Unions continue Telstra Siebel attack

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) today used the release of a report containing complaint statistics and a staff survey to accuse Telstra of turning a blind eye to the problems of its IT transformation.

The report contained statistics released yesterday by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) for the July to September quarter, which have Telstra's complaints rising 23 per cent over the quarter. This is much higher than the previous quarters which have been 14, 17 and 16 per cent.

Telstra's total complaint numbers
(Credit: ACTU)

The ACTU has said that problems with the Siebel-based "one click" customer service system rolled out to the bulk of call centres in the second half of this year, were at fault, backing its assumption with a survey of 250 call centre workers. The system is believed to have been implemented with help from IT services giant Accenture over the past several years. Siebel is now owned by former rival Oracle.

The workers claimed that the system had been poorly implemented, leading to a diminished customer service level. They said that they did not receive adequate training in the system and feel that the blame had been pushed onto them for system glitches.

Almost 100 per cent of the workers surveyed felt that the average handling time for calls and customer dissatisfaction levels had gone up. They also felt that the company was losing business due to the system.

"The level of client dissatisfaction and aggression is overwhelming as is the feeling of not being able to do my work effectively; at any time Siebel will freeze or error out," one interviewee said.

Staff have been losing money, according to the survey, because they have not been able to meet their targets and are receiving "bullying" pressure from up high to perform. "I'm stressed, depressed and worried about losing my job on top of it all, because we are being threatened daily that our jobs are on the line if we don't get our sales back to how they used to be, pre-Siebel," one respondent said.

We are being threatened daily that our jobs are on the line if we don't get out sales back to how they used to be, pre-Siebel

Anonymous unionised Telstra worker

The Community and Public Sector Union has requested federal agency ComCare investigate Telstra's working conditions, the ACTU said. The CPSU had already approached Telstra about the problems and had been rebuffed by David Moffatt, Telstra group managing director of consumer marketing and channels.

"Telstra is unconcerned by this latest union attempt to undermine the success of the IT transformation. The results outlined in detail at Telstra's investor day last week demonstrate beyond doubt that the IT transformation is on track," Moffat said at the time. Telstra spokespeople were not able to comment on the issue at the time of publication today.

This quarter has not been the first rise in complaint statistics for Telstra, with the statistics for the year to June 2008 before Siebel was even introduced showing its complaints rising by 81 per cent, compared to an industry average of 58 per cent.

When questioned on these numbers at the Telstra investor day in November, Moffatt blamed one-off events such as the floods in Queensland and the CDMA network switch-off, as well as industry-wide problems such as premium SMS services.

"When I isolate the one-off factors to your questions and get to the specifics, we are not seeing a material shift as a result of anything we've done to ourself so far, all through this process, which is remarkable," Moffatt said, absolving the IT transformation of blame.

The ACTU questioned why, if the CDMA switch-off were one cause, the landline complaints had risen by 90 per cent year-on-year and why, if the floods and premium SMSes were a cause, that the increase of average industry complaints was so much lower than Telstra's.

It also questioned Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo's assurances at the Telstra investor day that customers were happy with the changes. "We do our own research ... what we are seeing with all of our research is customer satisfaction going up," Trujillo had said.

"Either Telstra's assurances that customers are more satisfied than ever is correct or the reports of staff and the figures from the TIO are correct. They cannot both be accurate," the unions said.

The report followed news yesterday that unionised Telstra workers had voted in favour of strike action.