Aussie Telcos fail at front-line customer service

I have recently gone through the process of switching mobile carriers, from an Optus corporate account to a Telstra corporate plan. This has proven to be a frustrating experience, one that has been typical of dealing with each of the three major carriers in Australia (Telstra, Optus and Vodafone) all of which I have been a customer over the years.

I don’t wish to enter into a diatribe on the numerous issues experienced during this process which have all fortunately been resolved, however I do wish to exposit some conclusions that I have arrived at around front-line customer service from the three major players.

Apart from banks, telecommunications companies are probably the major provider of individual or personal services that people regularly deal with. In conducting their daily lives, most people have as much a reliance on their mobile phone, home phone and internet as they do on the financial services provided by a bank. Given this rough parallel in the world of personal service providers, as well as in the size and sale of the organisations the customer is dealing with, one would be forgiven for thinking it possible to interact with banks and telcos in a similar way.

The major difference here is that while banks, as part of the conditions of their financial services licence have to provide branches to consumers that provide a full range of support services, telcos have no such requirement. There must be a lot of people out there who, like me have ventured into a Telstra, Optus of Vodafone shop with an account or billing enquiry with the expectation of receiving something along the lines of customer service. There also must be many people out there who, like me walked away disappointed. In contrast, I imagine very few people walk into a Telechoice or AllPhones (or other dealer’s) store with this expectation.

The reason this occurs is that while Optus, Telstra and Vodafone shops carry all the branding of their corporate counterparts, they are simply franchises or licenced sales agencies and have no mandate, training, access or ability to assist with customer service matters. They are simply shops, not service centres and act in exactly the same capacity as Telechoice, AllPhones or any other carrier-independent franchise.

What this means is that rather than having a “branch” for customers to rely on, they end up spending hours on the phone to call centres (in the Philippines or India) to get issues resolved which could probably be resolved in a five minute interaction with a properly trained customer service representative with the proper access to the necessary accounts and billing systems.

Telstra, Optus and Vodafone should take a lesson from the banks, which are expanding their branch networks and operating hours as well as creating other face-to-face interaction mechanisms such as the NAB shopping centre kiosks.

There is a big opportunity missed by the telcos to turn the sales agencies, which already carry their branding and the expectations of their customers, into service centres instead of forcing customers to interact via IVR systems and call-centres. It is up to the telcos to drive this themselves, rather than the franchisees (after all, they are just there to make sales) however it would be possible for the telcos to install their own service staff in the franchised branches or provide incentives for the franchisees / licences to provide their own service staff.

If this approach were to be adopted, there would be benefits to all involved:

• Franchisees through capitalising on the leads  provides by service enquiries
• Telcos through improved customer satisfaction and retention
• Customers through a quicker, simpler and more satisfying service interaction