{"id":11486,"date":"2017-05-11T10:49:04","date_gmt":"2017-05-11T00:49:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/macquarietechnologygroup.com\/?p=11486"},"modified":"2023-03-01T16:37:00","modified_gmt":"2023-03-01T05:37:00","slug":"new-thinking-needed-turn-around-telco-consumer-confidence-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macquarietechnologygroup.com\/news\/new-thinking-needed-turn-around-telco-consumer-confidence-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"New Thinking Needed to Turn Around Telco Consumer Confidence Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

The dramatic spike<\/a> in consumer complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman demanded Innovative and imaginative regulation to head off a crisis in confidence as the pace of NBN migration grew, Macquarie Technology Group Executive Luke Clifton said today.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny initiative to turn around the customer experience across the industry needs to stimulate new thinking in the industry, starting with a willingness to admit we have a problem,\u201d Mr Clifton said.<\/p>\n

\u201cChange has to be owned by the industry, not imposed as a new obligation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPast approaches that set minimum standards for specific services \u2013 such as connection times \u2013 have not created a culture of caring about consumers, but rather been too often honoured in the breach .<\/p>\n

\u201cThe industry \u2013 and customers \u2013 have become accustomed to chronically high levels of complaints and unhappiness,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been worried for many months now that this was setting the scene for a tsunami of angry customers as the NBN migration created increased service disruption \u2013 even before today\u2019s disastrous figures, complaints in our industry were three to four times higher than against the banks!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cToday\u2019s numbers showing them up by almost 34 percent demands action.\u201d<\/p>\n

One approach might be to require companies with high numbers of complaints to publish \u201crectification plans\u201d describing what they would do to improve their own businesses, Mr Clifton said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe advantage \u2013 or the carrot \u2013 of this idea is that it does not tell companies how to run their own business, but the stick could be that companies have to publish and commit to the plans.<\/p>\n

Macquarie, for its part, has implemented a three-part policy for improving customer service over the past four years through:<\/p>\n