Hey, let’s play a game! … ‘Who Am I’?

So close yet so far

• My stated values include caring, working together, trusting, simplifying, courage, responsibility, humility, learning.
• My corporate strategy includes eliminating “customer pain points”  (read that how you will), empowering my people, serving my customers, and reducing my costs.
• I like to play a game of pre-warning customers of National Broadband Network (NBN) ‘maintenance’ outages lasting a whole business day, then carrying out the outage on a completely different day altogether. Repeatedly. Over many many days. (So much fun).
• I continue to blame NBN even though it officially stated it did not have any planned outages over the specified period of time. (Forgot to tell NBN about my game).
• I can take up to a month to inform the NBN (my wholesaler) of customers connection problems. (Love the waiting game).
• After eventually informing NBN of problems which it repairs within days, I get confused and re-connect my system incorrectly into the wrong ports. (Oops).
• I deny further problems from my end, and blame the customer’s computers. (More messing with their minds).
• I then cut off their phone line without permission. (Fun).
• I deny cutting the phone line without permission. (More fun).
• I finally admit to cutting off the phone line without permission. (Not so fun).
• I take six weeks to reinstall a phone line (with permission), ignoring customer’s interim medical risks in a regional area with unreliable mobile reception (oops – that last one’s mine too).
• I inform the customer that someone needs to be home for a technician to visit at a specified time, then don’t send the technician or send a message. (So funny).
• I eventually send one technician and forget to let myself know, so send another technician out to make the trek the next day. (Don’t think they had anything better to do).
• I charge customer $700 + dollars for cutting off their phone line without permission then reinstalling one after six weeks of their complaints via their dodgy mobile phone reception which kept cutting out. (Was worth a try?).
• I take the money out of my customers direct debit account despite being explicitly refused permission to do so on this occasion by the customer. (Worth another try?)
• I refer complaints to my overworked complaints department overseas whose phone mailboxes are full, and who repeatedly don’t reply to emails or messages. (I think they might have left the building).
• I engage in tactics to avoid paying customer guarantee fees. (Sometimes works?).
• I have a media department with no direct phone line and which repeatedly does not respond to emails on its main media address. (Great tactic to disguise they might have left the building too).
• I offer tiny amounts of compensation after drawn out periods of time to appease up to 60 hours of customer time (hmm, does that include ‘hold’ time? Probably not) spent on the telephone to me as they try to fix a problem they did not cause. (Sucker!)
• I eventually review only the cases relentlessly pursued by dissatisfied customers “with our legal team”, and offer slightly more satisfactory compensation. (Was getting bored with the game).
• I am a national icon specialising in telecommunications. (well… ‘specialising’ could be too strong a word?)
• I have almost one and a half million shareholders. (Goooooo me!)
• I was referred to as a stockmarket ‘hero’ earlier this month. (Incredible but true).
• I am subject to corporate governance. (Who cares?).

Who Am I? I am Telstra.

To be cont’d.