A new report, released April 10 by ACMA has revealed the rankings of Australian telcos when it comes to customer complaint handling performance metrics.
The Australian Communications and Media Authority’s (ACMA) quarterly customer complaints handling report ranks the performance of 34 of Australia’s largest telcos for October to December 2024 against three key complaint handling metrics.
In terms of total numbers of complaints received, Vonex ranked best receiving the fewest complaints per 10,000 services, while Uniti Internet was 34th, receiving the most complaints comparative to services in operation.
Of the three major telcos, Telstra ranked 20th, Optus ranked 28th while TPG ranked 33rd for the total number of complaints received per 10,000 services.
ACMA member Samantha Yorke said the volume of complaints across the 34 telcos rose slightly from the previous quarter at a time when the 3G network was closing, but was down on the same quarter last year.
“We hope that publishing these ranking tables will be an incentive for all telcos to look carefully at what is driving their customers to complain,” Ms Yorke said.
"We know from TIO complaint data and anecdotal reports by consumer advocates that, for example, customers would have liked more support when the 3G networks were shut down in 2024.
“Alongside raw complaint numbers, we also want to understand how quickly and effectively telcos are resolving complaints that come to them.”
Dodo, Circles.Life, Moose Mobile and Starlink finish on top of the rankings for the time taken to resolve complaints, with an average of just one day. Skymesh ranked lowest, averaging 18 days to resolve their customer complaints.
The industry average was 6.2 days to resolve complaints, with larger telcos having varying results, TPG reporting an average of 2 days, Optus reporting an average of 6 days and Telstra reporting an average of 9 days.
Complaints needing to be escalated to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) saw Lebara with the lowest percentage of complaints escalated (1.6 per cent) while More Telecom had the highest (114 per cent) indicating that it had more complaints raised with the TIO during the quarter than complaints received directly from customers.
Of the larger telcos, TPG had a referral rate of 4.6 per cent, Optus was at 5.5 per cent and Telstra at 9.5 per cent.
“The TIO referral rate is a useful indicator for consumers to understand what percentage of complaints are being resolved satisfactorily by a telco. A higher percentage means a larger proportion of the telco’s complaints were escalated to the TIO,” Ms Yorke said.
“This data continues to indicate that telcos can do more to address the underlying issues causing customers to complain. It also shows that there is significant room for improvement around effectively resolving complaints in a timely way.”
The report provides data for October to December 2024 and is updated quarterly to track performance over time. The ACMA will continue to work with telcos lagging behind industry averages on what they are doing to improve their performance.
The interactive aggregated industry-wide complaint handling report with data dating back to 2018 is also available.
If people have concerns about their service, they should complain to their telco in the first instance.
If the complaint is not resolved by the provider, customers can contact the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman to seek help settling their dispute.
