The Global Association for Contact Center Best Practices & Networking

July 29, 2010 -- Telstra, the telecommunications and media company, adds to its call centre staff to handle customer complaints. The move comes as the company fires hundreds of its managers and maneuvers to profit from social networking to boost revenue.

In an interview with ZDNet Australia, Kate McKenzie, Telstra's chief marketing officer, said that surveys conducted over the past year showed that customers had concerns over automated call menus, call centre waiting times and pricing. The survey had more than 700,000 customers, all of whom use services from Telstra or its competitors.

"We've added more staff to handle complaints and raised the focus of resolving customer queries first time," said McKenzie. "We're removing measurements on the length of time our consultants spend on the phone with customers in some centres, replacing them with measures focused much more strongly on resolving the customer's complaint or concern."

McKenzie adds that more than half of the respondents in Australia use mobile phones more than landline phones. Also, 63 per cent of the people surveyed said they would like to be able to access the Internet anywhere.

The company, which has about 10 million unique users of social networking Web sites, says that social media is rapidly changing and would force Australian businesses to change their business models. "The growth is explosive, and that interaction is changing the way we communicate," said McKenzie.

Posted by Veronica Silva Cusi, Asia Pacific correspondent

Source: http://au.ibtimes.com

About Telstra:
Telstra Incorporated is a global provider of advanced communications services to multinational corporations.