Telstra says it has responded to customer demands and relocated many of its call centre resources back on Australian soil.
Michael Marom, Area General Manager – Northern Region NSW, told the Barrier Truth Telstra had listened to the demands from customers to talk to someone who has a familiarity of where we live.
“We haven’t abandoned our call centres overseas as we have an international business, but as of June 27 this year all calls that originate in Australia are answered in Australia,” Mr Marom said.
“An extra 2000 people have been employed to make sure that we can take care of our customers in Australia with someone that understands the country.
“In addition to that we also have an indigenous call centre for first nation peoples to contact us,” Mr Marom said.
The new teams are spread across many locations and Telstra says as a company they are very flexible in regards to how people can work – so that means some are working from a home office.
The other significant change is all Telstra stores have been brought back into company ownership.
“We had over 300 stores that were owned and operated by licensees, which was a great model,” Mr Marom says.
“But we felt that it would be a more consistent customer experience to have our stores managed directly by Telstra.”
The telecoms giant is also working hard to increase their digital platform, says Mr Marom.
“Retention and putting on new staff, we have the same issues that everybody else does in any industry at the moment.
“It will be a longer burn to get that stability, but we are also working very hard to increase our digital platform.
“We are spending a lot of our capital to make sure that our online platforms and the way that customers interact with us online is also world class.
“When we think about cyber, it is all designed to protect the individual and the company.
“We block over two million scam text messages per day and since midway through 2021 we have blocked over 200 million scam texts,” he says.
“It certainly is a big part of what we do and certainly something we spend a lot of money on to ensure our customers are safe, their data is safe and we as a company is safe.”
