Industry Welcomes 48% Fall in Complaints to the TIO – a New Seven-Year Low
Sydney, 17 December 2014 – Complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman have fallen by 48% in the past 4 years – hitting a new seven-year-low figure in the three months to 30 September this year.
Communications Alliance CEO, John Stanton, said the record low numbers announced by the TIO today were further evidence that customer service and complaint-handling excellence had become the new competitive battleground in Australian telecommunications.
The September quarter TIO figures (30,539 new complaints) compared with the 59,438 complaints recorded in the March quarter of 2010-2011 – the highest quarterly figures recorded in recent years. This represents a massive turnaround of 48%.
“Australia’s telecommunications service providers have innovated in many ways, including re-writing their product plans to help customers maximise the value of services, manage their monthly spend and avoid excess-usage charges,“ Mr Stanton said.
“Customer service has gone through a revolution in pursuit of better customer experience and easier, more satisfying ways to interact with service providers.
“No-one would argue ‘mission-accomplished’ – there is great scope to drive complaint volumes far lower, and industry is on track to do exactly that.
“Measures such as the improved Communications Alliance Telecommunications Consumer Protections (TCP) Code have helped the trend, but the driver is coming from a genuine top-down commitment among service providers to excel at customer service. It is particularly pleasing to note the 13% drop in complaints related to mobile excess data charges –further evidence of industry’s ability to address ‘of the moment’ issues without compromising focus on the more traditional drivers of complaints.”
ABOUT COMMUNICATIONS ALLIANCE
Communications Alliance is the primary telecommunications industry body in Australia. Its membership is drawn from a wide cross-section of the communications industry, including carriers, carriage and internet service providers, content providers,search engines, equipment vendors, IT companies, consultants and business groups.
Its vision is to provide a unified voice for the telecommunications industry and to lead it into the next generation of converging networks, technologies and services. The prime mission of Communications Alliance is to promote the growth of the Australian communications industry and the protection of consumer interests by fostering the highest standards of business ethics and behaviour through industry self-governance. For more details about Communications Alliance, see www.commsalliance.com.au.
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Kreab Gavin Anderson
Lucy Chamberlain
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