Andy Lark slams Telstra, warns marketers to be careful when outsourcing their brands
The former marketing chief at Commonwealth Bank has warned companies against the dangers of outsourcing after complaining of being harassed by a firm claiming they were working on behalf of Telstra.
Andy Lark, now a marketing consultant after leaving CommBank last year, took a swing at Telstra on his blog, The Daily Lark.
He wrote: “Telstra’s a brand I’ve tried to like. Some great marketing, a strong agency, good people — all of that persuaded me to give them a go. Terrible experiences in mobile and broadband left me disappointed. The company that felt it necessary to call me constantly so see if I was happy, hasn’t bothered to call once since I switched to Vodafone.
“And today we’ve been harassed no less than six times from a company called Telechoice. Now when we ask them who there company is, they just hang-up. But call they do. They represent Telstra apparently.”
He also said Telstra had failed to respond to his tweets to the company, which he described as another example of how not to treat customers.
“Even if only to acknowledge customers and to say ‘we have heard you’, brands need to respond within a 20 minute to 30 minute window,” he said.
But Telstra, in a statement issued late today, said it has no agreement with Telechoice.
“We are looking into Mr Lark’s claims, however Telechoice is a wholesale customer and do not act on our behalf nor have any relationship with our retail customer base,” a spokesman said.
He added that Telstra has since responded to Lark’s contact via Twitter and apologised for missing his tweets on Saturday.
“This is highly unusual and we are investigating what happened here,” the spokesman said.
“Companies do it all the time. They put their brands in the hands of third parties who care less about your brand and only about transactions at any cost,” he wrote.
“This is fine in a world where customer experience was masked by word of mouth or buried in the back of newspapers. In this new world, transparency exposes brand’s truths. As they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant. The difference now is that it is the customers administering the sunlight.”
Lark succeeded Telstra’s outgoing head of marketing Mark Buckman as CommBank chief marketing officer in 2011.
He cited an example of where he was “harassed” six times in quick succession by a company who said they were calling on behalf of Telstra, despite requests not to call again.
While not suggesting companies should stop outsourcing altogether, the third party must have clear guidelines from the brand they are representing about how to treat customers.
“Brand owners need to take charge of customer experience, starting with the sales process,” Lark said. “And they need to get ruthless about realising the expectations of their leadership for nothing other than stellar customer service.”
Telstra had not responded to Mumbrella’s request for comment at the time of publication.
Steve Jones
Dont forget about me…..
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Devastating insights.
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This is an entertaining read while listening to Yakety Sax
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this “warning” is about 15 years too late when outsourcing was oh so new
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Telechoice are an mvno just like amaysim or vaya. They are not Telstra agents (the only connection is that they use Telstra wholesale equipment but saying that they represent Telstra is equivalent to saying that TPG is Telstra).
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And if you’re not Andy Lark, with a high profile in marketing and access to channels like Mumbrella to trumpet your issues, do you really think Telstra would have responded?
Not a chance in hell.
Maybe disgruntled Telstra customers should send their complaints to Andy Lark so he can pass them on.
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Actually Mike in my experience Telstra does respond to Tweets. But that’s only after you’ve had enough of the call centre in Manilla (The Philippines one not the one near Tamworth) which is so utterly useless and inflexible (don’t go off script because their heads will explode) that you get desperate to speak to some one back in Oz.
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Funny. I seem to get the exact same service from Commbank.
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Brands MUST realise that the staff that are amazing at service and are able to communicate, confidently in writing, plus are engaged, should be ‘live’ and client facing, manning the social channels. Marketing should not get involved with live communications with clients, neither should average call centre service staff, good service staff must, however only the very best and they demand a decent wage: they are your brand ambassadors and they will help your brand succeed.
We are moving away from the need / reliance of traditional channels to build brand. Vodafone is an obvious example of this. (How many customers have tVoda lost in Australia?) You can plough your money into the cricket, or sponsoring F1, however if the people do not like your product, or your service, then guess what might happen?
How does your brand rate on social review sites. Social proofing is free, so build a great product and EVP and watch your sale rise. It IS that easy in 2014. (Many old school ad agencies will tel you otherwise, as their traditional business models are hungry and they love making coin by charging enormous amounts in creative and production costs and booking expensive traditional media.) Marketeers: step up!
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Steve and Andy, just want you all know that I read this article and was very concerned to read some of the comments. We do not ‘wholesale our brand’ but unfortunately we do have companies representing themselves as Telstra which we refer to the ACCC. I am sorry that you have not received good service from us and I know Mark Buckman has discussed with you the issues…and our lack of responsiveness on your tweets…we do care about service and the only way we can improve our reputation is by improving our service and ability to personalise the support we provide our customers. Just for the record, no one has written this response for me…a number of senior Telstra executives and others have read this article. We are trying to improve, we don’t get it right all the time but we are very committed to improving,,,and if anyone has any problems, we want to hear about them…but not always in an article if possible…David Thodey (CEO of Telstra)
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