, after almost 18 months of sustained growth.

Between January 2009 and June 2009, complaints to the TIO rose by 1.8%, which compares with a 46.1 per cent increase in the 2007/08 year.

The proportion of customer service related complaints remains unacceptably high, and in the TIO’s view, the industry still has much work to do in this area. The TIO will continue to work with service providers to help them better understand what their customers are telling us, and assist them in dealing with these issues promptly and efficiently.

The connect.resolve report is available here.

The Australian and New Zealand Ombudsman Association (ANZOA)

The TIO is one of a number of ombudsman schemes in Australia and New Zealand. Some schemes exist to assist customers of a particular industry such as telecommunications, finance or electricity. Other, such as the Commonwealth Ombudsman, report to parliaments and help people who have problems with government departments.

In recognition of the common aims that all our schemes share, many ombudsman, including the TIO, are members of the Australian and New Zealand Ombudsman Association (ANZOA).

Throughout the year, the TIO has played an active role in several professional interest groups that exist under ANZOA. They include the ANZOA human resources group, the public relations and communications group, the information technology group, the learning and development group and the first contact group. The TIO chairs the human resources and first contact groups.

The public relations and communications group has been meeting for several years and coordinates several projects such as our attendance at orientation weeks at university campuses and joint advertising campaigns.
The human resources group began in February 2009, and the TIO hosts its meetings at our Melbourne offices. This group is exploring opportunities to promote careers with alternative dispute resolution schemes. Initiatives discussed so far include an ANZOA job website, attendance at careers fairs and participation in a graduate program where candidates rotate through various schemes. The scope and details surrounding these projects will be developed and implemented over the coming year, with participation in careers fairs at various universities scheduled to occur early in the 2010 academic year. Our human resources department also participates in a learning and development group.

The first contact group meets to discuss issues relating to managing first contact complaints. At the TIO, a first contact is a level 1 complaint, where a person is referred back to their provider.(See complaint classification) The purpose of this group is to share information and knowledge in order to develop best practice complaint handling processes.

The information technology interest group shares solutions and opportunities involving software applications and licensing, network and hardware infrastructure, computer telephony integration and data communication solutions and disaster recovery. The group has three scheduled meetings a year and is chaired by the chief information officer of the Financial Ombudsman Service.

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