No, Telstra. System outage is about reputation, not technology
When it comes to handling a crisis, some brands can't see the forest for the trees, says crisis comms specialist Tony Jaques.
You know you’re in trouble when the news media start compiling lists of your failures, and the list gets rolled out and updated with every subsequent issue.
That’s the problem facing Telstra as the incumbent premium telecoms supplier in Australia. And what’s even more damaging to reputation is not just its repeated system outages but the company’s inadequate communication to hundreds of thousands of angry customers.
In February, Telstra suffered a massive outage – reportedly caused by “an embarrassing human error” – followed by two further failures in March which affected up to 8 million customers.
Telstra CEO: Andrew Penn
CEO Andrew Penn offered users a ‘free data day’ and said: “As CEO I take full responsibility … and I regret the impact on our customers and the fact that we let them down.” It was pretty much a textbook apology, accompanied by a commitment to review the system.
But when the network went down again in mid-May, affecting 10% of the company’s internet customers, the CEO was noticeably quiet.
Perhaps it was because the latest failure happened just one day after he boasted at a function that a review of the network showed its “incredible strength and resilience,” and how Telstra was committed to meet, if not exceed, customer expectations.
After the new outage, instead of more public assurances from the embattled CEO, customers saw anonymous messages on the Telstra website – under the unhelpful heading Unplanned Service Disruption – which twice reported the system had been restored, and twice had to admit it wasn’t true.
Doubtless Mr Penn was very busy, but after four days he returned to social media and tweeted; “pls know I’m reading all your comments and our team is on it.”
It’s hard to imagine how anyone thought that message from the CEO would improve the situation.
In fact a whole week was allowed to pass before Telstra finally wheeled out their Chief Operating Officer, Kate McKenzie, to offer an executive apology and to concede that, despite earlier assurances, several thousand customers were still offline.
Predictably there was a technical explanation for the prolonged outage and the premature claims of success. But this was not fundamentally a technological crisis – any complex system is always going to have outages, but how you communicate about it is what makes the difference.
Reputational damage doesn’t just add up, it multiplies. When your company is repeatedly under fire – and the news media are compiling lists – every fresh problem starts to gain a cumulative importance that it doesn’t necessarily deserve.
Telstra’s response to public anger over its failure to support same sex marriage
That’s the situation Telstra is now in, and it needed a lot more than a confident CEO who took the limelight, then seemingly left it to someone else to face the media.
The role of the CEO in any crisis is critical, especially the question of when to use the CEO and when to use someone else.
Telstra’s latest experiences surely provide a lesson on how to manage such important decisions.
A Parting Thought: “A reputation once broken may possibly be repaired, but the world will always keep their eyes on the spot where the crack was.” – Bishop Joseph Hall 1574-1656
Tony Jaques is the director of issues and crisis communications company Issue Outcomes
Post-Thodey sadly Telstra has regressed to an accountant run organisation – talk is cheap but their actions are much louder – it’s sad that a company that underwent such a cultural change under Thodey is heading this way.
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Currently in my 3rd day of a Telstra ADSL outage, I have been intrigued by some of the customer service initiatives Telstra have implemented in recent times, no doubt to counter some of their core perception issues and I would hope improve the customer experience. While great concepts, when executed within the historically disjointed customer service chain at Telstra they simple fail.
Firstly, when looking for service status in the Telstra App – I found the very handy troubleshooting tool which identified that I indeed had line fault (ruling out several other possible causes including billing issues) and advised me to call customer service with a reference number. After the obligatory phone hold time – where I was encouraged/urged/nearly tricked into hanging up to use the online troubleshooting (see the potential never ending circle here?), I finally made it to Level 1 support where we started from scratch (with obviously no record of the troubleshooting already confirmed and linked to account). Unfortunately our attempts to troubleshoot were thwarted by scheduled maintenance occurring at the same time and after I hung up promising to call back (they weren’t keen on my offer to for them call me back), the job was dutifully closed and marked up as an issue caused by scheduled maintenance.
On discovering that (alas!) my issue was not caused scheduled maintenance, I then availed myself of the next great initiative designed to improve my customer service experience – Click To Call Telstra, where one click would elicit a return call within 45 minutes – preferable with my original customer service agent. One click – one simple response “Sorry! We are unable to schedule a call back. Please contact Telstra”. Back to the ground zero of hold music and helpful txt messages about the troubleshooting I went.
More success this time – passing the level 1 qualification criteria (you know the turn off/on, check the plugs steps we did with the online troubleshooting) to reach level 2 where aside from needing to repeat the online and level 1 troubleshooting, we have the additional step of a modem reset (if only I’d kept that factory password somewhere). Indeed it is deemed after 70mins, I do appear to have a line fault (isn’t that what the online troubleshooting hinted at?) and I have achieved the holy grail – an appointment with a technician at a time of their convenience sometime on Friday (please be home to let them in).
Success at last – I’m prepared to stay on the line to provide my feedback and after careful consideration decide that as I still don’t have an internet connection, I’ll press 2 to indicate my issue is still unresolved. There was a slight pause from the auto woman before she carefully responded “I’m sorry. We are currently experiencing technical difficulties”.
It’s a shame that a technology company can’t harness the essence of the business that it leads – and understand that properly integrated technology solutions (like the online troubleshooting that could do the heavy lifting of level 1 support, or empowerment of the twitterbots to be part of the support chain) that ultimately improve the customer experience. After all, doesn’t a good customer experience led to trust that builds reputation?
Just as well I have a good book tonight – Marseille on Netflix wasn’t holding my attention.
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Wow am I so daft. I experienced all that @BT narrated from November to January. Being in a regional area only a few of us were affected. Why daft? I never connected the latest string of widespread outages to mine “back then”… but it seems these failures have been escalating in scope and lack of attention by techos for some time. Please go and use the online diagnosistic tool.
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Not sure if this has anything to do with the recent successive rounds of redundancy…
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Telstra excels in providing Customer Service said no customer ever ! For all the customers who’ve been severely inconvenienced with these technical failures, once is too many times given the excessive cost of the so-called service, Telstra needs to give us a release from our contacts (I have only 2 months left) as well as to zero out our accounts ! Those of us who feel that we still need to have their pathetic service will obviously continue the service and those who don’t will go to another carrier. It’s up to Telstra to get their act together and to stop making fallacious claims about the extent of their service area coverage. Where I live I can only get 1 bar of phone service out in the backyard in an area of the Sunshine Coast where they allegedly have an “excellent coverage”.Like, hello ??!!!! We have many better choices in Australia. It’s time to “jump ship” folks.
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It’s also only the big, obvious issues that the general public can easily see is their fault.
They never mention when they break their peering to AWS for hours at a time (no Telstra web traffic can get to anything in an AWS/EC2 environment, but everything else is fine, so to the casual observer it looks like “some sites” are down).
Telstra certainly ain’t what it used to be, anymore.
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Remember the good old days when the PMG would send around a couple of blokes a month later who asked you “what the **ck are complaining about” before digging up tonnes of dirt between endless cups of tea and then leaving with a big hole in the ground.
Me – I’m with Optus, I was a-born and a-bred in the briar bush !
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@BT – that explanation is so familiar to me and sums up my experience over Christmas last year.
Worse is I’ve bundled my ADSL with Foxtel’s triple play. So not only is Telstra’s customer service and infrastructure terrible, I am lucky enough to have a Foxtel technician acting as a filter and constantly blaming Telstra on the delays (how handy that Foxtel take my money and blame someone else) and having no follow up and being passed from one technical to another and having to explain myself again and again and jump through their “have you turned it on and off” hoops.
Worst decision ever, we’ve gone from 15-20MBPS with iiNet to 1-4MBPS from Foxtel/Telstra. Same house, same distance from the exchange, same modem. Same old poor service.
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Telstra is pne of the biggest ripoff company. The pre-paid number got “suspended” with $30 recharge just 4 days before. This is 6th day to try to resolve this issue and no return to my paid service. Don’t know if I should raise legal action against, or it’s just waste of time!!! To do such harassment to their client with any feelings… they might have full support of the government. Embarrassing!!!
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