Australian businesses attempting to contact ASIC are reportedly spending an average of 8.5 minutes on hold despite the corporate regulator having doubled its contact centre headcount in the past year.

According to Business Insider Australia, ASIC call volumes grew from 650,000 in May 2011-12 to more than 1.1 million calls since May 2012, when it combined the eight state and territory business name registers into a national database. Website issues also wreaked havoc on ASIC's contact centre initially, with businesses callers requiring help being turned away by a recorded message that said only to call back later.

"After Business Names Online commenced, the volume of calls almost doubled and the average wait time increased to an average of 13 minutes over the past 12 months," an ASIC spokesperson told Business Insider, noting that callers waited an average of 40 seconds prior to May 2012. "On a few occasions the wait time exceeded 30 minutes. This has now improved to a current average wait time of just over 8 minutes." ASIC's spokesperson said it did not expect call rates to fall significantly below current figures, because ASIC's registry business had effectively doubled in size to 1.7 million names since the online register was launched.

China Southern Airlines has upgraded Australian customer service by continuing to grow its local staff in line with the increasing needs of the region.

In the past 12 months, the customer service team has tripled in size and now occupies a purpose-built contact centre taking up an entire floor of China Southern's new regional headquarters in Sydney's CBD. New staff appointments include a customer relations team, led by former Air New Zealand staffer Azad Rehman, an assistant manager and a team leader to support the contact centre.

The airline has also added a new Sky Pearl team, dedicated to group bookings and a growing presence on social media. China Southern regional general manager Australia/New Zealand Henry He said improving customer service in the region was a top priority. "Since we moved into our new Sydney headquarters last year, we have been committed to growing and improving regional customer service and I couldn't be happier with the progress of our friendly, professional and proudly multicultural team."

Resort Management company Classic Holidays says its staff has excelled its expectations following the latest guest satisfaction surveys.

Three days after checking out, resort guests are sent a customer survey via email asking them to rate different aspects of their experience while they were on holiday at a Classic Holidays resort. Averages calculated for March and April show that 90% guests stated that their overall experience at a Classic Holidays managed resort exceeded their expectations.
However, the most impressive survey statistic was the one that relates to the resort staff.

An outstanding 97% of guests said that the resort staff exceeded their expectations when it came to customer service and courtesy. Established in 1978 with head office operations on the Gold Coast, Classic Holidays is Australia's largest privately owned timeshare Resort Management Company, representing almost 50,000 member families and responsible for over 650 employees.

US contact centre IT company LiveOps has formed a strategic alliance with Connect NZ to offer the LiveOps cloud contact centre to its contact centre portfolio.

Connect NZ offers an "integrated solution combining the LiveOps platform and applications with their own telephony offerings". The combined solution provides the ability to enable multiple communications channels including voice, chat, email, SMS and social media over a single platform, and tighter integration with cloud-based CRM databases.

Connect NZ is a well-established technology provider with more than 30 years of experience working with a wide range of businesses from medium enterprise businesses through to education providers, government and corporate organisations. "We clearly see the value shift from on-premise to cloud. LiveOps Platform gives us a new reason to interact with our customers who have otherwise been stuck with traditional call centres," Connect NZ CEO Karl Rosnell said.

Building company Metricon Homes has implemented Microsoft Dynamics CRM to upgrade service to its growing customer base.

Metricon found its fast-expanding customer base, in a market where a typical sales cycle can lasts between six to nine months, coupled with a lack of customer data visibility, was impeding its marketing efforts. It began looking for a customer-centric platform to centralise its leads database and enhance its customer experience.
"Microsoft Dynamics CRM was chosen for its good fit with our existing technology architecture and ability to easily configure data capture forms, workflows and business intelligence information," said Mr Orsolic, Chief Information Officer, Metricon Homes Pty Ltd. "As we grow rapidly from a mid-sized company to an enterprise, efficiency is key to ensure that we can sustain this growth while remaining competitive."

The company says it gained immediate benefits from centralising its leads management. Metricon now has the ability to track all customer enquiries, correspondence and marketing materials to ensure timely follow ups by its sales team as well as maintaining prospect's interest across the long sales process. Lead duplication can also now be efficiently filtered out. Most importantly, losing leads as a result of staff movement is now a thing of the past.

UK-based cloud contact centre solutions provider NewVoiceMedia has opened its new Asia Pacific headquarters in Sydney.

NewVoiceMedia produces ContactWorld, which is designed to provide contact centre technology as a 'true Cloud service'. APAC vice-president Brett Waters said the new Sydney headquarters has been launched to accommodate for growing demand in the region, and forms part of NewVoiceMedia's global expansion strategy.

"The company's expansion into Sydney…will strengthen our footprint in APAC which is one of our highest growth regions," Waters said. "As an industry leading organisation, we are always looking for ways to better service our customers and prospects, and the opening of this office provides us with an excellent facility to base our team."

Leading public sector solutions provider Northgate Public Services will upgrade its cloud customer service offering via a new partnership with Content Guru.

The collaboration will initially focus on helping councils to give their residents a better customer experience through their customer service centres, whether people choose to call, send texts and emails, go online or use social media. Public sector colleagues will also be able to work together more efficiently using Content Guru's storm platform.

"Councils are under enormous pressure to make it easier for people to use their services, but at the same time many have to reduce their costs by as much as 20% over the next few years," said Northgate Public Services' Joe Bradley. "The strategic relationship between Northgate and Content Guru will enable local authorities to share customer service centre and telephony resources in the cloud. This will help councils to improve the quality, efficiency and pro-activity of their services for local people, in a way that's future-proofed and cost-effective."

Australian home-based contact centre outsourcer Unity-4 is expanding into the New Zealand market and expects to create up to 150 jobs.

Unity4 CEO Global Dan Turner said New Zealand is the second international expansion for the contact centre outsourcing and technology company. "This is a very exciting development for Unity4," Turner said. "Last year we employed over 500 people in the United Kingdom and Australia, and have brought our proven work from home model and leading cloud based contact centre technology to New Zealand."

Turner said recruitment is underway and more than 20 agents have already been hired, working from home from all over New Zealand. "We have welcomed our first technology client, Flight Centre, and are very close to finalising negotiations with three others. We are confident that many more kiwi companies with a need for innovative, cost effective contact centre services will come on board in the coming months."

Six Best Western hotels across New Zealand have been recognised for their customer service with 2013 Certificates of Excellence from the world's largest travel site TripAdvisor.

Queenstown-based Best Western Cranbury Court Apartments property manager, Marama Mains is one of the Best Western winners who was voted in the top 10% of accommodation providers on TripAdvisor for the third year running. "This award can only be achieved by all of our staff who each day go above and beyond to provide the best possible experience for all of our guests and families," Marama said.

Best Western's New Zealand brand development manager and former All Black Grant Batty said motel managers take pride in delivering a warm, friendly customer service experience for all their guests. "This is a timely achievement for all the Best Western TripAdvisor winners, especially leading up to New Zealand's booming winter ski season. The six New Zealand Best Western Certificate of Excellence winners were: Best Western 555 On Bayview (Dunedin), Best Western BKs Pioneer Motor Lodge (Auckland), Best Western Braeside Resort (Rotorua), Best Western Capri Court Motor Inn (Rotorua), Best Western Cranbury Court (Queenstown), Best Western Wellington (Wellington).

In what could be one of the toughest contact centre contracts around, the Federal Attorney General's Department (AG) has started looking for staff to take calls for a new Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The AG's has issued a request for tender for Call Intake and Support Services for the long awaited official inquiry that seeks to give some acknowledgement and closure to the scores of people whose childhoods and lives were shattered by crimes that many believe were persistently covered-up by churches and authorities. The winning outsourcer must provide staff that can field the calls, provide information to callers, capture crucial information and also refer clients to "related services and other sources of assistance."

The tender calls for the successful service provider "to provide counselling, staff welfare and recruitment support services for those working on the Commission. These include "telephone counselling support to Commissioners and Commission staff", the provision of "counsellors as requested to attend hearings and sessions of the Commission" and to "provide onsite counselling support to witnesses and Clients in attendance, as well as to staff of the Commission."

Outsourcer Datacom has signed a four-year deal to provide the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) with contact centre services.

The contract follows Datacom's September 2012 appointment to the ATO's Outsource Contact Centre Services (OCCS) panel. "We are delighted to have been awarded this work after going through a fiercely competitive process to secure a place on the panel last year, and an extensive process to design a support model that met the ATO'S flexibility requirements," said Datacom Group CEO Jonathan Ladd.

In 2012 Datacom, in partnership with AusIndustry, won the Best Outsourced Contact Centre award at the Government Contact Centre Summit 2012. In the last twelve months Datacom has also signed deals with federal agencies DIAC and the ACCC.

ISP company Internode has expanded its technical support network by launching "techii" services in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth six months after the initial launch in Adelaide.

The service will allow customers in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth to book by telephone a technical expert to visit their home to set up a broadband connection, install a modem, connect Internet-ready devices to Internode broadband or tweak the best performance from their broadband service. "The most common callouts are to set up new services or to integrate multiple devices throughout the house. Our customers love that everything is typically up and running within the first hour of the visit," Internode's Phil Dempster said.

Dempster said members of the techii team are staff from its contact centres, not external contractors, "so you get the real deal in our award-winning customer service." He said a techii could assist customers to get their broadband service up and running, configure their wireless network, set up Fetch TV or connect their PCs, laptops, tablets or smartphones to the Internet or provide general tech advice.

Optus chief Kevin Russell says the standard of customer service in the telecommunications industry is in decline.

"The standard of service in Australia relative to the standard of service in the UK just seems to have gone backwards," Russell told an Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce lunch in Melbourne. He said it is important for the industry to lift its game on customer service to head off competitors like Google and Apple and recoup billions of dollars invested in super-fast 4G network and spectrum licences.

"It makes me nervous that two core competitors have brand recognition with customers that is fundamentally higher than our relationship," Russel said. "That is a strategic risk that makes me nervous." He also acknowledged that banks now have a better record in serving customers. "It is not my aspiration in life to be completely outgunned by banks but they have done a good job."

Contact centre equipment company Polaris has announced that it’s Soundshield 4G Acoustic Safety device and the newly released Soundshield Wireless Headset have received individual iF product design awards for 2013.

For 60 years, the iF design awards have been an internationally recognised label for award-winning design in the three disciplines of product, communication and packaging design. The Soundshield Wireless Headset was designed after extensive consultation with contact centre agents and is the first wireless headset to be uniquely designed for contact centres.

The Soundshield 4G is a stylish plug and play acoustic safety device that features HD wideband sound and a large, intuitive touchscreen that provides users with all of the essential call controls at their fingertips.

Rude retail staff and offshore contact centres have emerged as one of the top customer service complaints in a new survey of Australian businesses.

The latest figures from business review website, Womo.com.au, found rude shop assistants are one of our nation's biggest gripes, with 30% of respondents listing them as their biggest retail complaint. The survey asked reviewers to rate common customer service complaints in three environments - bricks and mortar retail, over the phone, and when tradespeople are working at their home.

In retail, rude salespeople came out on top, followed by 22% who disliked staff who don't say hello, followed by badly trained sales assistants (15%), staff that are too focused on selling product (11%), and salespeople upselling to products of no relevance (7.9%). Having to deal with offshore centres topped the phone customer service list, also rating as the top grip for 30%. Some 20% of respondents chose automated phone services as their biggest gripe, with 12% saying being put on hold for more than five minutes made them angry.

Outsourcer Salmat has joined marketing management software provider Teradata Applications to offer the Influence cloud support and customer insights to its customers.

Influence is designed to let businesses manage their various marketing efforts through a single portal. The core of the product is an insight into how consumers are responding to marketing efforts though behaviours or actions, such as conversations with contact centre staff and navigation of the company website or Facebook page.

Salmat's Peter Anson said Influence could be hosted locally and tuned for the Australian market. "Our partnership with Teradata is a key investment and supports our philosophy of partnering with the best technology providers to help our clients meet their marketing and communication objectives," Anson said.

More than three in five Australian internet users access social media, with almost half logging on daily and some more than five times a day.

The 2013 Yellow Social Media Report by Sensis found Australian Facebook users are spending more than seven hours on the site every week, and the smartphone is now the most popular way to access social networks, taking over from the laptop computer. Sensis' Kelly Brough said both the number of Australians and time spent on social sites shot up this year, showing Australians of all ages were embracing online communication.

"The big thing we're learning from the report each year is the continued, really large growth of social media across Australia," Brough said. "Every site is growing and it's a testament to how important social media is becoming." The survey found 34% of social network users logged on at work, 13% at school, and 18% in the car. Some 44% used social networks in bed, 7% in the bathroom and 6% in the toilet.

Melbourne-based outsourcer Aegis Australia says it will return money incorrectly deducted from employees pay for bathroom breaks.

At least three employees at an Aegis centre in Werribee had money taken from their pay for the amount of time they spent in the toilet during their shift. Chief executive Andrew Hume told reporters the "minimal monies" deducted would be paid back to the concerned employees.

"Aegis call centre employees have scheduled start, break, lunch and finish times, which are managed through an electronic time and attendance system," Hume said. "If an employee is absent from their rostered schedule, they are sent an electronic alert updating them to the amendment and prompting for exceptions to be made." He said after a detailed review, three instances were identified where the process had failed and time deductions were made that were incorrect against standard operating procedures. "The concerned employees have each been spoken to and the minimal monies owed will be paid in the next pay cycle," Hume said.

ANZ bank will send 70 contact centre roles from Australia to its New Zealand operations in Wellington.

The offshored roles will join 175 staff already based in Wellington, helping Australian customers. ANZ says it should need to make any Australian staff redundant, instead relying on natural attrition.

ANZ says Wellington is suited as a customer service hub thanks to its highly trained English-speaking staff, good infrastructure and a friendly time zone. An ANZ spokesman said Australia will remain the main location for calls from Australian customers and it has no plans to expand its New Zealand operation, but it will continue to look at its services.

The federal government will provide an additional $7.8m over two years to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to improve its contact centre service levels to support the introduction of the online National Business Names registration system.

ASIC assumed responsibility for the administration of the National Business Names Register in May, replacing an earlier system of separate State and Territory-based registers. "By providing this extra funding to ASIC, the government will be ensuring that ASIC is able to be contacted by the public in a quick and efficient manner," Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, Bernie Ripoll said.

Responsibility for the National Register represents a significant increase in ASIC's workload, especially with respect to the number of people accessing ASIC's client contact centre - over 1 million phone enquiries and 120,000 written enquiries since its launch. "This funding will improve ASIC's client contact centre capabilities, and allow ASIC to improve the quality of service that it provides to the community."

Australian retailers need to do more to keep up with consumer use of mobile technology, according to Google retail industry leader Ross McDonald.

Speaking at a recent Australian Information Industry Association event, McDonald said Australian retailers should instead be looking at how Australian consumers compare to their offshore counterparts. "Australia has amongst the highest smartphone penetration in the world ... we have the highest tablet penetration in the world...so we can't actually wait to see what's going to happen out of the US or copy best practices in the UK," McDonald said.

Despite Australia's rapid uptake of mobile devices, McDonald said Google research showed just 55% of the websites of Australian businesses could be seen and navigated on a mobile device. "How high do these smartphone penetration numbers have to get before we have 100 percent of businesses that can have their website viewed on a mobile device?" McDonald asked. He said "couch commerce", a spike in tablet use after 8pm at night, was an opportunity for Australian retailers.

Queensland state-owned energy provider CS Energy is looking to outsource its service desk and systems administration in order to lower staff costs and improve the availability and resiliency of the operations.

CS Energy this week approached the market for contractors and suppliers to provide service desk and Windows/Intel systems admin services. As well as cost savings CS Energy is looking to improve infrastructure service levels and operational efficiency; ensure availability of skills; provide an overflow facility for increased call volumes or staff absence; and more proactively respond to incident and problem requests.

CS Energy called for an "out-of-the-box" managed services solution that it could adopt "with a minimum of development and customisation". It also asked for a service provider skilled in system upgrades, hinting at a potential Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrade. CS Energy declined to comment on the plans.

Melbourne taxi drivers will be required to pass a knowledge exam before being allowed to operate cabs under a move the state government says will improve customer service in the industry.

Fares will increase during peak times, such as Friday and Saturday nights, while prices will drop in off-peak times under changes announced by the state government after a 16-month inquiry, while card payment service fees will also drop from 10% cent to 5%. Drivers will also be guaranteed to keep at least 55% of their takings.

Victoria premier Denis Napthine says the reforms will boost customer service and restore trust and confidence in the taxi industry. "These changes will ... provide better services and safety for customers," he said. "Reforms will ensure that taxi drivers are safe, knowledgeable ... and fairly paid."

Melbourne's Moreland City Council is using videoconferencing to explain council processes interactively, including to its large population of migrant residents who speak English as a second language.

The council's delivery of videoconferencing services follows its deployment a cloud-based service by managed services provider AINS. "Through this project, customer service staff at Moreland City Council will be able to use videoconferencing to explain council processes interactively, in particular to residents who speak English as a second language," said AINS' George Pezzutto.

The Moreland Video Connect initiative is the first online video conferencing service in Victoria launched under the NBN funding, and allows council staff to engage in one-on-one visual contact with the community and provide webinars to allow groups of citizens to interact on a range of subjects and services relevant to council. Pezzutto said all three stages of the end-to-end solution provided to Moreland City Council - software development, intelligence and technical support - were devised by AINS, "to meet the very detailed and specific requirements of Moreland City Council's new online customer service centre."

The New Zealand government has opened a new multi-jurisdictional customer service centre in Christchurch to mark the return of full registry services to the District and High Courts in the city.

The new centre provides a one-stop-shop for the Ministry of Justice, and will manage face-to-face customer interactions with court customers and lawyers for the District Court and the High Court. "Christchurch's Customer Service Centre is another example of the justice sector working smarter and delivering better public services," Justice Minister Judith Collins said.

Collins said the centre will also be a stepping stone toward even more integrated services for the earthquake-hit city being delivered through the Justice and Emergency Services Precinct, a key anchor project for the Christchurch rebuild. "We are continually developing smarter ways to ensure access to justice. This Government is delivering better public services, and a safer New Zealand," Collins said.

Auckland Airport is hosting a week of workshops for airport staff to learn more about offering customer service to Chinese visitors.

The workshops are designed to help staff at Auckland Airport deliver better airport experiences for Chinese tourists - currently the fastest growing tourism market for New Zealand. Auckland Airport's Glenn Wedlock said the workshops are another initiative from the airport to foster and build enduring relationships with China.

"China is one of the world's leading economies and a huge growth opportunity for New Zealand. We have experienced impressive growth in Chinese arrivals during the Chinese New Year period with 30% year on year growth in the combined two month January and February period," said Wedlock. "These workshops will provide staff across the board at Auckland Airport with increased knowledge of how best to interact with our Chinese visitors, ensuring that we in turn provide the best possible travelling experience for them."

The Department of Human Services has been allocated $30 million over two years in the new federal budget to help it meet customer demand for Centrelink call centre services and reduce waiting times.

Minister for Human Services Jan McLucas said the funding will allow additional staff to be employed to act as a "surge capability" in contact centres. "The Department received over 44 million Centrelink-related calls in 2011-12, that's around 160,000 calls per day," McLucas said. "This funding means we will now have a greater ability to match the availability of call centre staff with caller demand fluctuations and reduce call waiting times."

McLucas said given the large number of calls, demand during the day and over a week can be highly variable and sometimes lead to wait times that are longer than are acceptable. "Accordingly, the Department is working hard to continue to strengthen its telephone services, with a particular focus on those lines where people can sometimes experience longer wait times," she said.

Dimension Data New Zealand says it has won Microsoft's Innovative Technology for Good Citizenship Partner of the Year Award for its implementation of a CRM solution with Prison Fellowship New Zealand.

Dimension Data migrated Prison Fellowship's Angel Tree program from a legacy application to a new system, which gave the organisation flexibility to manage years of historical data, while being able to extend its capability and manage other programs in the community. Prison Fellowship New Zealand is a volunteer-based Christian ministry that attempts to be a "national movement of reconciliation and restoration within the Criminal Justice System".

The Dynamics CRM solution helps the Prison Fellowship manage grants and funding, community children enrichment programs, donation management and volunteer training. In addition, Dimension Data built a donation portal, hosted on Windows AZURE, to collect donations through a credit card gateway. "It is very fulfilling to use our skills and experience with Microsoft technology to help organisations like Prison Fellowship do great work for the community," said Dimension Data CEO Simon Gillespie.

Technology, furniture, medical, cafe and cleaning supplies company OfficeMax Australia will set up new contact centre at its Derwent Park facility north of Hobart.

The new centre, expected to create about 70 new jobs, will be set up with $600,000 in funding from the federal government and $200,000 in funding from the Tasmanian government. The new contact centre will use the National Broadband Network, which OfficeMax is already connected to, and will support clients from across Australia.
Recruitment for the new jobs is expected to start next year.

"It is fantastic that another multinational company is demonstrating confidence in the Tasmanian economy, following Vodafone's decision to create an additional 750 jobs at its Kingston call centre," Tasmanian Premier Lara Giddings said. In March, Vodafone announced it would add 750 jobs to its Kingston centre in the state. "We have been working with this company for a number of months to secure these jobs for Tasmanians against competition from other jurisdictions," Giddings said.

The federal privacy commissioner has launched an investigation into a Telstra data breach that led to thousands of customer names, telephone numbers and home and business addresses accessible to a Google search.

Federal privacy commissioner, Timothy Pilgrim Telstra has briefed him about the incident and advised that its customers' information, contained within Excel spreadsheets, was no longer online. Pilgrim said Telstra is investigating the incident and has started to contact affected customers. Data discovered online included customer names, telephone numbers and in some cases home and business addresses.

"I have asked that Telstra provide me with further information on the incident, including how it occurred, what information was compromised and what steps they have taken to prevent a reoccurrence," he said. As part of his investigation he said he would look at whether Telstra's practices were consistent with the Privacy Act 1988 at the time of the data breach, which was revealed by Fairfax Media on Thursday last week.

Qantas-owned regional carrier QantasLink is outsourcing customer service, baggage handling and aircraft cleaning at Mildura Airport.

Qantas says it is inefficient to run its own ground handling services because of the airline's flight schedule, which runs three return flights each day, except for Saturday when there are two return flights. A Qantas spokesman told reporters the schedule means there is a lot of unproductive time for employees during the day.

NTL Aviation Services has been appointed to provide customer service, baggage handling and aircraft cleaning. The airline says it will try and redeploy the six affected workers within the Qantas Group or provide redundancy packages.

Tasmanian auto club the RACT (Royal Automobile Club of Tasmania) has selected Noble Systems' Noble ShiftTrack Workforce Management (WFM) software for its contact centres.

"RACT is committed to providing our members and the wider Tasmanian community with world's best service and expertise," RACT's Rose Schmalfuss said. "That's why we chose to deploy the Noble ShiftTrack WFM solution. It will allow us to more accurately forecast call volumes, so that we more effectively predict how many staff we require to meet our service levels, and to schedule staff with the correct skills at each location."

Noble ShiftTrack WFM provides predictive and analytical features that allow the organisation to maximise results from their team of customer contact specialists and to improve member services. "We're excited to serve a company that is focused on finding ways to enhance life in its local community," Noble Systems Asia Pacific's Ashley Clayton.

Customer service staff at Virgin Airlines is threatening industrial action over pay and conditions.

Check-in staff have claimed they are paid well below market rates, while baggage handlers have overwhelmingly rejected Virgin's pay deal, with more than 80% voting against the airline's offer. The Australian Services Union warns it is keeping its options open if a meeting on Friday fails to get progress on a better pay deal.

ASU assistant secretary Linda White told reporters customer service operators were angry and would not rule out industrial action. "The salaries are not close to what the market is paying," she said.

Allianz Global Assistance Australia has set up a smartphone app to help drivers track the location of their recovery vehicle in real-time.

Allianz Global Assistance has one million policy holders and managed 125,000 automotive breakdowns throughout Australia last year. "We can authenticate them as being a policyholder and if they need assistance they can specify what type of assistance, whether they have a flat tyre or battery issue or others," Allianz Global Assistance's Dean Peck said of the new app. "We can then show and alert the customer potentially on Google Maps, either on an iPhone or an Android device, the whereabouts the provider is in terms of location and how far and how long they would expect to take."

Peck said the app can never replace human interaction via telephone calls to its customer service centre, but in many cases will be complementary. "A fully automated system would be always applicable but if people can be made aware that a job has been logged and assistance is at hand and how far away it is, that really gives them peace of mind that they're not forgotten," he said.

ANZ Bank says it has embarked on Asia-Pacific's biggest deployment of its next-generation teller cash recycler (TCR) to provide a "friendlier, more engaging branch experience".

The NCR Cash Recycler 11 accepts and dispenses cash for teller staff, allowing them to focus their attention on the customer rather than counting bank notes. The devices immediately secure all deposited notes in its safe, cash drawers and loose cash are eliminated from the teller counter, improving security. This has enabled ANZ to remove barriers within the branch, which have traditionally kept customers and staff on opposite sides of the counter.

"The NCR Cash Recycler is enabling us to make our branches even more open, welcoming and friendly, where our staff can shake our customers' hands and have meaningful face-to-face conversations," ANZ's Lynne Sutherland said. "As in any other retail store, our staff can now engage more productively with customers, move around the branch with them and discuss banking solutions more effectively. The NCR Cash Recycler 11 helps ANZ create a better overall experience for customers."

Board members and executives from ANZ Bank have traveled to the US on a week-long fact-finding mission to examine the customer service strategies of leading players including Apple and Google.

The delegation, including CEO Mike Smith and chairman John Morschel are attempting to gain an insight into technological innovation in financial services. "The aim of the visit is to deepen our understanding of emerging and future technologies, including global payments systems, mobile solutions and other technology developments that can improve customer service and centricity," ANZ spokesman Stephen Ries said.

Along with Apple and Google, ANZ will meet with companies including Cisco, IBM and Hewlett Packard. Banking analyst Brian Johnson told reporters it was a good move for the bank's board to mingle with technology leaders in the United States, saying "I think they would learn a lot".

Australian banks are among the biggest users of social media customer service, according to a new study.

The new report from online marketing company Web Profits measured companies by their Facebook and Twitter followers and how often they posted updates or tweets. Commonwealth Bank of Australia, National Australia Bank, Westpac Banking Corporation and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group are all among the top 10 ASX 100 companies using Facebook and Twitter.

CBA came in at number one out of the top ten, with nearly 398,000 Facebook fans and about 19,300 Twitter followers, while four out of six banks in the top 100 have more than 20,000 Facebook fans. Other companies in the top ten include Telstra, Westfield Group and Sydney Airport. "That the big four banks have caught on indicates that even traditionally risk-shy companies know that the blend of information and customer service that social media can achieve is a powerful marketing and loyalty tool," Web Profits MD Paul Sprokkreeff said. While many were excelling with the adoption of social media, the report also found that 46% of the top 100 companies were not using the channel. "That did surprise me. Facebook is one of our biggest platforms with over 11 million active users but only a quarter of our top 100 companies are using it to engage with consumers," Sprokkreeff said.

Australian technical services provider Plaut IT Australia has bought Malaysian-based outsourcer Baseliner, for an undisclosed sum.

Baseliner is an SAP service partner for Southeast Asia that focuses on offering SAP application management support, Basis, BI CRM and ABAP project services. "Adding offshore capabilities to our existing portfolio of expertise enables Plaut customers to leverage competitive advantage from globally distributed talent pools and allows us to provide remote services into the South East Asian region for local and global SAP customers," Plaut CEO, Sebastian Moore, said in a statement.

Baseliner will run independently and will be led by its Kuala Lumpur-based managing director, Charles Sigmon. "Taking a controlling interest in Baseliner advances Plaut's stated objectives of strengthening its SAP consulting services business in Australia," Plaut chairman, David Prior, said. "The complementary skill set of both companies will ensure Plaut delivers customers a competitive portfolio of SAP services onshore and now offshore."

Telstra has reportedly sought advice from Commonwealth Bank on how to improve its popularity with its customers.

Telstra CEO David Thodey told BusinessDay that Telstra consulted Commonwealth Bank on the telco's plan to win over customers, a project requiring big changes to Telstra's processes, technology and culture. Thodey said the formerly government-owned CBA had "a lot of parallels" with Telstra, and he took heart from the bank's success in transforming its customer satisfaction ratings under the leadership of former chief executive Ralph Norris. Research found customer satisfaction with CBA reached 80% in January, the bank's best rating since the survey began in 1996.

"It was seven years before they climbed to be number one, and we are what, two or three years into our journey," Thodey said. He added that said while Telstra has lifted the net promoter score that rates its popularity with its customers into positive territory overall, it still had a long way to go.

While websites are the most popular channel for customers to interact with organisations, many are becoming dissatisfied with IVR systems overloaded with routing options.

NICE System's Customer Channel Preference Survey found that when customers get in touch with a contact centre, 40% expect the agent they speak with to already know about their attempts to resolve an issue through other channels. The survey of nearly 1,200 people in Australia, the US and the UK indicated that on average, customers are using as many as six channels to obtain answers or resolve issues with a company.

Websites remain the most popular customer channel, with smartphone apps and social networks quickly rising in popularity. Consumers aged 18-30 are driving the use of self-service channels, while those aged 46-60 use fewer channels and, while they are expanding their use of Web and e-mail options, most still prefer the personal contact of assisted channels. The survey also noted the decreasing level of IVR and long menus of phone-delivered choices. One of the biggest reasons customers use IVR (60%) is to reach a live representative or to employ the option where a live representative returns the call.

Fletcher Earthquake Recovery (EQR) says it will relocate its North New Brighton hub in Christchurch to its site in Aranui to improve service to customers in the city's eastern suburbs.

EQR's Bruce Emson, says the aim is to continue repairs in the eastern suburbs from an expanded hub base. "The purpose of these moves is to improve the way that we work, and a new customer centre will be a better way to help our customers in the area.

The company said the old hub would be decommissioned only after all staff were relocated and EQR opens a new customer-facing contact centre in the eastern suburbs to provide a one-stop location for claim queries. Fletcher EQR has played a major role in repairing and rebuilding properties damaged and destroyed by the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes.

Resort and accommodation company Mantra Group has upgraded its customer service IT with a LivePerson cloud-based platform, including live chat and content targeting capabilities.

With the LivePerson solution, Mantra Group is able to detect when a customer is in need of real-time assistance during the online booking process, and proactively invite them to chat with a live agent, ensuring successful completion and ultimately, more sales. "Mantra Group strives to offer the best customer experience possible at every touch point, and we realised that by working with LivePerson, we could provide a more personalised and seamless digital journey for our growing volume of visitors," Mantra Group's Luke Jamieson said.

"Since we've implemented LivePerson's chat and content targeting capabilities, we've seen a significant increase in revenue as well as above industry average customer satisfaction rates," Jamieson added. "We're excited to continue working with LivePerson to provide the effortless and innovative experience we know our customers demand."

Nowra contact centre outsourcer Quincolli has gone into liquidation, reportedly owing back payments to up to 33 employees.

Quincolli was fined in the Federal Court on February 18 for underpayment of 33 staff and ordered to pay back $193,419.36 in underpaid wages to staff by April 19. On February 28, Quincolli's owners lodged a request for a stay of the orders, pending an appeal, which was granted by the Federal Court on April 11, on the condition that Quincolli pay a sum of $20,762 by April 19 to be held by the court until the appeal was determined.

At least 33 former and current employees are reportedly awaiting back payment from the company. United Services Union representative Rudi Oppitz said his organisation was monitoring the situation. "The union will be working with any government agency to make sure we get the entitlements owed," he said.

Outsourcer Salmat has announced a string of high-profile appointments in its new customer engagement solutions (CES) division.

Fiona Boyd assumes the role of chief operating officer, while Mike Banbrook is general manager for "speech and reach" and Tony Bridgewater becomes executive general manager for technology and products. The newly formed CES division aims to consolidate contact centre services, technology solutions and consulting.

Chief executive David Besson said the aim of CES is to improve customer communication. "Many contact centres are struggling with increasing demands and the emergence of new channels such as social media, while simultaneously managing the conflicting objectives of improved customer experience and cost reduction," Besson said.

As Australian businesses increasing turn to social media for service, the need for social media marketing has become a vital component of building a customer base.

According to a new BizReport study by Think Big Online, 65% of businesses surveyed have indicated that social media has helped their business grow within the last year. Think Big Online founder Samuel Junghenn said it's not enough to simply get a message out there. "If you are not getting any interaction or engagement from your target audience, it could mean that your business isn't actually getting the attention it needs to stand out," says Junghenn.

A third of the businesses surveyed said they used social media as a way of improving their customer service. By engaging customers directly through social media, companies are able to focus their marketing strategies and develop innovative ways of marketing that are not possible with traditional marketing forms, the report found.

UK-based telephone answering service Moneypenny has taken the unusual step of offshoring its agents to New Zealand to offer 24/7 service to its customers.

NZ-based Moneypenny staff now take over at 8pm GMT every night from their Welsh-based colleagues from Takapuna, New Zealand. Moneypenny came up with the idea after managers realised staff would rather leave the country than work night shifts, according to the Daily Mail newspaper.

Four UK staff members now live temporarily in a rented house in Takapuna and work on a cycle of four days on, four days off, so they can travel. When they are finished their stint working in New Zealand, they will be replaced by another set of four employees.

Virgin Australia's Velocity customer loyalty program has been named the best in its region by the 2013 Freddie Awards in the United States.

The Freddies represent excellence in frequent travel programs and rate the best programs in three global regions: Americas, Middle East/Asia/Oceania and Europe/Africa. The Virgin Australia Velocity loyalty program was named the best in Middle East/Asia/Oceania in three categories: Program of the Year, Best Redemption Ability and Best Elite Program.

In 2013, 2.9 million votes were cast in the awards, which are named after the late Sir Freddie Laker, who pioneered low-cost air travel across the Atlantic in the 1970s. "This is not an elitist view of these programs but rather the 'best' are determined by the votes of those who spend a great deal of their life on the road," said Randy Petersen, founder of the Freddie Awards.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has called for increased investment from Australian airports to boost their levels of customer service.

In its annual report on Australia's five major airports - Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney - the ACCC found overall ratings for the quality of service decreased in 2011-12 and for the first time no airport achieved an overall rating of at least 'good'. The ACCC, taking into the account the view of passengers, airlines border agencies, found the airports remained profitable and a combination of strong domestic demand from fly-in, fly-out passengers, increased international passengers and some higher prices boosted aeronautical revenues at all airports.

"It is apparent that continued growth in passenger numbers at most airports is placing pressure on existing aeronautical infrastructure, contributing to lower service standards," ACCC chairman Rod Sims said "More investment is required to avoid excessive congestion, and ensure that the needs of Australia's travellers can be adequately accommodated." The ACCC also found there had been a falling trend in punctuality at airports over the past decade, with the proportion of flight movements that are on-time dropping.

ANZ Bank says its five-year customer-facing IT upgrade, Banking on Australia, has already seen some early progress with more than 1 million users already on the goMoney banking app.

ANZ said in its half year results that goMoney has more than 1 million users, and more than 1 million logons to the app per day. The two iPhone and iPad apps launched in October - FastPay and Transactive - have had 2,300 and 1,685 downloads, respectively, by business customers. Some 300 commercial bankers now have access to the iPad business app, with 1,200 more to come online this year.

In addition, ANZ has rolled out 43 Cisco video conferencing systems into branches, while 800 NCR "iATMs" will begin being rolled out from June allowing customers to complete transactions that have traditionally required the assistance of a teller. "We are transforming our distribution network to reduce branch footprint costs, build out our contact centre capability, and improve frontline banker productivity," the bank said.

Fifth Quadrant, Australia's leading Customer Experience Strategy, Design & Research company announces the inagural launch of the Customer Experience CEO's Forum.

Twelve of Australia's foremost business leaders will come together biannually, for the strategically focused Forum, which is dedicated to the development of thought leadership and innovation in the emerging and complex field of Customer Experience Strategy.

"This Forum is being held at a critical point in time, when businesses are struggling to adapt to the rising power of the consumer and as new technologies and channels, such as digital, social media and mobility, and new approaches such as Big Data, reshape our approach to customer experience," said Dr Catriona Wallace, CEO, Fifth Quadrant.

"Debate within the Forum will provide significant insight into the strategies and practices that businesses can employ as they navigate their way through this changing business environment. For the inaugural gathering, discussion will focus on the use of Big Data strategies for creating breakthrough customer experiences," said Dr Wallace.

New research shows global CRM grew 12.5% last year to US$18 billion, a rate three times that of all enterprise software segments on average, as companies look to acquire more business and serve existing customers better.

The new Gartner report found that 40% of CRM revenue was derived from SaaS (software as a service) products, reflected by the fact that Salesforce.com overtook SAP as the largest single CRM vendor. Oracle, Microsoft and IBM followed in third and fourth and fifth, while SAP remained the top CRM vendor in Europe.

The CRM market has witnessed a wave of acquisitions and mergers, particularly in the area of marketing software. In all, there were more than 50 acquisitions within the CRM market between 2009 and 2012, according to Gartner. "With corporate cash at all-time highs, many vendors are willing to pay high premiums to acquire specific technologies and expertise in an increasingly dynamic and competitive CRM market environment," the report states.

Invercargill mayor Tim Shadbolt says internet service provider Orcon is looking to relocate its Philippines contact centre to New Zealand's Southland region.

Shadbolt said Orcon had decided to move its centre from Manila back to New Zealand, and he had been involved in initial discussions about establishing it in Invercargill. "It's sounding very interesting," he said. "Usually our businesses are all heading off overseas to take advantage of cheap labour, I guess, and in this case it's reversing the process."

Invercargill was one of several places being considered as a potential base for the contact centre, as the company preferred a regional location over a big city, Shadbolt said. He believed about 25 jobs would be created. Orcon is yet to confirm a shift.

BPO outsourcing has the ability to not only cut operating costs, but boost Australia's country's economy, according to outsourcing sales and marketing company LMS Thinking.

"There is a protectionist idea that outsourcing is the same as offshoring, meaning domestic jobs are lost in favour of cheap labour in other countries," said LMS Thinking MD Tim Kennedy. This is a simplistic view and does not take into account Australian-based outsourcing firms. Kennedy said one of his company's goals is to keep jobs in Australia while still maintaining the benefits of outsourcing such as gaining specialised skills and lowering overheads.

Kennedy said the benefits of outsourcing to Australian businesses are partly financial, as outsourced contractors both domestic and overseas typically have lower overheads than keeping the work in-house. However contracting specific business services allows companies to streamline their operating processes and allows them to focus on their core competencies. "This frees the business from the time and expense of training their own sales force, and allows them to direct these resources into their own specialism, such as developing new products," he said.

A Qantas pilot has earned praise for his customer service skills after turning a disappointing situation for his passengers into a memorable gesture.

Some 400 passengers aboard a Qantas flight to London via Dubai were reportedly told by their pilot just 90 minutes out of Dubai that the plane's refrigerator had broken down and they would not be getting breakfast or lunch, due to fears the food might cause illness. The passengers were also told that food would be available in the lounges at Heathrow for frequent flyers and Qantas Club members after landing, while others would get "vouchers to have breakfast at one of three eating establishments".

While some passengers were becoming disgruntled at the arrangement, the captain told everyone to write down his name and mobile number. The pilot was Richard De Crespigny, and he said if anyone didn't get a voucher or they weren't happy with the service, to call him personally and he would fix it. De Crespigny has experience in averting disaster, he was the pilot of flight QF32, which made an emergency landing at Changi Airport in 2010 after being rocked by an engine explosion.

While Australian businesses expect massive change from the upcoming National Broadband Network, fewer are banking on the initiative making a major difference to customer service.

The Deloitte Access Economics-Macquarie Telecom backed NBN Business Readiness Survey for 2013 found that 51% of respondents believed that the NBN will change how it engages customers and clients, down from 57% in 2010. Only 24% of businesses were ready to take advantage of this capability.

Meanwhile, customer service outsourcer Unity4, which participated in the survey, says it is well set up considering how the NBN will improve its operations. "In the future we'll be able to use voice over IP," CEO Dan Turner said. "Even though technically we as a company can do it now, the internet infrastructure of the country doesn't allow us to do it at a high enough quality for our clients. So the NBN really gives us the ability to start using a more flexible telephony solution, it'll bring down the cost, it'll be a lot more reliable, and it will start to allow us to do things that we probably can't even imagine doing now."

Cloud-based customer service software provider Zendesk has announced that the subscription fees raised across Australia and New Zealand from its $20 Starter Plan will be donated to adult cancer charity, Dry July.

Zendesk around the world has a tradition of donating subscription fees from its $20 Starter Plan to deserving not-for-profit organisations. Zendesk offers the Starter Plan for new companies getting started with customer service and who have three or fewer support agents. For each new Australian and New Zealand customer that signs up for the Starter Plan in 2013, Dry July will receive a donation equal to that customer's first year subscription.

Dry July, which raises funds to create better environments and support networks for adult cancer patients and their families, runs the annual Dry July initiative that encourages individuals and teams to give up drinking alcohol for the month of July while being sponsored. Zendesk and Dry July have been working together since the Australian Zendesk team participated in Dry July in 2012. Since then, the Dry July team has moved into donated office space at Zendesk's Asia Pacific headquarters in Melbourne.

Australian outsourcer Datacom has sold its Asia contact centre business to US-based rival Convergys.

The deal involves Datacom's Asia-based contact centres in the Philippines and Malaysia which offer the capability to handle 15 languages between its 1000-strong employee base. "Datacom has built a world-class multi-site multilingual Asia BPO business servicing a suite of long-term blue chip clients," said Datacom CEO Jonathan Ladd. "Today, after a six month competitive process, we're proud to sell this asset to scale global BPO service provider Convergys, who will continue to nurture and invest in these key client relationships."

Ladd said Datacom's Asia BPO business had reached a tipping point and now requires a "truly scaled global specialist to take the business to the next level." Datacom says it remains committed to Asia and will now focus its regional investment on more technologically differentiated service businesses rather than continuing to aggressively grow a global scale BPO business."

A Gold Coast company has been fined $750,000 after using a bogus contact centre to con hundreds of small businesses into paying for unwanted advertising.

Adepto Publications contact centre staff were reportedly coached on how to trick businesses into believing they had ordered ad space, the Federal Court heard. Over four years Adepto billed hundreds of Australian businesses for unsolicited ads in The Underprivileged Children's Guide, The National Emergency Relief Guide or The Volunteer Organisations Guide. Adepto's "cold callers" each day were given a selection of ads for targeted Australian businesses, cut from other publications, according to facts agreed in the court. Another Adepto representative then would make the sales call, falsely telling the business that it already had agreed to place an advertisement in one of its publications.

Former office manager Danielle McKay reportedly directed them to make a "cleansing call" to those companies to check their business details, saying they were from "Australian Business Listings". A recorded "checking call" was made by Adepto staff, using a carefully worded script, to confirm payment details and finalise the sale. Adepto was ordered to pay $500,000, director Craig Francis Mitchell $150,000 and McKay $100,000.

US-based unified communications company Interactive Intelligence has bought the customer support agreements of its New Zealand reseller, Amtel.

Under the sale, Amtel's 24 customers will now directly be served by the Interactive Intelligence sales, marketing, support and services organisation in New Zealand. "This acquisition benefits former Amtel customers by giving them direct access to our local, regional and global support and services staff, which number about 450 worldwide," said Interactive Intelligence CEO Donald E. Brown. "At the same time, it will help us launch our cloud-based communications-as-a-service offering in New Zealand."

Interactive Intelligence plans to expand its Auckland staff to between eight and 12 employees by the end of the year. It also plans to relocate its office to a larger facility within the next 12 months. Dustin Kehoe of IT research company IDC said the acquisition is "fundamentally about acquiring customers and skill sets to bolster a regional capability, rather than one based on assets and infrastructure, which the market no longer requires". "It appears that this acquisition is UC, Collaboration and Contact Centre markets are growing in ANZ, but business needs are geared around professional services and new delivery models. IDC managed services research shows that a vendor's local presence and ability to understand their end customers' business are important success factors."

New Zealand Bankers Association (NZBA) says a public opinion survey has found a high level satisfaction among the country's bank customers.

The survey, commissioned by the NZBA, found that 82% of respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with their main bank, with only 7% dissatisfied. "This is a pleasing result which shows that banks are continuing to put a big effort into customer service," said NZBA chief executive Kirk Hope. "It also shows how competitive our banking sector is. By providing excellent service, banks work hard to attract and keep their customers."

The survey also found that 63% of respondents agreed that the strength of New Zealand banks meant that New Zealand got through the global financial crisis with less damage than other countries. "Ongoing uncertainty in other countries, most recently in Cyprus, shows our banks in a good light. We have a strong, stable and well-regulated banking sector which supports our economic growth."

A university student has experienced a very public positive outcome from his campaign to a complaint over Tiger Airways' customer service to social media.

New Ltd reports that Nathaniel Martin took to Facebook to vent his frustrations after Tiger Airways bumped him from his flight from Hobart to Melbourne on Sunday, telling him it had been overbooked. Martin gave a detailed description of his treatment from Tiger and outlined the inconvenience and cost caused by being forced to buy a full fare ticket with another airline in order to make his Monday morning class, despite buying his Tiger ticket a month in advance.

Martin's account attracted 50,000 'likes' on Facebook, prompting a call from Tiger offering an apology and an agreement to reimburse the cost of his fares to Melbourne. A Tiger Airways spokesperson told News Ltd that while cases like Martin's are rare, "overbooking of flights is common practice in the air travel industry here in Australia and world over - it's a practice put in place by airlines (and other travel and tourism industries) to compensate for an average no show rate. ... While issues in relation to this are extremely rare, we are very sorry to have inconvenienced one of our passengers recently. On review of the situation, we dealt directly with the passenger and resolved his specific situation."

Vodafone Australia CEO Bill Morrow said the telco's renewed focus on customer service is part of a sharpened strategy aimed at earning back the "hearts and minds of the Australian people."

Vodafone is attempting to rebuild its image and customer base, spending a reported $2 billion in Australia on network improvements and customer service. Vodafone has announced it will switch on its 4G network from June, has added 2,000 mobile phone towers to improve coverage and introduced a "network guarantee" opt-out for unhappy customers as part of a push to heal its damaged brand. Morrow has directed that staff not sign up customers if the company could not offer adequate network coverage in their area.

The mobile carrier is offering a "network guarantee" to new customers, allowing them to cancel contracts within the first 30 days if they are unhappy with network coverage. Vodafone has also set up a contact centre in Hobart, looking to improve service and public perception by bring customer service back from overseas. Morrow told a briefing with reporters the carrier was pursuing a strategy to lift its reputation in a narrower target market. "We can't be all things to all people - we're not going to make the capital investment that one of our other competitors has, to get that wider coverage of a network," he said.

Westpac NZ has chosen HP Enterprise Services to BPO outsourcing in a bid to improve customer service and productivity.

Under the new five-year contract, HP will provide document processing services, which enable Westpac to manage its end-to-end print production environment. The bank was seeking to provide better communications to its 1.3 million personal, business and agribusiness customers in New Zealand. HP is also expected to modernise the presentation of the bank's customer communications documents such as bank statements, utilising HP Exstream customer communication management (CCM) software. "HP's comprehensive document processing and archiving services allow us to focus on more effective customer interactions in a secure and controlled environment," said Westpac COO Jim Stabback. "Ultimately, this will help us to drive process transformation, achieve cost savings and maintain service excellence for our customers."

HP Enterprise Services country manager Gavin Greaves said financial institutions can easily become overwhelmed with the volume, variety and velocity of information needed to manage their business and serve their clients. "To assist organisations that require strong document processing and archiving management services, HP has recently established a purpose-built facility in Christchurch, and a second document processing site in Auckland," he said.

New research from Fifth Quadrant has found that while more than two-thirds of Australian organisations use social media to deliver customer service, consumers are proving slower to adopt the channel for their service interactions.

Fifth Quadrant's newly released report, Emerging Consumer Channels: Social Media, Web Chat and Smartphone Apps, found that 70% of Australian organisations now offer social media as a customer service channel, but just under one third (31%) of consumers used the channel for a customer service interaction in the past three months. The disconnect between consumer use and business expectations may in part be occurring because the two groups are looking for each other in all the wrong places, the report found.

The world's leading social network, Facebook, is the Australian consumers' number one choice for customer service engagement, followed by online forums and communities, and YouTube. Popular networks including Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs were the least popular options, with more than seven in ten consumers stating they "rarely" or "never" turn to them for customer service purposes. Conversely, the leading network among businesses is Twitter, used by more than three-quarters of organisations. Company blogs, websites and online communities tie in second place followed by Facebook. YouTube and LinkedIn sites are also prevalent contact channel offerings. "Simply creating a new service channel then standing back and waiting for the customers to come won't work," said Fifth Quadrant head of research Chris Kirby. "If organisations want to offer customer service through social media, they need to go to the networks that their customers use. They also need to treat social networks as they would any other communications channel. This means developing realistic long term resourcing plans."

Union officials have raised questions over rules that forbid Ambulance contact centre workers from eating sweets at their desks and allow them only to drink from sipper cups.

Dispatchers in the southeast Queensland communications centres are not allowed to keep lollies, fresh fruit or other food in their drawers or water bottles or cans of soft drinks on their desks. A Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) spokesman said the "carefully researched" rules ensured staff remained "focused on their task at hand and to protect vital technology". "Staff are allowed to consume fluids during their shift in special containers supplied by the QAS," he said. "This is to minimise the risk to vital technical equipment."

Ambulance co-ordinator for union United Voice, Jeanette Temperley said the rules were harming morale for frontline staff. "It's been a long-running issue, particularly in the Brisbane comms," she said. "They can't even have a snack, like a muesli bar or anything. They're definitely micro-managed."

Broadcore have successfully deployed the latest speech recognition product offering from Australian provider, Inference Solutions, for Ardwin Freight.

The speech recognition application asks customers the city and state they are calling from in order to ensure that the call is successfully routed to an operator that can best assist them. By expanding the capability of their BroadSoft telephony platform managed by Broadcore, Ardwin Freight are now able to take advantage of a cloud speech enabled IVR service. "Previously when we wanted to use any advanced IVR or speech recognition services we had to send calls off net and hair pin calls to another IVR providers platform. This meant the cost to service these calls was too great. By speech enabling our own telephony platform we are now able to manage our costs more effectively with the added bonus of much tighter integration" said Edwin Sahakian, President, Ardwin Freight.

"We have been working with Inference Solutions for some time now to establish an advanced IVR and speech recognition service offering that integrates natively with our BroadWorks platform. We are now able to offer all of our customers both inbound and outbound speech recognition applications that can deliver far greater automation opportunities at a much lower cost" said Alan Pourafzal, Director of Client Services, Broadcore.

Global hotel wholesaler roomsXML has enhanced its customer service reputation by adding a freecall 24/7 customer service for its Australian travel agents.

"Travel is 24 x 7 and there is nothing worse than having a customer who you can't help because you can't find somebody to speak to," roomsXML Asia Pacific MD Mark Luckey said. "So given that we're a global organisation, we have now put the technology in place which connects Australian customers from 1800 roomsXML to the Australian office during business hours, or to one of our other global offices after hours."

roomsXML has available tens of thousands of hotels and apartments across 9000 destinations in 188 countries. "The technology which underpins our operations ensures continuity in the customer service process, whether it's initiated by the integrated help system, phone or email," Luckey said.

New Zealand Post (NZ Post) is planning to expand its use of Oracle's cloud-based RightNow customer management service to its courier business.

NZ Post last year ended its joint venture with DHL, buying back the remaining 50% of the shares for Express Courier, which operates CourierPost, Pace, Contract Logistics, and Roadstar. NZ Post now wants to rationalise the customer care process for the courier unit with its main business.

NZ Post first started using RightNow as a sales CRM tool, and then slowly expanded the product suite to cover different channels, including contact centres, email, and social media. 'We are currently looking to deploy RightNow across the CourierPost business, and that will give us great benefit in both contact centres that work across our parcel and courier business," NZ Post's Russell Stephens said.

Outsourcer Salmat has partnered with Global software vendor, Kana Software ahead of an expansion of Kana's customer management solution across Australia and New Zealand.

Kana's Brian Donn told reporters the partnership with Salmat was a key plank in the company's strategy to build business in Australia, particularly with the latest cloud-based Enterprise Agent Desktop solution to be implemented by Salmat in all of its Australian and New Zealand contact centres.

Donn said Kana, working closely with Salmat, would 'go to market quite aggressively,' in June when Salmat released a major new upgrade to its cloud-based enterprise contact centre technology solution. Donn said the Australian market is an important plank in the company's APAC-wide growth strategy, with the majority of its business in the region currently in the Australia and New Zealand market, along with significant business in other countries like Indonesia, Singapore and Hong Kong.

An overwhelming 78% of small businesses in Australia are planning to increase their focus on social media in the coming year, according to a new survey.

The Bibby Barometer, made up of research by Bibby Financial Services Australia, found that almost half of small businesses are using social media to raise brand awareness and source new customers, while 40% are using it to generate new sales and 44% to provide networking opportunities, effectively contributing to business growth. Of those businesses surveyed, as many as 65% report that social media has helped their business grow over the past 12 months.

"Social media is increasingly being used as an extra communication channel to raise small business' profiles and reach new and existing clients," Bibby Financial Services Australia's Gary Green said. "A third of the businesses surveyed said that social media has helped them improve customer service and stay ahead of competition and as many as 22% have used social media to recruit new staff."

The New Zealand Racing Board (NZRB) is reportedly cutting 54 customer service jobs from its Auckland contact centre.

NZRB is selling the centre's building and moving the work to Wellington and Christchurch. Staff at the Auckland centre are expected to be made redundant in October.

The board said most of the workers were part-time or casual. Len Richards from the Service & Food Workers Union said TAB has obligations to look after its people. "I'm not sure whether laying them all off in this way is meeting the requirements of the Racing Act," Richards said.

Telcos need to view social media as more than just another marketing channel or risk being left behind by the media's potential, according to a new study.

A recent global Lithium study found that only 44% of telcos engage in social customer care, leading the social customer experience software firm to brand communication service providers socially immature. "Too often, social is considered just another marketing channel as opposed to a new paradigm for doing business," Lithium co-founder Lyle Fong told reporters on a recent trip to Australia.

"For companies to truly gain the benefits of social, and to really integrate the customer mindset into the organisation, social needs to be more strategic and integrated deeper into the day-to-day workflows of the organisation," he said. The number of communication service providers using social media as a customer service tool is set to hit 64% in two years, the study found.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has awarded an eight-year managed services contract to Fujitsu to provide a Microsoft CRM system to issue Australian passports.

Fujitsu's contract involves services, hardware, CRM implementation, program management, systems engineering and enterprise architecture. The Passport Redevelopment Program (PRP) is part of the Australian government's commitment to deliver a contemporary passport system with more a more secure, efficient and responsive service.

It will introduce a number of new services and streamline passport application processes using Microsoft CRM workflows for bulk scanning, case management, fraud control, workflow and passport printing solutions. "DFAT is committed to continuous improvement and we are constantly looking for ways to improve our process and services" DFAT CIO Tuan Dao said in a statement.

Australia's leading Customer Experience Consultancy and Analyst firm, Fifth Quadrant, recently announced the appointment of Claire Chow to lead the Customer Experience Design & Customer Co-creation division. Claire has a background in Customer Experience Strategy and Design and has worked on projects that have utilised customer centred design techniques as well as big data to underpin recommendations and inform customer experience strategy and management.

Claire is a seasoned consultant with a body of solid methodologies and practical experience across a broad range of industries and organisational structures, working with brands such as Toyota, Lexus, Weight Watchers, CBA and Expedia.

She has completed the Stanford Graduate Business School Customer Focused Innovation and Design Thinking program, studied Law and Asian Studies at UNSW and is completing her MBA with Deakin University.

Claire will work with Fifth Quadrant's private and public sector clients to introduce Customer Experience Design Thinking (CEDT) techniques as part of broader enterprise-wide Customer Experience Strategy across 8 key channels: voice, face-to-face, online, social media, mobile apps, face to face, video and gamification. An integral part of CEDT is Customer Co-creation which involves innovative methods of customers and employees designing products, services and interaction experiences together.

CEO of Fifth Quadrant, Dr Catriona Wallace, stated, "Claire's appointment solidifies Fifth Quadrant's position as the most innovative Customer Experience consultancy and research firm in Australia. Our research shows that to truly be competitive organisations will need to develop coherent and integrated multi-channel Customer Experience strategy. The greatest value of these strategies is unlocked when customers are involved in the process."

Claire can be contacted at cchow@fifthquadrant.com.au or on +61 2 9927 3399.

The mayor of the New Zealand city of Nelson says a move to attract contact centres to the area aims to provide 100 to 300 jobs paying at least $NZ 50,000 plus in the first year.

Nelson Mayor Aldo Miccio has met with the CEO of NZ outsourcer Gen-i, Tim Miles, Hastings mayor Lawrence Yule and Xero CEO Rod Drury to move the initiative forward. Miccio said Gen-i, which had offices in Melbourne and Sydney, would put a business model together during the next month, with input from the two regions, then test the model with companies in Australia and New Zealand and take it to the market.

The main sales pitch to the Australian companies is that New Zealand is 40% cheaper, mainly in employment costs, with lower wages and superannuation. Miccio said the aim of the contact centre initiative was to attract 100 to 300 relatively high-paying jobs to Nelson, earning $50,000-plus in the first year, and to increase that number year on year.

The Darwin Police Service will employ an extra 20 customer service staff as the incoming Country Liberals Government strengthens the commitment to law and order in the Territory.

"Labor left a mess with policing in Alice Springs. They under-resourced policing and we are fixing up their legacy of neglecting Central Australia," Chief Minister Adam Giles said. "I can announce that the police call centre in Darwin will get 20 more staff to help manage call centre case loads."

The Darwin police contact centre has been the target of criticisms over delays in its response times. "Policing is front and centre for the Country Liberals Government and we have a clear direction on making services and resources available as required.

The Pharmacy Support Services (PSS) hotline will expand to Western Australia making the anonymous service available in five states and territories.

The hotline offers counselling to pharmacists struggling with stress, health issues and practice matters. PSS president John Coppock hopes the service will be available to all Australian pharmacists in 2014.

"We are taking the expansion one state at a time to ensure that appropriate planning and quality assurance is in place," Coppock said. "We also have to ensure that sufficient funding is available."

SUBWAY Restaurants' service commitment has been recognised with New Zealand's Quick Service Restaurant of the Year award.

The award recognises SUBWAY's "commitment to providing superior customer service in an increasingly competitive industry." SUBWAY's head of marketing David Herrick said the New Zealand chain has worked hard to provide a point of difference to other quick service restaurants through outstanding customer service.

"Over the past 12 months we have strived to increase our focus on customer service," Herrick said. "We have implemented a unique customer feedback system called tellsubway.co.nz, which allows every single customer to give feedback on their experience in our restaurants."

Transfield Services has secured an extension of its wide-ranging outsourcing contract with Victoria's Mornington Peninsula Shire council.

Transfield will provide customer service and community engagement services as well as building, furniture, signs, parks and roadsides services in its asset management and maintenance services contracts. The council as signed three expanded 10-year contracts, extending one of Transfield's longest running relationships, now in its 15th year.

"We are thrilled to be able to continue to apply our expertise in long term asset management principles to the Mornington Peninsula Shire, in one of the company's longest running relationships," said Transfield CEO Graeme Hunt. Transfield Services also recently won the Silver Award from the Asset Management Council for its application of asset management principles with the Mornington Peninsula Shire.

Telecom NZ subsidiary Gen-i will undertake a reorganisation of its Australian business that could see major contracts abandoned or shifted.

Telecom NZ said up to 120 employees of Gen-i Australia would be made redundant as part of a strategic review into the unit, as it shifted focus to large corporate customers with "specific trans-Tasman ICT service requirements". The reorganisation comes only months after the subsidiary signed a five-year contact centre deal with Commonwealth Bank.

The company will reportedly move some existing customers to AAPT, another Telecom NZ subsidiary. A Telecom NZ spokesman said affected customers were being notified but would not clarify whether Commonwealth Bank's five-year contract would be kept under Gen-i Australia. Gen-i employs 2,500 staff across Australia and New Zealand.

iiNet has connected more than 10,000-customers to Australia's National Broadband Network across fibre, satellite, and fixed wireless services.

iiNet Chief Executive Officer Michael Malone said the milestone reflects the iiNet Group's support of the project and customer service experience in connecting customers to super-fast broadband. "We've hit our stride when it comes to connecting people to the NBN quickly and smoothly, and getting access to Australia's best internet with iiNet is hassle-free," Malone said. "Best of all, no matter what NBN connection our customers receive, they can bank on getting our awesome customer service and support."

"New customers can be confident connecting to the NBN with iiNet because we make the process simple, quick and jargon-free. We'll also recommend the best plan for our existing customers to ensure switching to the NBN is easy," Mr Malone said.

Jetstar CEO Jayne Hrdlicka says a tighter focus on customer service will help the Qantas-owned low-cost carrier stand its ground against rivals Tiger Airways and Virgin Australia.

Hrdlicka told reporters that Jetstar's level of customer service had not kept pace with its rapid growth and was now a key priority for the group. "The customer is much higher on our agenda than in the past," she said.

Jetstar has announced the launch of an online chat service which allows customers to have questions answered through instant messaging with service agents. The service, trialled in 2011 to help customers who were booking holiday packages, has now been rolled out following positive feedback.

Masters Home Improvement has launched what it claims to be a customer service first for it's industry, the 'ultra-handy' new Masters Home Improvement iPhone app for renovators.

The hero feature is its 'Chat Now' functionality that offers real-time customer service. "We've taken the innovation of our popular in-store customer service buttons, where a staff member will respond within one minute of being called, and moved it into the digital world," says Melinda Smith, Director of Masters.

Aside from Chat Now, the app also features; Product Finder, where users shop for more than 30,000 products and search through 19 categories to buy on the spot; Projects, a practical library of 'how-to' videos, articles, and step-by-step instructions on a range of projects; Scanner, a price comparison tool; Inspire Me: a trend-spotting device; Store Finder: find the nearest store, how to get there and opening hours and more.

Outsourcer Oceania Customer Interaction Services (OCIS) will close its contact centre just outside the capital Suva after losing a major contract.

OCIS CEO Heath Lee confirmed its Australian clients have ended their agreement with the company, which has affected Fiji operations. Lee said because of this the company will be unable to trade in Fiji and Australia.

Some 174 staff have been made redundant and the facility is scheduled to close from April 3. All staff have been notified of the closure and will receive a redundancy package.

Adelaide-based People's Choice Credit Union (PCCU) is preparing major customer service overhaul to meet online competition.

PCCU MD Peter Evers told reporters the credit union was bedding down a restructuring of its personal loans processes after realising the market had moved. "We (previously) applied a traditional branch call centre type application and approval process to an online world," he said.

He said after re-engineering the contact centre process over the past 18 months, "we are now taking some of those things and taking them back into the branch and the call centre to make them better." He said a lot of people gather information (about mortgage lending) from the internet but don't necessarily want to complete a transaction online.

Government contact centre Studylink is reportedly struggling to cope with the number of enquiries from students their about loans and allowances.

The help line has dropped nearly 300,000 calls in the last five months, and students' frustration is mounting as they struggle to get answers to their questions. Head of Studylink Susan Kosmala told reporters it is unfortunate some students have trouble getting through.

"That's not the service we aim to provide. We are continuing to make improvements to answer as many calls as we can," she said. In the last five months Studylink has answered nearly 430,000 calls, according to figures published by TVNZ, but a further 300,000 weren't answered. The figure is actually an improvement of more than a 100,000 on the same time last year.

Travel industry customer service IT specialist Travelport has extended its contract with New Zealand travel agency, Brooker Travel Group.

The agreement will see Brooker Travel continue to use Travelport's Galileo solution and give its agents access to Travelport's suite of industry-leading products. Travelport says it is aimed at improving operational efficiencies via solutions such as the Travelport Smartpoint App, Travelport ViewTrip Mobile and Travelport Rooms and more.

"At Brooker Travel we believe that travel technology, coupled with unparalleled customer service, is the key to our success," said Brooker MD Andrew Carmody. "We were one of the first travel agencies in New Zealand to implement a GDS reservations system and our long-standing relationship with Travelport has been very successful."

Australian timeshare holiday provider Classic Holidays is reporting extremely high customer service figures to start 2013.

Customer response surveys for January report satisfaction levels well above 90% when resort guests were asked if they would recommend the resort to family or friends and if they would return to that resort in the future. For Gold Coast-based Cedar Lake Country Resort, an exceptional 100% of those surveyed in January said they would return to or recommend the resort.

"Classic Holidays is an extremely supportive, fun and creative group of hard working professionals; it's like one big family. The company culture is one that can't be matched. This is truly a company that puts people first, manages from the heart and cares for the community," Cedar Lake Country Resorts' Julie Lee said. Gold Coast-based Classic Holidays manages 19 resorts and clubs across Australia catering to nearly 50,000 members.

On demand interpreter company ezispeak is talking up its cloud-based contact centre solution from Interactive Intelligence as a more effective means of managing its customer care requirements.

Ezispeak opened 18 months ago providing instant phone and video-based interpreting on demand as a means of overcoming the costly logistical challenges and delays previously incurred by services relying on face-to-face interviews. "Today the majority of the market is made up of on-site interpreting services where you get people (who) speak a particular language physically travelling to a dedicated location to provide that occasion of service," ezispeak chief executive Rebecca Haynes told News Limited.

Hayes said its Interactive Intelligence Customer Interaction Centre platform allows ezispeak to manage all inbound calls and automate multimedia queuing and routing processes. It includes comprehensive reporting to help management continually improve the customer experience. Haynes says the platform allows the company to provide instant connectivity between multiple parties that require an on-demand interpreting service, which can make a difference in an emergency situation.

A State Government report has found that most Melbourne residents are satisfied with the customer service offered by their local councils.

The study indicated that 9% of residents rated their council as very good, 40% as good, 36% as average, 9% as poor, 4% as very poor and about 1% couldn't say. Monash Council had the highest approval rating out of all Melbourne councils, scoring 71% and higher than the statewide average of 60%.

Municipal Association of Victoria president Bill McArthur said the council satisfaction surveys were a way for councils to understand what their residents liked and disliked. "It certainly gives an indication of the areas that the councils need to take more notice of and to improve the transparency of the operation and the accountability to the community," he told reporters.

Statistics New Zealand is expecting up to 35% of census forms - about two million - to be submitted via its new online facility.

Helpdesk were readied this week on a Statistics number 0800 CENSUS to give first-line assistance, and any problems they couldn't answer were escalated to staff from Datacom, which is managing the digital census processing. Statistics manager of census development Sarah Minson says census staff expected 200-300 calls may be escalated from Statistics' contact centre to Datacom during the busy period on census day.

Minson said the actual computing resource is provided by Revera through the government's infrastructure-as-a-service network, from fully replicated datacentres in Wellington and Auckland. New Zealand planned a census in 2011, but it was postponed following the Christchurch earthquakes.

Optus upped its face-to-face customer service with the opening of 10 'yes' pilot stores across Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria.

The telco also plans to revamp 100 of its stores from April, with an additional 33 new stores added to the network within 12 months. Optus says the move will see the company employ more than 200 new staff in the retail department.

Optus sales managing director, Rohan Ganeson, said the announcement is a significant step in making customer experiences a priority and encourages feedback from its customers. "Easier, simpler and better is what our customers have been telling us they want. These stores are an opportunity to deliver a better experience and the feedback from our pilot stores will be invaluable in helping us shape the experience for the rest of the transformation," Ganeson said. Optus also claimed to be working on a revamp of its website and apps to make them more user-friendly, as part of a larger objective to deliver the best customer experience possible - whether it's in store or online.

British smart meter company Bglobal has sold its Australian CRM subsidiary Utilisoft to customer care company Hansen Corporation.

Utilisoft Australia provides data management, software and process solutions to customers in the Australian energy market. Hansen is an independent provider of billing, customer care and IT solutions to the telecommunications, electricity, gas and water industries.

Bglobal said the sale of Utilisoft Australia will allow it to focus on its remaining UK businesses and continue to develop its 'meter to cash' smart meter services platform.

Outsourcer Contact Centres Australia (CAA) is expected to shortly open its first New Zealand contact centre in the Wellington CBD.

The centre is expected to create some 100 local jobs by July 2013 and the company plans to be able to employ up to 200 staff from across the Wellington region within two years. CCA currently employs about 550 staff in Sydney servicing a range of Australian public and private sector clients, with a focus on NGOs.

CCA will operate from Wellington as Contact Centres New Zealand (CCNZ) and decided to locate in Wellington after several interactions with regional economic development agency, Grow Wellington. CCNZ will begin to take and make calls on behalf of Australian clients and intends to grow the business with New Zealand clients.

Carnival Cruise Lines has extended its contact centre hours for the Carnival Spirit liner to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The move is designed to provide guests and agents with constant access to the dedicated customer service team. Carnival Cruise Lines says the change highlights commitment to providing superior guest service at a time that best suits Australians' busy lifestyles, as well as strengthening its commitment to support its agent partners.

Carnival Cruise Lines Australia and New Zealand director Jennifer Vandekreeke said she is confident the change will be a major help. "We know Aussies lead busy lives and we also know holiday inspiration can strike at any time," Vandekreeke said. "For these reasons, and as part of our ongoing commitment to quality customer service, we will now be available for guests and agents whenever they need us."

Domino's Pizza New Zealand has introduced a new app that allows customers to rate their feedback in real time on Facebook.

The company designed the new application to improve the overall service to consumers by allowing customers to rate their end-to-end experience with the brand. The order ratings will be displayed in real time on the Domino's Facebook page, allowing about 200,000 fans to view the score and customer comments for their local store.

Domino's New Zealand GM Josh Kilimnik said the Store Ratings application demonstrates Domino's commitment to transparency, accountability and continual improvement to the overall customer experience. "We have taken big steps over the past five years in improving the service and operations of our stores, and this is the next step for our stores to perform even better," he said. "For the first time ever, our customers will be able to provide real time feedback by rating their experience with our business."

Low cost airline Jetstar has apologised to the family of a man killed in a shark attack in New Zealand over treatment received from its customer service centre.

Adam Strange, a film director, was killed last week when he was attacked by a shark off of a popular tourist beach in New Zealand. Strange's mother attempted to get an immediate flight to Wellington but already had a flight booked for a week later. The woman's sister reportedly asked the airline to have some compassion and change the flight.

New Zealand media reported the woman was placed on hold for 10 minutes to talk to a supervisor before being told she would pay a flight change fee of $265 or pay for a new ticket. She was told the airline would refund the fee if it received documents proving the change was made for compassionate reasons. In a statement, Jetstar said it appreciates the woman's treatment would have been a stressful situation and "regrets if the service received by her relative from our contact centre caused further distress. We have contacted the relative and apologised for the way the call was handled."

Mortgage company State Custodians has taken the overall prize for best customer service at the Australian Home Loans Awards, saying it is an affirmation for a non-bank, online based model.

State Custodians director of operations Heidi Armstrong says the key to good customer service is to treat people as individuals, rather than as a 'type', and pay attention to their requests. "We are an online lender and rarely see people face-to-face, but we understand that different people have different service expectations."
State Custodians says it relies heavily on positive reviews and referrals from existing customers to build up business and remain viable.

"We take a very active approach in listening to our clients' feedback," said Armstrong. "Our clients are smart people. We know they have generally done some research to find out about State Custodians. Therefore, when they speak up and make suggestions for change, we don't just listen, we act." Other customer service gold winners were ME Bank and the Greater Building Society.

Mobile telco Vodafone Hutchison Australia has announced 750 new customer service jobs at its Hobart contact centre headquarters.

The expansion has been helped by a $4 million investment by the federal government and will result in more than double the staff numbers at the contact centre, which currently employs over 680 people. The Tasmanian Government is providing $850,000 for infrastructure costs and waiving payroll tax for Vodafone's new employees.

Tasmania premier Lara Giddings said the expansion was one of the biggest jobs announcements in the state's history. "The investment by Vodafone to double their Tasmanian workforce up to 1500 employees is a massive boost for the economy," Giddings said. Vodafone expects the employment targets to be achieved over the 2013-14 financial year.

Air New Zealand has been named best major airline in the Pacific for on-time performance, by flight and information services website FlightStats.

Air New Zealand is also one of four finalists in the global Major International Airlines category. The awards recognise airlines for delivering on a key element of customer service - the ability to meet passengers' expectations of arriving at their chosen destination on schedule.

Air New Zealand COO Bruce Parton said the award is shared by the thousands of staff across New Zealand and around the world "who work hard every day to bring all the required elements together to ensure flights get away on time". "Not only are we the best in the Pacific at getting our customers to where they need to be safely and on time, we do so without compromising the truly world-class customer service we pride ourselves on," Parton said.

Aspect Software has recently announced an equity partnership with back office optimisation software and services expert eg solutions, plc.

Aspect a leader in workforce management, offers capabilities to align people's time and skills for best-in-class customer interactions with the contact center. The eg partnership creates the ability for Aspect to ensure that the people, processes and tasks that support these interactions across both the front and back office can optimise the total customer experience.

The agreement provides Aspect exclusive distribution rights to eg's products and services in the Asia Pacific and Americas regions and formalises the partnership model for both companies to address customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Lawyers are preparing to mount a class action against Vodafone after years of complaints about the mobile telco's customer service and coverage.

Law firm Piper Alderman on Monday announced plans to proceed with the action but did not reveal further details. Vodafone said it was aware of the potential class action, but said the law firm has not contacted Vodafone directly since it first threatened action in 2010, nor has it sought to discuss the claims of any customers it represents in the class action with Vodafone.

The legal move comes more than a year after Vodafone said it was working hard to improve its service following a damning report that outlined more than 12,000 complaints ranging from patchy network coverage to poor customer service. Since first announcing in December 2010 its intention to launch the class action, Piper Alderman has received more than 23,000 registrations of interest to participate from Vodafone contract holders.

Macquarie University has rolled out a campus-wide SugarCRM solution via integrator InsightfulCRM.

InsightfulCRM is responsible for developing, hosting and managing a CRM solution for Macquarie University to help improve its relationships with over 44,000 students, academic staff and commercial partners, as well as prospective students. Macquarie University's CIO Marc Bailey said SugarCRM has enabled the university to build better stakeholder relationships and increase their focus on student experience and retention in a highly competitive education sector.

"When we looked at how to introduce customer relationship management ideas and technology in a higher-ed context, we realised that interaction and adaptability are what really matter," said Bailey. Although there are off-the-shelf solutions to educational CRM, at the bottom of the iceberg there is a multiplicity of integration targets where generic approaches just don't fit. Open source, in this case SugarCRM, delivers value from both worlds - generic where you can be, custom where you can't."

Business-focused telco Next Telecom has won the Australian Gold Customer Service Award for 2012 for the second year running.

The Australian Customer Service Awards uses an online customer survey tool to collect and analyse feedback organisation's customers and grade their responses using best practice customer service standards as a benchmark. "After 5 years of operations, winning this award again is a testament to the organisations mission to be the leader in service in this highly competitive environment," Next Telecom CEO Officer Ryan O'Hare said.

"While most telecommunication companies claim their service levels are the best, our less than 10 second answering, advanced billing, pricing, knowledge and overall award winning customer service sets us apart." Next Telecom recently launched its new corporate headquarters in North Sydney "enabling it to continue planned growth and adopt technology advances that will maintain its leading service position".

ShoreTel unified communications solutions deployed to more than 3000 local government users in last 12 months.

Unified communications company ShoreTel says it is servicing 3000 new users as it continues to gain market share in the local government sector. The company says it has more than 50 councils currently considering ShoreTel as their business communications solution.

"We've had phenomenal success since we started to actively target the local government sector in mid-2011," ShoreTel ANZ MD Jamie Romanin said. "Local government IT departments need technology solutions that meet their criteria without adding a burden of complexity to the operation, and ShoreTel provides the ideal solution with powerful and integrated business communications combined with a simple and elegant systems architecture and management interface."

Telstra has announced plans to cut around 650 jobs at its directory services unit Sensis as part of a restructuring away from its traditional print-based model to a digital media business.

Telstra said on Wednesday it planned to set up a new digital customer management centre and outsource some customer service functions. "Until now we have been operating with an outdated print-based model - this is no longer sustainable for us," Sensis Managing Director John Allan said in a statement.

Allan reportedly told union officials that "Australians will get better customer services from Manila or India. They have better technology and innovation." Allan told Fairfax media, "the vendors that we are considering provide services for customers that go beyond our service today, such as 24/7 operations and unique technologies that assist in processing efficiencies, which they do for many directory businesses around the world".

Westpac Bank has apologised for an online and telephone banking services glitch that disrupted services on Monday, upping other customer service channels to meet demand.

Westpac had earlier confirmed that the services had been offline and that it was working as rapidly as possible to correct the problem. "All of our online banking and automated telephone banking services have now been restored," Westpac spokeswoman Supreet Thomas said.

Thomas said Westpac had extended its contact centre opening hours until 9.30pm Monday and also opened earlier on Tuesday to help its customers. "We sincerely apologise to our customers for the inconvenience and encourage customers to call their local bank manager or our customer contact centre if they have any questions."

The federal government has issued a tender request for contact centre services as the first step in its $198 million aged care gateway plan.

The aged care gateway will attempt to create an entry point for the aged care system and enable timely and reliable information to be accessed by older people, their families and carers. A key element of the initiative is a new My Aged Care website, which will consolidate information on ageing and aged care services. This will eventually include quality indicators and a rating system for aged care services.

Healthdirect Australia will be in charge of developing and managing the My Aged Care website and the sourcing and procurement of contact centre services. According to the briefing notes, the contact centre "will be required to utilise and integrate with a Commonwealth, core ICT system to support delivery of Aged Care Gateway services". The government's current Aged Care Australia website will be decommissioned following the introduction of the My Aged Care website. The current national number for information on aged care, 1800 200 422, will be used by the aged care gateway's national contact centre.

IBM has officially opened its new outsourcing Delivery Centre in New Zealand at Auckland's Unitec Institute of Technology.

The facility, formally opened by Prime Minister John Key, will prepare students to work in the digital economy and provide businesses with access to new skills in mobile and analytics, and advanced technology. IBM anticipates that the centre will employ up to 400 people within the next two years including full-time and part-time professionals, as well as Unitec graduates and current students.

The partnership will be based on IBMs successful model at the Ballarat Delivery Centre in Australia. The new Delivery Centre in New Zealand is part of IBMs global network of more than 50 centres and will leverage IBMs "global expertise in delivering innovative business process outsourcing and services to clients locally and internationally".

Two thirds of the 442 complaints received by the Airline Customer Advocate in its first six months were resolved in the customer's favour, according to new research by the body.

Complaints about cancellation and refund requests totalled about a third of inquiries for all airlines, followed by flight delays at 18%, fees or charges, website problems and then disputes over terms and conditions. Tiger Airways reportedly attracted the most complaints between July and December 2012, followed by Jetstar. Qantas and Virgin prompted the least complaints.

Tiger had 2.17 complaints per 100,000 passengers for cancellation and refund disputes, while Jetstar scored 1.44, Qantas at 0.16 and Virgin had 0.14. According to the annual report, customer complaints were resolved within two weeks on average. Transport Minister Anthony Albanese said the results showed reform in the industry had been a success, with complaints resolved quickly and effectively after support from airlines as well. "For the first time airline customers have a real alternative when they need their complaints resolved," he said.

The mayors of New Zealand cities Nelson and Hastings have announced a plan to attract more customer service jobs from Australia to cost effective provincial New Zealand.

In a joint election-year release yesterday, headed "Mayors ready to fight for local jobs", Aldo Miccio and Lawrence Yule said they'd been working with Wellington technology entrepreneur Rod Drury, who had suggested basing technology contact centres in the regions. The mayors said they would be working with their economic development agencies on a strategy to "bundle together services and promote these to Australian businesses - finance and insurance companies, for example".

Yule said the contact centres were usually 24/7 operations so there could be capacity for many new high-value jobs, and an economic boost to the whole community. "We know our regions can offer great value that can attract Australian companies."

New Zealand's Contact Energy says its customer service centre roles are safe from reported plans to lay off about 100 of its 1100 staff by the middle of the year.

Contact Energy 's job cuts are part of a wider plan to chop $40 million in yearly costs. Contact Energy's head office has 270 staff and its retail operation has 150 people in Wellington. The two sites are being combined, with retail staff moving into the head office building in coming months. Contact Energy also employs 100 contact centre staff in Levin and 130 in Dunedin.

Contact Energy said while the whole business was being looked at, it did not expect any "material" cuts at the contact centres. "We will be taking great care that any of the reductions don't impact on the reliability and safety of operations or customer service," a spokesman said. Contact Energy was not considering outsourcing the call centres to other countries.

On-demand hire-car service Uber is hoping a proposed deregulation of the Australian taxi industry will allow more room for its app-based customer service model.

Since its launch two years ago, the San Francisco company is operating in 26 cities around the world, with 100 luxury cars available in Sydney since launching in October, and 15 vehicles in Melbourne. Once customers download the Uber app and register their details, they are able to see available cars onscreen as they move about the city and order one.

All Uber drivers must have a current hire-car licence, insurance, and pass a personal interview and city knowledge test, while customers are able to rate them at the end of each trip. While passengers await the arrival of their Uber car, the app allows them to see the driver's photograph, licence plate number, and review "star rating". Uber general manager in Sydney, David Rohrsheim, says the feedback works both ways, with drivers also able to rate passengers, creating a greater sense of accountability. Uber's hire cars are generally 30% more expensive than a present cab fare, with Uber taking a 20%.

Analysis of the entrants in the 2012 Telstra Australian Business Awards indicate that most of the top SMBs have a comprehensive business plan that includes a strong focus on customer service.

According to the NSW Business Chamber's analysis, most of the 2012 entrants have covered possible risks of their online activities through secure passwords, anti-virus software, unidentified emails and offsite back up of data. Every entrant, 90% more than 2011, have maintained and utilised some form of customer database, 89% of entrants reviewed supplier performance and benefited from better customer service, reduced costs, increased reliability and better quality products.

Australian businesses looking to enter the 2013 Telstra Australian Business Awards will receive a free 70 page Business Health Check report that evaluates the business' performance against international standards, current legislation and accepted industry best practice. Noel Niddrie, director of Winangali Pty Ltd and the winner of the 2012 Telstra Queensland Business of the Year Award said, "the opportunity to take a fresh look at your business and have it assessed by experts is priceless."

Westpac Bank is reportedly considering offshoring roles from its South Australian mortgage processing centre.

New reports say Westpac told workers, including 70 at its Lockleys mortgage processing centre, that it was reviewing their jobs with a view to moving them to India and the Philippines. "We've started a consultation period that will run until the end of February," Westpac spokesman Paul Marriage told reporters. "If we do decide to go ahead there will be an impact on some jobs in Adelaide."

"Should we proceed we are committed to supporting people through the change and make it a priority to redeploy as many people as possible or retrain our staff into new roles," the spokesman added. Labor MP for the Adelaide seat of Hindmarsh, Steve Georganas, said workers at the Lockleys contact centre had for years told him they were terrified of losing their jobs. "Banks need to wake up and realise offshoring is bad for workers, bad for customers and bad for Australia," he said.

A consumer study by US-based software company Zendesk has found that Australian customer service is the best of the best with 93% customer satisfaction.

Zendesk's latest Customer Satisfaction Index measures customer happiness across 65 million consumers in 137 countries. The Zendesk study also pointed to research by recruitment company Randstad that found that Australia has among the happiest employees in the world. "There is something of a connection between countries with happy employees and countries that are providing the best customer service," Zendesk said.

"Canada (93% satisfaction), Australia and Germany (88%) have high rates of happy employees and some of the highest customer service scores," the company said. "On the other hand, France, China and Turkey have some the lowest rates of happy employees and also have low scores on the customer service satisfaction index."

The National Rugby League (NRL) and the Australian Sports Drug Agency (ASADA) have established an anonymous contact centre as part of its efforts to flush out drug cheats.

In the wake of a report claiming the widespread use of illicit substances in Australian sport, the NRL and ASADA are calling on players and officials to call the new hotline and provide information on drug use in rugby league. "Players will be able to provide the confidential information, receive advice relating to anti-doping concerns and come forward with information that may reduce the level of any sanction," a statement said.
"Any member of the public will be able confidentially provide information on doping issues through the existing ASADA Hot Line 1300 027 232 or they can log on to www.asada.gov.au," the statement said.

"Players can contact 1300 550 485 on a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week basis to talk with an Intelligence Manager at ASADA who will be available to confidentiality collect information,'' a statement issued to the Sunday Telegraph read. NRL boss David Smith urged players and the public to provide information to assist in the investigation.

Customer service centres set up to handle New Zealand teachers' payroll problems have been swamped with calls.

The centres took more than 800 calls in the first two days after the first pay round of the school year, with hundreds of teachers expected to be underpaid or not paid at all. Ministry of Education officials have manually paid 86 teachers this week after "discrepancies" in their pay packets, but the number of total errors was expected to be in the hundreds.

A ministry contact centre received 228 calls on February 6 and a further 102 calls and 197 emails on February 7 from teachers, principals and payroll administrators. Payroll company Talent2's contact centre also fielded more than 500 calls since the pay round last week.

Cosmetic company owner Napoleon Perdis has warned department stores against cutting back on staff and training unless they want to push customers online.

Perdis was quoted by Fairfax Media as saying that stores need to invest in staff and improve the consumer experience or customers will have no reason to shop in store. "Department stores are going to have to bite the bullet further with increasing their staffing levels so that customers feel there is a reason to go in to them. It's expensive upfront, but not expensive long term," he said.

Perdis said there has to be a major incentive for a woman to go in the department store and "feel beautiful". Perdis says Australian department stores desperately need to train their staff beyond using a cash register. "You have to actually reinvest in humanity to give you the returns," he said.

The IT Service Management Forum Australia (itSMF) and HDAA (formerly the Help Desk Association of Australasia) will join forces to co-produce the LEADit 2013 conference and exhibition.

The partnership will help expand Australia's largest IT Service Management Conference and Exhibition to cater for help desk and service and support professionals. Under the partnership, LEADit 2013 will feature a larger presence for HDAA, access for HDAA members, an extended range of speakers and additional content on service desk and support issues.

"It has long been understood that service desk and support operations are critical to the effective implementation of ITSM improvement strategies," itSMF's chair Kathryn Heaton said. "Therefore, it is only logical to extend the value of our conference by including designated content on this complementary area of IT." LEADit 2013 is itSMF's 16th National Conference and will be held in Canberra from 7-9 August.

National Australia Bank has deployed an automated contact centre testing solution from Cyara to help it monitor and evaluate its customer service while consolidating IT.

NAB will use Cyara for testing, monitoring and simulating agent and customer experience, as well as its IVR and contact centre systems and applications. "Using Cyara's automated suite for our contact centre virtualisation project significantly lowered our testing costs and, more importantly, reduced the risk of customer service impact as we made changes and moved to one virtual platform," said NAB's Graham Cronin.

NAB used Cyara's suite of solutions for pre-and post-migration, benchmarking existing customer experience and documenting and managing application and systems changes across 36 different contact centres while they were consolidated to one virtual system. "Our business stakeholders were comfortable using Cyara because of what Cyara revealed to them - invaluable information about their own customer experiences," said Cronin.

New Zealand's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) is installing the Microsoft Dynamics CRM (CRM) software as part of an upgrade of its customer service.

The new solution is expected to help the MBIE to simplify its interactions with customers, reduce costs and keep its organisation better informed about opportunities to improve service. The two-phase implementation into MBIE's Christchurch-based service centre began last month, with the full roll-out to be completed by mid-2013.

"This gives us a clearer picture than we've ever had before of not just the issues we need to pay attention to, but also the time taken and cost to resolve them," said MBIE's Jeremy Dickson. Dickson said one of his aims was to eliminate the need for people to follow up on, or re-explain, their initial enquiries or contacts with the Ministry.

Telstra says its renewed focus on improving customer service is largely responsible for the continued growth of its mobile communications business.

Telstra signed more than 600,000 new customers for its mobile services in the past six months, especially for its 4G internet network. "These results have been achieved through what I would say is a sustained and disciplined focus on our strategic priorities and, very, very specifically, on improving customer service which is such a key priority," Telstra's CEO David Thodey said.

"While it's still a long way to go, it's sort of the heart of what we do," Thodey added. Telstra also spent nearly $2 billion over the half-year on new technology and expanding its network.

Energy retailer Australian Power & Gas Company Limited has entered into an agreement with global payments company, PayPal to expand its offering to customers.

The deal will allow Australian Power & Gas' over 340,000 customer accounts to pay bills online using PayPal online and reduce Australian Power & Gas' transaction costs to process payments. "This is an important relationship which opens up access for Australian Power & Gas to PayPal Australia's 5 million active accounts," said Australian Power & Gas CEO James Myatt. "We're delighted to be the first energy retailer to enable customers to pay bills using PayPal."

Under the agreement, payment information is managed electronically reducing manual handling, mail and paper transaction costs. Customers will also be able to pay bills in instalments at times of their choosing, as an alternative to lump sum payments at the due date.

Dimension Data New Zealand has partnered with Desktops as a Service (DaaS) company Desktone to offer cost-effective, full-featured virtual desktops as a cloud service.

Dimension Data will offer the Desktone virtual desktop platform to New Zealand companies and government agencies to help them better support corporate and remote workers. The move comes as the rapid adoption of mobile computing and other enterprise initiatives has created a need for a desktop solution that's scalable and reduces operational costs and complexity.

"Organisations are increasingly embracing cloud computing for its flexibility, efficiency and ease of use," Dimension Data New Zealand's Leigh Jackson said. "At Dimension Data we've been aggressively building our portfolio of cloud services with solutions like Desktone's multi-tenant virtual desktop platform that help customers improve performance and lower IT costs."

ME Bank has launched a new customer service initiative by installing a workplace banking kiosk at Telstra's Melbourne's CBD contact centre.

The kiosk measures five metres square and acts as a miniature bank branch that can operate on an employer's worksite. The kiosk includes a video phone to access ME Bank's contact centre, a private office space for meetings with a banker, an ATM, and access to Internet banking.

"ME Bank is taking banking to the customer, rather than making them come to us," said ME Bank sales group executive Ian Hendey. "The Kiosks combine face-to-face and digital banking, and address the difficulty many people have finding time to go to their bank."

Hosted voice and data communications provider MyNetFone says it has significantly expanded its Australian-based customer service and support operations.

The company has shifted customer service into larger premises within the group's Sydney headquarters to meet substantial growth in MyNetFone's Residential and Business (SMB and Enterprise) divisions. The expansion will specifically be in the customer service and technical support contact centre, which has increased its staff numbers by 20% compared to last year.

"Contrary to recent industry trends, MyNetFone Group strongly believes in onshore support and service," said CEO Rene Sugo. "Together with our substantial investment in Australia-based Research & Development, our dedication to local customer support forms the foundation of our commercial success."

New research indicates poor customer experience could cost companies 20% of their annual revenue.

The Oracle survey of 75 senior Australian executives found that organisations recognise that not offering a positive, consistent and brand-relevant customer experience would have a significant impact on their bottom line. The study also showed that the main obstacles for implementing customer experience locally were technology-related.

Oracle Australia's Chris Bosch said a great customer experience is being able to engage with a customer's bank or telecommunications provider through any chosen channel for any service. "It's also to get consistent, clear and accurate information that helps me make a decision," he said. "Realising that I'm one customer even though I have a few products is key." Some 21% of respondents said they had implemented advanced customer experience programs, while 37% had none; 31% were getting started with a formal customer experience initiative.

Melbourne-based online clothing retailer, The Iconic, has reportedly outsourced its customer service operations to India.

The Iconic has been offshoring parts of its email customer service to Hyderabad since December, according to Fairfax media. The report quoted the company's MD Adam Jacobs that redundancies down the track were not related to the Indian offshoring.

"We are looking to reduce our team in Sydney by five to eight roles, which represents a small percentage of our full team," he said. Jacobs said there was a "reduced" need for the customer service team. "It has reduced due to concerted efforts to create a seamless customer experience, meaning less customers now need to contact us with queries/issues," Jacobs said.

Timeshare exchange accommodation provider RCI Pacific is reconfiguring is customer service numbers as part of a global restructuring of the group.

RCI provides timeshare holiday exchange accommodation at more than 4000 resorts in 100 countries. About 60 staff as the company's Bundall office on the Gold Coast were told their jobs would go as part of the changes, which see customer service centre functions relocated to the company's Singapore office.

RCI Pacific managing director Charisse Cox said employees affected were largely back-office and member-service staff at the contact centre who would be offered assistance to find new employment. "Globally, we are looking at where efficiencies can be made all our offices and for this reason it was decided to move the back-office functions to RCI Singapore," Cox said.

Sydney telemarketing company Strategic Outsourcing Solutions has opened up an offshore contact centre.

The new contact centre has been set up in conjunction with one of the leading telemarketing companies in the Philippines, opening up a new partnership for the business. Strategic Outsourcing Solutions offers options for companies who are looking to open up a telemarketing business to further their client base and research. This has been proven to assist companies with marketing solutions and has led to inspiration for new research in the retail, health and construction sectors.

The company have worked closely with a number of prestigious companies and have sourced out offices and telemarketing businesses within Australia, India and the Philippines. Strategic Outsourcing Solutions says its new office in the Philippines is one of the largest established telemarketing businesses in its region.

Building materials company Boral has pledged its customer service will be unaffected by plans to cut 700 jobs from all levels of the company to reduce costs.

Boral has announced that 700 staff will go from functional, support and management positions, with 200 of those redundancies having already occurred late last year, and the rest expected to be completed by March. Boral CEO Mike Kane said the changes should not affect customer service, as the redundancies are concentrated in back office, managerial and support activities.

Kane says doing nothing was not a serious alternative, with shareholders unhappy about a recent cut in dividends. "I've been looking for ways to enable Boral to be more responsive to our external markets and customers, and to ensure Boral remains competitive at a time when the building and construction sector is facing serious challenges, especially in Australia," he said.

Fairfax Media is reportedly in the process of offshoring much of its contact centre work to New Zealand.

Once it is completed, the bulk of the company's newspaper and magazine subscriptions and classified ad bookings will be handled by US outsourcer Teletech's customer service centres in Auckland and The Philippines. The move was announced to staff late last year and will involve redundancies, but the exact number of jobs has not been confirmed.

Fairfax employs staff at its contact centres in Sydney and Melbourne, although some of its subscriptions work had already been outsourced. Fairfax announced last week it is continuing to shift editorial sub-editing jobs from Australia to its wholly owned New Zealand division, Fairfax Media NZ.

Tiger Airways has received a largely positive response from customers after admitting on social media it is "extremely disappointed" with its contact centre service and promising change is on the way.

The budget airline posted a message on Facebook outlining its own disappointment at the centre's service problems, including long delays, and said it would be moving to a new outsourcer on February 1. "We want to apologise to our customers, we are extremely disappointed with the current levels of service you are experiencing when trying to call our call centre," it said.

"We are moving to a new call centre provider on 1st February to ensure you receive the standards of service that you deserve and thank you for your patience in the meantime. Thank you and sorry." A Tiger Airways spokesperson told reporter the new contact centre is an important move for the airline. "Customer satisfaction is a key priority for Tiger Airways Australia and we strive for continual improvement in this area."

Qantas has offered some check-in and customer service staff voluntary redundancies after losing a multimillion contract with Air New Zealand.

Qantas said Air New Zealand advised in November it would not renew the contract for ground handling services when the current arrangement expired in March. Qantas in response has called for voluntary redundancies among its check-in and customer service staff.

"We don't expect there will be any compulsory redundancies," a Qantas spokesman said. The number of redundancies was expected to be low but the airline is yet to determine exact figures.

Australian online retailers have been urged to concentrate on customer service to ensure they retain and build on their share of the online sales market.

According to research by MasterCard, two in three respondents said they shopped online at least once a month. Overall, 12.6 million adult consumers have shopped online during the last 12 months.

MasterCard Australia VP David Masters said it was up to online retailers themselves to "deliver where overseas retailers cannot - (through) service (and) delivering a personal approach."

A survey of small to medium businesses has found that telcos would benefit by following the lead of airlines by distinguish between premium-paying customers and "economy" customers.

The study of 260 businesses with fewer than 20 employees indicated that 29% per cent of small business owners suffered the same customer service and complaint-handling issues experienced by personal consumers. Complaints ranged from the length of customer service phone calls (22%), being on hold (18%), being passed between departments (9%) and having to call multiple times (7%).

"The vast majority of respondents use business-grade services. By paying a premium for business services, there is an implicit understanding that as a business customer they would enjoy a higher level of customer support," the report's author, Shara Evans, said. Evans urged businesses to purchase a mobile broadband "dongle", or obtain a fixed broadband service from multiple providers using different technologies to their business being impacted when offline.

Stellar is looking to hire another 100 customer service officers to work in its new Maroochydore contact centre.

With the assistance of the Sunshine Coast Council, Stellar has organised two more information sessions for prospective employees to find out more about Stellar, its job requirements, its global organisation and its benefits.

The company's Maroochydore centre has already employed more than 100 people. The centre provides support for its five-year contract with the Australian Taxation Office.

Telstra has launched a new marketing campaign with a pledge to continue improving customer service.

The campaign, which uses Sydney's New Years Eve celebrations as its backdrop, comes after the telco poured one billion dollars into the area over four years. Telstra's Inese Kingsmill told reporters the campaign comes after Telstra recorded improvements in key customer service indicators.

"Satisfaction is trending upwards and complaints are trending downwards despite the fact that we have added more customers," Kingsmill was quoted as saying. Telstra has won two million new customers in the past two years while complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) have dropped by 10% in the past six months.

Logistic supplies company CHEP has introduced a range of customer service initiatives based on the results of its annual customer survey.

The company's CHEPedia.chep.com website has been expanded to provide customers with easy-to-access information to simplify day-to-day administration, control and management of their CHEP equipment. CHEPedia also offers on-line training for Portfolio Plus (an online equipment ordering and management system), including a step-by-step guide to accessing reports, an invoice training guide, and an overview of the recently launched account reconciliation functionality.

A customer dispute management framework has also been launched on CHEPedia.chep.com that enables customers to engage with CHEP to investigate transactional disputes with trading partners. CHEP's quarterly Customer Forums are face-to-face customer events designed for the company to work closely with customers to help address supply chain issues and promote best practice.

New Zealand's DB Breweries has upgraded its customer IT to include SAP's latest web channel experience management (WCEM) software.

DB is partnering with integrator UXC Oxygen to roll out a number of new SAP solutions aimed at improving business efficiency. The web shop, which services DB's trade customers, went live on time and on budget in December 2012.

DB's Mike Rawson, says the brewer recently upgraded its core SAP system and is now commencing a program of CRM work to further strengthen key customer service functions. Rawson says the web shop will help DB better service customers by providing them with a more direct and consistent means of engagement with the brewer. "Customers will be able to order from us through the web shop at any time of the day or night – not just during business hours," he said.

Health fund HCF has improved its customer service to dental customers by rolling out an integrated, networked electronic patient record across its 94 dental centres across Australia.

The records system, developed by Sydney-based company Centaur, allows for the storage of patient records and electronic medical imaging, Peter Sandyford, head of dental services for HCF told reporters. "A lot of practices have an electronic medical record," he said.

"The difference with ours is it can follow the patient between our various surgeries because the system is connected at the back end." Patients can attend any one of HCF's dental centres and have their patient records available. "If they ring our call centre, and an appointment is available at another centre to where they would usually attend, their records follow them," Sandyford said.

Embattled New Zealand-based online storage and sharing entrepreneur Kim Dotcom will re-enter the web market with a new cloud storage offering backed by a local contact centre.

The new mega.co.nz will launch with 50 gigabytes of cloud storage for all comers and a global customer support line. Australian-based domain name registrar Instra will reportedly manage the contact centre with an initial 15 to 20 staff.

Instra CEO Brian Clarkson told reporters the company has signed up to deliver Mega's customer support from a contact centre in Hamilton, New Zealand. Clarkson's hope is that most enquiries come by email, as Instra has installed a customer service application tuned to handling email enquiries. "We have contingency plans to put more staff on," he added. "We're going totally into the unknown."

Customer service IT specialist Oracle has opened a new Sydney datacentre to meet customer demand for its hosted CRM solutions.

Oracle set up its first Australian datacentre in 20101with its on-demand CRM platform. Speaking at a press conference in Sydney, Oracle global president, Mark Hurd said that the second datacentre will support the company's strategy to build out the cloud, as well as address data sovereignty concerns from its local customers.

"We hope you will also look at it as an investment into the Australian market, and it shows our commitment to this market," he said. Hurd said that the vendor is also able to mix and match its offerings should customers want to host a portion of its Oracle applications on-premise or in a private cloud.

Public health authorities are being urged to use social media better as a customer service tool in spreading emergency messages and advice.

New research conducted at the University of Sydney suggests Twitter is an ideal way to disseminate important, sometimes urgent information about public health. But Professor Robert Steele said many government health organisations aren't tweeting enough.

"One of things we noticed in our research was that government Twitter accounts had been quite successful in disseminating information - they have more followers on average and their messages are more re-tweeted," he told Australian Associated Press. "But we also noticed that government accounts tweet less."

Consumer NZ chief executive Sue Chetwin has warned telco and utility companies using door-to-door sales maybe inviting a negative customer response.

Chetwin said door-to-door sales calls are ramping up and extending into Sundays, making them a good way to annoy the public and lose business. "If it's annoying on Saturday, it's probably doubly so on Sunday," she said.

Legislation due to pass in NZ Parliament this year will toughen rules around door-to-door sales to guarantee cancellation rights for 10 days and restrict solicitations to "reasonable hours".

Air New Zealand plans to outsource some of its contact centre operations in a bid to cut costs.

Under the proposal, about 70 temporary customer service staff handling domestic and short-haul inquiries will be outsourced to computer giant IBM's "New Zealand Delivery Centre" being established with Auckland's Unitec Institute of Technology. The airline estimated the move will save about $3 million a year.

Air New Zealand says the partnership with IBM would boost its contact centre capability and enhance customers' experience. "This would offer the benefit of a part-time workforce which can be called upon at short notice to ensure extra support is provided to customers and staff at times of high demand," it said.

The Community and Public Sector Union claims that budgets cuts had led to a dramatic drop in customer service levels for a range of government departments.

The union says customers are frequently having to wait more than an hour in Department of Human Services offices, which provide Centrelink, Medicare and Child Support services. In its pre-budget submission, the union also says people are routinely waiting up to 90 minutes for calls to be answered during peak periods and there was a backlog of 98,000 claims to be processed, including 45,000 applications for Family Assistance.

The CPSU said 5400 jobs had been cut from the public sector since late 2011.The union's submission called for "no further overall reduction in federal public sector staffing levels in the short term and growth to meet increasing demand for services in the medium to longer term".

Defence Bank has launched what it says is Australia's first video banking system for its 90,000 members.

The service uses technology provided by US vendor uGenius, which was recently acquired by payments technology giant NCR. Defence Bank CEO Jon Linehan said the video service is initially targeted at members wanting to conduct loans and credit card-related transactions.

"Many Defence force personnel are living in remote areas, or might not have the opportunity to attend a branch," Linehan told reporters. "The video banking allows them to conduct business face to face." To use the video banking system, customers book a session online, and then point their browser to a specific address at the booked time. A video-equipped customer service representative then takes the video call at the bank's Melbourne contact centre.

Insurance company Suncorp and its subsidiary AAMI has taken to the road to streamline customer service to victims of last week's Tasmanian bushfires.

Suncorp has set up mobile claims units and sent in teams of assessors and customer service staff to speed through the claims relating to the fires after more than 100 properties were destroyed. The Tasmanian bushfires had already led to insurance claims worth more than $42 million in the first few days, but this is expected to grow as homeowners are increasingly allowed back to the fire-ravaged areas.

It is estimated that AAMI and the Royal Automobile Club of Tasmania command about 80% of the Tasmanian insurance market between them. "It's a watching brief at the moment. Each day the claims are going up a little bit but it's not huge from an overall financial perspective," a Suncorp spokesman said.

Lindeman Island's owner will set up a dedicated contact centre and a new website as part of a marketing blitz designed to raise awareness of the Queensland resort.

Chinese-born Australian citizen William Han plans to spend $200 million overhauling Lindeman Island in the Whitsundays from a cheap and cheerful partiers' paradise to a high-end luxury destination targeting locals and the rapidly expanding Asian market.

Han reportedly plans to redevelop and upgrade the existing 228-room resort and build a new six-star facility on another part of the island. China is Australia's fastest-growing, highest-value international visitor market, with more than 600,000 Chinese tourists arriving this year to spend more than $4 billion.

The New Zealand Ministry of Justice has been forced to backtrack after a glitch in its text message customer service.

Almost 30,000 New Zealanders reportedly got a surprise text message from the Ministry of Justice on Monday telling them to urgently get in contact. The ministry says it sent out messages to 29,600 people with outstanding fines, asking them to call an 0800 number to pay them.

However, through human error, some people who had already paid their fines were also texted. A spokesperson said they have sent out a second text, telling those people who have no outstanding fine to disregard the message. The Ministry's contact centre was jammed with extra calls Monday and staff said there were delays of about 20 minutes a call.

Customers have taken to the phones and social media to voice their concerns after Virgin Australia's migration to a new ticketing and check-in system encountered some glitches.

Users reported error messages when attempting to search for and book flights on the Virgin Australia website over the weekend, as well as problems logging into Virgin's Velocity Rewards website. Virgin's contact centre was flooded with complaints and customers reported wait times in excess of two hours to change booking details over the phone.

While the airline repeatedly posted on its social media pages that its staff were "aware of the problems and working hard to resolve the issues as soon as possible," customers posted their frustration. "On hold for 40 mins now, after being abandoned by my first operator. Terrible, terrible service," wrote one frustrated customer on Facebook, while another sent evidence of his wait: a screenshot from his mobile revealing the two hours he had been waiting on hold.

Cloud-based CRM company Zendesk says it signed its 1,500th Australian customer since opening its Melbourne office in September 2011.

Retailer Cotton On became Zendesk's 1,500th customer as the company announced its 25,000th customer globally. "Australia is an important market for us and we are committed to helping our customers improve the service they provide," said Zendesk's Michael Hansen. 2012 was an exciting year for us, we opened our new development centre in Melbourne, expanded our team and launched the new, improved Zendesk."

With almost 90 percent of Zendesk's Australian customers falling into the small to medium-sized business category, Hansen said he expects the company's focus on SMBs to be a continued in the next 12 months. "What Zendesk provides is an easy to use customer service solution that is quick to set up, requires little training, scales up with your business and offers incredibly good value for money," he said.

More than half of Australians prefer to use a smartphone app for routine customer service inquiries, according to new research.

The Nuance Communications study found customer increasingly expect to be able to use their phones as an "always-on" customer-service channel for services such as checking an account balance from their bank or confirming a flight schedule. Convenience and round-the-clock availability were the two biggest drawcards for using an app for customer service, Nuance Asia Pacific's Jason Stirling said.

"Australians are no longer asking for innovation in customer care, they expect it," Stirling said. "The face of customer care has changed and the companies that keep pace will not only improve customer loyalty, but they will also gain a clear competitive advantage over their industry peers." Almost 60% of respondents admitted they have positive perceptions of a company that offers a customer service app, while 69% would tell a friend about their positive app experience.

The contact centre company that operates Australia's Do Not Call Register has been fined $110,000 by the Australian Communications and Media Authority after making telemarketing calls to numbers listed on the register.

Outsourcer Service Stream Solutions provides contact centre services to several organisations and government agencies, including the operation of the Do Not Call Register on behalf of the ACMA. An ACMA investigation found the numbers were incorrectly included on a Service Stream Solutions calling list used during a 10-week campaign arranging installations for energy-saving products.

Service Stream Solutions made over 7,000 calls in the period and the problem was not identified because the list wasn't re-checked against the register. ACMA requires calling lists to be checked against the register every 30 days. Service Stream Solutions has undertaken to engage an independent consultant to review its calling list processes and train its telemarketing staff about their Do Not Call obligations, as well as auditing and reporting on the compliance of its future telemarketing campaigns.

The Mitre 10 and Mitre 10 MEGA hardware stores in New Zealand are offering customers a unique customer feedback solution.

Customers are now able to provide specific feedback on their experience in store, the service and the range of products following every purchase. Checkout operators, docket messaging and in-store signage direct customers to a specific webpage where customers can rate their experience, while a unique transaction code found on the docket opens the survey to individual customers.

The 'My 10 cents worth' program launched in late September and customers have responded at an average rate of around 1,000 per week. "It's a unique tool and is providing us with invaluable feedback at individual store level as well as nationally," Mitre 10's Dave Elliott said.

The NSW government will overhaul its customer service in the wake of a report that found the state's public is Australia's most dissatisfied with its government.

Details obtained under freedom-of-information laws by Fairfax Media, the report found fewer than one in five people were "very satisfied" with the quality of service in NSW. The survey of 1000 citizens and 208 businesses found the 69% satisfaction rate lags behind the 90% -plus ratings in Tasmania and South Australia.

To fulfill its election promise to improve service, the NSW government will push ahead with an overhaul of its offering. The first contact centre, at The Rocks, will start hiring staff by March and will be operational shortly after with a single telephone number. Eighteen Service NSW centres will open from mid-next year.

US crane manufacturer Manitowoc has improved its customer support in Australasia with the opening of a new contact centre in Sydney.

The centre is staffed by Manitowoc engineers and technicians and contact centre will provide 24 hour, seven days a week customer support for Manitowoc dealers and customers in the region. It is able to organise on-site support, training and technical assistance as well as dispatch spare parts.

"As we expand our operations in Australia and New Zealand, we remain committed to helping our dealers and customers get the most from their cranes," Manitowoc country manager Brad Cooper said. "This new channel of communication will improve our services and meet the specific needs of customers and dealers across the region."

New Zealand resort chain Waiaua Bay Farm has implemented Yellowfin's Business Intelligence solution to improve customer service and enhance operational efficiencies.

Yellowfin's BI solution has been introduced across the chain comprising three separate retreats - The Lodge at Kauri Cliffs, The Farm at Cape Kidnappers and Matakauri Lodge. The solution's self-service technologies have allowed the group's operational and financial managers to more efficiently and independently monitor business performance.

"Ensuring exceptional customer service standards, while safeguarding financial viability, is paramount to our success," said senior finance officer for Cape Kidnappers, Paul Sanders. "Yellowfin is helping us better achieve those goals."

ACE Insurance will open a major training facility in Brisbane early next year as it sharpens its focus on customer service.

The CBD facility will serve as a development academy for ACE division Combined Insurance. The focus of training will include customer service, personal development, business leadership and compliance. Combined specialises in accident and health insurance sold directly to customers through a network of authorised representatives.

"Training and development has always been the cornerstone of success at Combined Insurance," said ACE Insurance executive VP Des Bosnic. "Our investment in this brand new facility is testament to our strong performance and development culture. It demonstrates our commitment to improving the customer experience and the job satisfaction of our team."

The Bank of Queensland (BOQ) is the latest financial services company to pursue social media and other forms of online engagement to serve customers across more channels.

BOQ CEO Stuart Grimshaw told the bank's annual genera; meeting the top item in the bank's strategy is "multi-channel optimisation." That means "serving our customers in the way they wish to do business with us--be it face-to-face in-branch or through a broker, over the phone, online or via social media," he said.

"As customers' preferences change, we need to make sure we keep up with them, otherwise we won't attract any new customers and we risk losing our existing ones," Grimshaw said. "Choice is the key." He said online channels could even gain the bank customers in areas without Bank of Queensland branches. "That may be in Queensland or it may be interstate where millions of potential new customers live."

Product Review website users have rated ISP Dodo as the worst brand of the year after anger at its slow speeds and service delays.

Nestle was voted second worst, with whitegoods company Simpson coming in third. Product Review marketing manager Samuel Williamson said bad customer service and poor quality products were the most common complaints.

"With Dodo it was things like waiting weeks for internet set-up, slow internet once it finally was set up," Williamson said. Dodo CEO Larry Kestelman told reporters he was "absolutely gutted" by the rating but the feedback from Dodo's overall client base was mostly positive. "All I can say is Dodo attracts a lot of first-time users of the internet and we do our best to get customers up and running in a timely matter."

Industrial relations agency Fair Work Australia (FWA) has been forced to stop using a centralised contact centre as part of measures to cut spending by $7 million.

Documents obtained by News Limited under Freedom of Information laws show the Department of Finance rejected a bid by the tribunal to run a second successive multi-million-dollar deficit this financial year. It recorded a $3.9 million deficit last financial year. An FWA spokeswoman confirmed the tribunal's telephone service was also "being decentralised with calls now taken in all states, rather than a central call centre".

FWA general manager Bernadette O'Neill, in a letter to Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten in May, said the budget pressures were the result of a number of factors, including "a significant increase in legal costs to support investigation and litigation".

Sydney-based online fashion retailer The Iconic says it is experiencing a bumper Christmas thanks largely to its commitment to service.

The Iconic says its sales have quadrupled in recent weeks to nearly 5000 orders a day. At the heart of its business model is the high standard of service, with three-hour delivery in Sydney, overnight shipping for the other capital cities and up to 100 days to exchange a purchase.

Next year, the company plans to introduce a system where orders could be tracked and delivered to a customer's location by mobile phone. "We have a lot of items at the same price as our competitors, but that's not our main difference, it's the service," co-owner Finn Haensel told reporters. The Iconic also features free overnight shipping for products over $20, an active contact centre, a live chat option, and an advisory blog.

Accounting software provider Xero has opened a new Australian headquarters in Melbourne to support its growing local customer base.

The new Xero headquarters in the suburb of Hawthorn is set to create more than 25 ICT jobs for Victoria to accommodate the company's expansion in Victoria and around Australia. "Xero has tripled its revenue and customer numbers in Australia in the past 12 months, with more than 32,500 paying customers," said Victorian Technology Minister, Gordon Rich-Phillips.

Founded in Wellington, New Zealand, Xero provides a platform for online accounting and business services for small and medium-sized businesses. Xero's Managing Director in Australia, Chris Ridd said the new office would allow the company to help partners and independent software vendors with desk space, providing support for cloud start-ups and fostering growth in the industry.

Customer service and trusted brands are motivating the majority of online shoppers to spend their money with Australian retailers this Christmas.

New research from Mastercard shows that 98% of Australians prefer to buy from local retailers, as long as the price is comparable with those overseas. MasterCard Australia country manager Andrew Cartwright said 59% said faster delivery was a key driver to 'Buy Australian', while 46% said it was important to deal with retailers they know and trust.

"So local retailers have the advantage over overseas competition in delivery and after-sales service but international online retailers are overwhelmingly favoured when it comes to price," Cartwright said. The study found that some two out of every three Australians shop online at least once a month, with 89% of adult Australians (12.6 million) having shopped online in the last twelve months.

Timeshare company Classic Holidays says it has seen a direct correlation between its expanded customer service program and its improved customer retention and acquisition.

Classic Holidays says it is now the largest privately owned timeshare company in Australia with a membership of more than 45,000 families. It says its recent move to a new 100 seat contact centre has allowed it to bolster its customer service outreach and expand upon its service levels.

"We have devoted an enormous amount of time and resources to our customer service outreach, which is the backbone of our success," said Classic Group Ramy Filo. Classic Holidays won the 2012 Australian Timeshare and Holiday Ownership Council's Excellence in Service award. "The fact that we are winning national and international awards at the same time that we're servicing more members than ever before shows that consumers appreciate our efforts and keep coming back to our resorts."

The federal government has revamped its customer interactions with the introduction of a smartphone app connecting to the National Health Services Directory (NHSD).

The free app, which functions on both Android and Apple devices, enables users to locate emergency health services, pharmacies, doctors and hospitals all across Australia. The app can also provide directions via Google Maps.

Developed by the Council of Australian Governments, the NHSD contains approximately 14,000 service records. The directory will be "expanded over the next 12 months to include more detailed information and cover more types of health services, such as allied health providers," federal health minister Tanya Plibersek said in a media statement.

Kennards Hire has introduced a new customer service module to showcase service history and safety records of hire equipment online.

Described as a first for the hire industry in Australia, Kennards says its customer service has been taken to a new level by allowing customers to inspect records online. The initiative enhances safety, speeds up the job and cuts the amount of paperwork.

The online portal is accessible by customers through the use of a smart phone, tablet, laptop or PC. Customers will be able to see a full service history, Certificate of Test and Examination, operator's manual, risk assessment, pre-delivery checklist and online operator safety checks of the equipment for hire. Customers can also access user guides, equipment videos, maintenance schedules and insurance details.

National Australia Bank has dramatically ramped up its online customer service with the opening of a "social media command centre".

The command centre will be open seven days a week in the lead up to Christmas and consist of seven staff from the bank's digital, marketing and corporate affairs team. The agents will monitor and respond to the 5000-some comments the bank's social media channels currently receive in an average month.

NAB's Sam Plowman told reporters the investment, in which the bank has partnered with Salesforce Marketing Cloud, has been made to improve the customer service experience no matter the channel. "This state-of-the-art centre will complement our award-winning customer contact centres to make banking with NAB easier and more accessible for our customers. Our customers don't switch off on weekends, and now neither do we," Plowman said.

Customer service IT company StayinFront will provide Melbourne-based pharmaceuticals and complementary medicines manufacturer Probiotec with a CRM and Analytics solution.

Probiotec GM Dusty Stringer said the company's expansion strategies for its Australia-wide distribution network and retail customer base required the support of a sophisticated, but easy to use, automated CRM and sales order functionality. The solution is integrated with 4Solutions' B2B e-commerce solution HSN (Health Supply Network) for streamlined order processing.

Stringer said his company's national sales team would leverage the StayinFront EdgeCG SaaS solution on iPad touch devices. StayinFront's Australian MD Kerrie-Anne Turner said the company will provide training specifically tailored to the Probiotec team's requirements. She said the scalability of the StayinFront solution would enable Probiotec to easily roll out the same system for additional divisions such as its Sports Nutrition team.

New Zealand Telecom customer bombarded social media with complaints this week after being unable to reach the telco's contact centre during a broadband outage.

The outage, which began at about 1am Thursday, could have affected up to two-thirds of Telecom's broadband customers, or about 300,000 households. Full services were not restored until about 8am. Customers took to Twitter to voice their frustration, with tweets like "Argh, internet down. Telecom recorded message gives no indication of when it will be back up," and "Get on it, Telecom_nz. Bc nobody is answering the phone customer service!"

Telecom said the fault was caused by systems maintenance. About half of Telecom's broadband customers previously lost service for about two hours on November 30 because of another early-morning fault that the company said occurred during scheduled maintenance on a computer server.

New Zealand telco TelstraClear has won the contract to standardise Auckland Council's contact centre operations.

The contract is intended to bring together the customer service operations from the eight councils that were amalgamated to form the Auckland Council two years ago. Auckland Council manager of customer services Nigel King said the systems that were inherited at the time of amalgamation no longer serve an organisation of the council's size. He said they will be replaced with a single cost-effective model that will serve its need for the foreseeable future.

The council estimates that its investment in the contact centre solution will have an overall benefit of $7.3 million in savings, as well as making its customer contact systems more efficient. TelstraClear was last month bought by Vodafone, which has been delivering mobile voice and data services to the council for two years.

The New Zealand arm of ANZ bank will relocate much of its customer service functions as part of a major upgrade and centralisation of its Wellington operations.

The moves, which comes after ANZ announced plans to discontinue its National Bank brand, will see Wellington staff shift from nine separate buildings to one. About 1200 support service staff, including contact centre, collections, recoveries, banking operations and Eftpos New Zealand teams, will move to the new ANZ Centre Wellington.

Chief operating officer Craig Sims said ANZ would also be upgrading its properties in other centres over the next four years and 15 new branches would be opened in the next two years. "As the new ANZ our goal is to have the largest and most convenient branch network in New Zealand."

Government aid agency AusAID has helped the Zimbabwe city of Bulawayo improve its customer service with a new contact centre.

The Mayor of Bulawayo, Thaba Patrick Moyo, said the centre, the first such facility in the country, would improve communication with residents and stakeholders. The opening of the centre was also an indication of the city's commitment to improve service delivery.

"The Australian Government has been pleased to support BCC (Bulawayo City Council) work to improve services to residents," said AusAID representative Claire Chivell. The contact centre initiative also assisted Bulawayo city to win the national public sector award as the most customer focused local authority because of its excellent customer service initiatives.

More and more Australians expect to be able to use mobile phone applications for routine customer service functions, according to a new study.

The Nuance Mobile Attitudes report, indicates that mobile apps are the "next formidable force in customer care", with more than half of Australians surveyed admitting they preferred to use a company's app for routine enquiries. Nuance's General Manager Asia Pacific Jason Stirling said the study showed that Australians are no longer asking for innovation in customer care - "they expect it."

Stirling says Australia's increasingly mobile lifestyle and always-on expectation for customer care has been attributed to the shift by consumers to using company-provided mobile apps, with the survey revealing that the convenience and 24/7 availability are the two biggest advantages of a mobile application for customer service. "The face of customer care has changed and the companies that keep pace will not only improve customer loyalty, but they will also gain a clear competitive advantage over their industry peers," Stirling said. The survey showed that almost 60% of respondents admitted they have a positive perception of a company that offers a customer service app, and 69% said they would tell a friend about their positive app experience, with ease-of-use the number one reason why a company is deemed to have the best customer service app.

Customer service departments that cannot remember the past are doomed to losing customers for their employers, a new survey shows.

As reported by Business News Daily, the survey of more than 2,200 U.S. customers ages 18 years and older, tired of being treated like strangers when they deal with customer service representatives, say their biggest gripe is clueless customer service reps. Three-quarters of those who have ever called customer support reported frustration because the representative didn't know the customer's history with the company or organisation, according to an online survey sponsored by Sugar CRM.

For many customers, poor customer service causes more than just complaints. It can lead customers to take their business elsewhere, the survey found. More than half (52 percent) of respondents said they ultimately decided not to buy a product or service from a company due to a negative experience with a sales representative.

Datacom has won the contract to manage the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's (ACCC) SCAMwatch contact centre.

Under the two-year contract starting December, Datacom will offer personalised assistance by phone to individuals who wish to discuss and report an issue or concern in relation to any scam or potential scam. SCAMwatch provides information to consumers and small businesses about how to recognise, avoid and report scams. The ACCC publishes this website to help consumers recognise and prevent scams.

"We are thrilled to be working with the ACCC who play an integral role in the regulation of fair market trade," said Datacom MD Kirsty Hunter. "We are focused on putting in place services that deliver tangible policy outcomes for the ACCC that assist them in their plight to reduce the impact of scammers on the community."

Online travel booking site Expedia will reportedly offshore its Australian customer service to India.

Expedia has terminated its seven-year support contract with outsourcer Salmat, ending its relationship with contact centres in Sydney and Melbourne from April, according to the Australian Financial Review. The company will move the majority of Australian contact centre operations to India under a contract with Interglobal Technologies.

The Sydney and Melbourne centres were used to conduct support for the travel booker's operations in Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, South Korea and Malaysia. Expedia already outsources much of its contact centre work to Egypt, Philippines and El Salvador.

Toyota and Honda have overtaken Subaru as Australia's car makers with the most satisfied customers.

The third annual JD Power Asia Pacific Australia Customer Service Index Study measures overall satisfaction with the vehicle service experience at authorised service centres based service quality, vehicle pick-up, service advisor, service initiation and service facility. The study found that a positive pre-service communication experience assisted in creating a highly satisfying overall service experience.

Customer satisfaction improved when people were given an estimate of how long a service will take, as well as when they were notified by the dealership of when their vehicle needed servicing. "Owners prefer to be updated by the network on their service due dates, as well advised during vehicle drop-off of the time to pick up the vehicle. These simple steps help to create a positive first impression about the network's ability to deliver a quality after-sales experience," JD Power Asia Pacific's Mohit Arora said. Brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Lexus, BMW, Peugeot and Volvo were not included due to an insufficient sample size.

Jabra latest release SPEAK™ 510 speakerphone with Bluetooth allows users to be seconds away from virtual meetings and hands free conversations on the go giving flexibility for mobile workers.

In the workplace mobility is becoming more important in order to attract and offer employees the possibility of working from anywhere to enable a better work/life balance. This generation of employees defined as Generation Mobile has grown up with Internet access, social networks, mobile phones and the "always on" lifestyle. Generation Mobile is profoundly changing the way the world communicates and interacts at work and the devices that support the increased request for more mobility are in high demand. In Frost & Sullivan's recently published 2012 Enterprise Mobility Report, more than 25% of businesses rate mobility to be either their top priority or a very important priority in 2012.

Jabra ANZ Managing Director, Fulvio Toniotti explains, "Mobility and connectivity between people on the move is the key to a successful business in today's global world. The Jabra SPEAK™ 510 helps to optimise productivity by intuitively enabling one-to-one and smaller group conference calls at any time and in any place."

Internet forums are advising Apple users to shout and swear if they want their calls to the company's helpline to be escalated from an automated response to a human agent.

The Reddit forum is advising Apple customers that contact centre program is able to recognise swear words, and interprets this as a warning sign that a customer is unhappy. It then transfers that customer to a human operator who apologises and attempts to ease any anger.

However, one Reddit user, a former Apple employee, warns that such actions, while initially satisfying, may ultimately cause more delays. "Doing this will get a human on the line, so will hitting zero, but it doesn't get you to a person that can help you any faster. In fact, it will actually take longer to get to someone who can help you if you do this, he warned. "In the end all swearing/mashing the keys/hitting zero does is get you to a "call director", which is a person who will apologise to you and then transfers you to the right queue (ie put you on hold again in the same queue that the automated system would have if you had just cooperated with the automated system).

A prominent Queensland economist says contact centre queues and lengthy hold times are costing the state $700 million a year in lost productivity.

University of Queensland economist Professor John Quiggin said waiting time was robbing the state's economy of hundreds of millions of dollars each year through lost productivity and "valued time", based on the number of employed Queenslanders, an average "time cost" of $35 an hour and an estimated 10 minutes a week on hold. "Forcing people to spend long periods waiting on hold is a way of transferring costs from companies to customers and the general public," he said.

Quiggin also called for a new requirement for regulated monopolies to report average waiting times, saying "it would be helpful". However, Queensland University of Technology economics expert Dr Boon Lee said he believed there wasn't a loss in productivity due to workers being kept on hold and pointed to observations that most people tended to work in spurts.

The event that was supposed to save retailers' sales figures and introduce thousands of people to a new , online channel, buckled under the pressure of demand leaving only frustrated customers.

The Click Frenzy website crashed as soon as the 7pm sale began last Tuesday, and within minutes the websites of Myer, Dick Smith, Harvey Norman and many others had also been knocked offline or slowed to a crawl. Between 6pm and midnight that night about two thirds of the participating sites reportedly had issues. Some IT experts told Fairfax media the Click Frenzy organisers and some participating retailers used software and technology platforms that were widely known to be incapable of handling the demand.

They also said the when consumers were able to get on to the site and see the deals, many claimed that mostly they weren't bargains at all and they could find cheaper prices on international sites. Social media sites were also critical of the event as customers took to Twitter and a Facebook page "Click Frenzy Fail" quickly attracted more than 1900 'Likes' with its title "The fail that stops a nation".

"Contact centre rage" is on the increase in Australia and local businesses have been slow to address the issue, according to new research.

Professor Paul Patterson from the Australian School of Business is part of a research team which recently conducted a study of customer rage across Australia, the United States, Thailand and China. "You've only got to read comments in the media about why people are now shopping online," Patterson told reporters. "They're all saying the customer service levels in Australia are just so pathetic."

"Companies have not responded at all, certainly not in this country," he said, adding that almost all cases of customer rage stem from a sense of lack of fairness. "What happens to customers is some of their fundamental psychological needs get damaged, for example, our self-esteem, or threats to equity or fairness when you get cheated." Patterson said the worst offending businesses are the major retailers and telcos, where a focus on productivity increases is coming at the expense of customer satisfaction. He said that often means the person copping the rage of the customer is rarely responsible for aggravating them.

David Jones shareholders took the opportunity to complain about poor customer service at the retailers annual general meeting last week.

Some shareholders linked poor customer service with the drop in the company's profits. "I suggest your profitability is down due to a total and utter lack of customer service in your shops," shareholder Kevin Hughes told the meeting.

Chairman Bob Savage defended the retailer's customer service, saying the company had recently increased staff numbers after realising they had cut back too much, adding that staff numbers were based on customer traffic volumes. "We manage our customer service in relation to the volume of sales we expect at any one time," he said.

Auckland tertiary institute Unitec is partnering with IBM to build a service delivery centre at its Mt Albert Campus after the success of the IT company's collaboration in Ballarat, Australia.

The Unitec delivery centre, which is due to open in February, will support IBM deployments in Australia and New Zealand, creating around 400 jobs, 200 of which will be part-time roles for Unitec students. Students enrolled in Unitec IT courses will have access to paid career-related work experience, while earning credits toward their courses in an Earn As You Learn (EAYL) scheme.

The University of Ballarat Technology Park centre in regional Victoria was set up 18 years ago and is the model for the new centre at Unitec. Some 1500 IBM employees service accounts in Australia and New Zealand from Ballarat, with clients including the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Qantas, and Jetstar. Technology Park director Mal Vallance told reporters about 80% of the university's Bachelor of IT Professional Practice graduates who take part in the EAYL program go on to be employed by IBM once they graduate.

National Australia Bank expects to benefit from greater customer insights with the deployment of a new pay-as-you-go CRM system.

The system, hosted by Oracle in Sydney, will provide a single view of customers' business, personal and wealth management accounts. NAB's David Gall said the bank had done a lot of work to create a user-friendly interface that provided "actionable insights" to its staff.

"What it enables us to do for the first time is for all of our bankers to see the total relationship that NAB has with that customer," Gall said. "We're seeing (an opportunity) to do more with [business customers] on a personal level, around their wealth strategy and obviously the MLC suite of products, and also around their wholesale banking and markets activity - how they manage their foreign exchange and risk management products as well."

The chief executive of New Zealand telco CallPlus, Mark Callander, has hit back at a Kiwihost survey that slammed the customer service record of its Slingshot subsidiary.

Customer service training company Kiwihost released a survey earlier this month that accused the country's telcos of providing "shocking customer service", rating Slingshot lowest, with a "strongly negative rating" of -23. Callander said statements made by Kiwihost were very misleading and accusing it of "poor research standards".

Callander said Kiwihost's survey was only completed by 600 respondents and as Slingshot had about 10% of the broadband market, it was likely only about 60 of its customers were surveyed. He said Kiwihost's claims were dramatically different to CallPlus' own research - which involved randomly contacting 5000 of its customers each month - and showed Slingshot's customer satisfaction had been trending upward. "We have 150 proud contact centre staff based in New Zealand doing an amazing job and providing great service."

New research indicates many Australians are prone to disregard the advice of healthcare customer service agents not go to hospital and still attend hospital emergency departments.

According to a Becker's Hospital Review study published in the Medical Journal of Australia, about half of Australian patients who contacted a contact centre about medical conditions, still went to the emergency department. The study, which used data from national health contact centre Healthdirect Australia, looked at patterns among patients at Royal Perth Hospital in Western Australia from August 2008 to April 2009.

Appropriate referrals to the hospital by the contact centre's nurses required either that a patient was admitted to hospital, was transferred to another hospital, was seen by an inpatient health team for an assessment, was referred to an outpatient clinic or needed radiological or lab investigations. Some 72.9% of healthdirect-referred patients had "appropriate" referrals, compared with 73.8% of self-referred patients and 89.7% of GP referred patients, the study said.

Car hire company Hertz has launched the car sharing club Hertz On Demand in Sydney in a bid offer a more flexible customer service option.

Members of the car sharing club have 24/7 access to a fleet of self-service vehicles placed throughout Sydney, which are bookable online. There is no annual membership fee, and customers can hire a car for as little as $6.00 per hour, including insurance, fuel, maintenance and cleaning.

Currently Hertz On Demand has 30 spaces in locations around Sydney, which will increase to 100 by 2013. Vehicles are installed with an RFID reader for SmartCard identification, giving each member keyless-entry to the cars. If during their trip members need help, have questions, or would like to extend the length of their rental, they can contact the Hertz in-house Member Care Centre based in Australia via the hands free in-car communication technology.

Super fund-owned ME Bank has selected a Cisco and NetApp FlexPod for VMware solution to help transform its customer service IT.

ME Bank a private cloud built on the FlexPod for VMware and Cisco Unified Computing System, Cisco Nexus switches, NetApp MetroCluster Solution and VMware vSphere 5 Solutions to help the company better serve its customers. ME Bank said the new IT will help to hasten delivery of new services to customers, while having the flexibility to respond to changing market demands.

"ME Bank plans to grow its business by continuing to provide customers with innovative products and an unrivalled service experience," Cisco Australia and New Zealand's Courtney Dodds said. "By selecting Cisco and NetApp FlexPod for VMware for its private cloud computing platform, ME Bank will gain new levels of business agility that will make it easier to support this growth and speed delivery of innovative new services to customers."

New Zealand-based online accounting firm Xero is reportedly considering a capital raising from investors to fund a new customer service centre in the United States' mid-west.

Xero CEO Rod Drury said the Wellington firm would further step up its investment drive to become the leading global provider of cloud-based accounting software, while revealing a near doubling of its interim net loss to $7 million and forecasting a bigger second-half loss to come. "If we suddenly found the US started to take off, then we might want to put a call centre in the mid-west that just dialled for dollars'," Drury said.

Drury said interest in cloud-computing from would-be investors overseas would make it easy for the firm to raise more capital at "a pretty good valuation" if required. Even without the contact centre, Xero plans to take on about another 100 staff. We haven't completely put our foot on the throttle in the US yet. But the buzz about Xero feels quite good," he told reporters. "We are now being presented as the real challenger to (online accounting market leader) Intuit in the US."

Online payment company PayPal is taking entering Australia's offline customer service market, offering customers at several merchants the ability to pay for purchases using their PayPal accounts and their faces.

The solution allows customers to check into a merchant's location so the counter employee can see their picture on the screen of a point-of-sale terminal. The customer service agent then selects the customer's picture and the charge is placed on the customer's linked PayPal account. PayPal Australia and New Zealand MD Jeff Clementz said that by using the app, merchants can provide personalised service to regular customers and also reward them with loyalty programs. Additionally, retailers can connect with individual customers and recognise repeat visits and loyalty.

Upon integrating the solution, PayPal's millions of account holders in Australia are immediately enrolled and can pay at participating retailers using PayPal. PayPal said four small retailers in Australia will pilot the solution with more partners coming on board in the next few weeks and months.

SingTel will extend its own proprietary Optus customer service retail outlets as it looks to better compete with Telstra.

Singtel CEO Chua Sock Koong said Optus is changing how it sells to consumers, adding customers will see more Optus-branded distribution channels. "Over the years, we've probably taken the workforce down about 10%, but we've continued investment in customer-fronting staff."

SingTel's Australian unit wants to consolidate more retail sales under its own brand. Optus will end the license of partner Boost Tel from January, according to a statement. A distribution agreement with TeleChoice, SingTel's biggest third-party retailer in Australia with more than 150 outlets, will end in March so the company can focus on its own network by adding 33 stores, it said.

The growth of social media and mobile customer service will offer new challenges of implementation and integration, according to new Fifth Quadrant research.

The Fifth Quadrant 2012 Customer Service Industry Market Report found that 69% of Australian based organisations have already implemented social media as a channel for customer service, while 23% have implemented smartphone apps. The challenge now is how effectively organisations address the supporting business processes and skill levels of social media customer service representatives.

"The challenge for Australian business is that they typically do not consider multichannel customer experience as a strategy, hence these new channels lack integration, they do not have accurate revenue and cost models and there is poor data analytics. This has resulted in a sub-optimal channel deployment and as the research shows, ultimately, a sub-optimal customer experience." Fifth Quadrant MD Dr Catriona Wallace said. But while social media and smartphones were fast growing service channels, the Fifth Quadrant report found that the predominant share of the 22 million daily customer interactions handled by contact centres is still handled by live agents (52%), while social media's share of contact handling is 0.2%.

Cloud-based customer service software provider Zendesk, has announced a new partnership with eBay company Magento to deliver a fully-integrated and comprehensive customer service solution for eCommerce.

A simple configurator enables eCommerce sites to be up and running with customer service capabilities in a matter of seconds. This two-way integration allows Zendesk customer service agents to access consumer data from the Magento eCommerce platform seamlessly, and vice versa. Because customer views are available in both platforms, sales and customer service agents can choose their preferred platform while staying up to date with all customer interactions.

"Our new integration with Magento helps online retailers bring their sales and customer service teams together to deliver the type of customer experience that exceeds expectations and drives new business," said Zendesk's Michael Hansen. Magento's Jeff King said Zendesk provides an easy way for his company's retailers to access customer service capabilities that can help enhance their shoppers' experience, "which therefore lead to a stronger brand and bottom line for our customers".

The shift by Australian contact centres toward cloud-based solutions will gather pace from 2015, according to a new report.

The Frost & Sullivan report found the contact centre market in Australia is expected to experience a major transformation as cloud-based solutions and mobile devices change the way organisations provide customer service. Cloud-based contact centre solutions are expected to gain momentum in the next three to five years while traditional on-premises models will decline as most organisations baulk at committing to long contract terms in a rapidly changing technology landscape.

"While organisations value the level of control offered by on-premises models, cost constraints and flexibility (in terms of scalability and pricing) requirements are causing organisations to evaluate alternative options at the time of a new deployment or upgrade," Frost & Sullivan's Anand Balasubramanian said. "Organisations are becoming increasingly inclined towards deploying hosted and cloud based solutions."

US customer service IT company LivePerson has agreed to acquire Australian cloud-based customer contact company ENGAGE.

"Our acquisition of ENGAGE will enhance our ability to offer intelligent engagement solutions to businesses in the Asia Pacific region," said LivePerson CEO Robert LoCascio. "ENGAGE has been a reseller and champion of LivePerson solutions for several years, in addition to having its own successful hosted contact centre solutions, which complement LivePerson's offerings. Our common mission to help businesses connect meaningfully with consumers makes the ENGAGE team a natural addition to the LivePerson family, and a valuable asset as we seek to drive growth in the region."

ENGAGE supports the sales and service strategy of enterprise level companies to meet changing consumer needs and expectations. ENGAGE provides sophisticated cloud-based services that uniquely support several customer contact solutions including voice, live chat, SMS and social media, allowing businesses to connect with consumers in multiple channels. The acquisition is expected to close during the fourth quarter of 2012.

New Zealand's Key Research will create fifty new roles with the opening of a new contact centre in its home city of Tauranga.

Initially operating with 20 seats, the centre is expected to expand to 50 within the next year, Group chairman Michael Hooker told reporters. Key bought outsourcer Pulse Business Solutions in 2008, and the expanding Pulse serves a number of Australian market research agencies as well as end clients.

Founded in 1993, Key Research also bought Perth based market research firm West Coast Field Services earlier this year, and Hooker said he aims to buy two more Australian research firms on east and west coasts before turning his attention to the broader Asia Pacific region. Key Research now boasts around 100 staff in Tauranga, 80 in Pulse's base in Oamaru and 110 in Perth.

Retail customer service is suffering as a result of the rising cost of penalty rates for Sunday staff, according to a new study.

Monash University's Sunday Trading in Australia report found the high cost of double-time Sunday wages means retailers are often reducing the number of Sunday staff or rostering on cheaper, less-qualified workers. The study also found that highly paid Sunday employees were often left worse off overall, as retailers paid more per hour but cut shift lengths to compensate.

The research follows months of intense pressure on the Government from retailers to abolish the higher Sunday rate. Businesses say they are being "pushed to the wall" by penalty rates, which can add up to an extra $100 in the pay packet of the typical Sunday worker and can see some casual waiters paid up to $40 an hour.

The lobby group representing Australian telecommunication companies has warned that SMS technology should not be considered a safe means of verifying the identity of customers during a banking transaction.

Communications Alliance chief executive John Stanton, representing Telstra, Optus and Vodafone, took the step of declaring the technology insecure in the wake of numerous reports of Australians being defrauded via a phone scam. "SMS is not designed to be a secure communications channel and should not be used by banks for electronic funds transfer authentication," Stanton told reporters.

SMS authentication is used by three of the four largest Australian retail banks as a preferred mode of second-factor authentication for transactions to unfamiliar accounts. Several banks have rolled out physical token authentication to business customers, but retail customers usually have to ask for such devices to get one for their accounts.

Customer service is not expected to suffer as a result of plans to encourage up to 12% of Australian public service (APS) employees to engage in teleworking.

"To inform delivery of this goal, a select number of APS departments and agencies will conduct a series of telework trials commencing in the first half of next year," Prime Minister Julia Gillard said Monday at the launch of National Telework Week. The national digital economy strategy white paper released last year said the government wanted Australia to "have at least doubled its level of teleworking so that at least 12% of Australian employees report having a teleworking arrangement with their employer".

The government's commitment was welcomed by technology industry players, with ISP iiNet noting its own teleworking program for contact centre workers already had participation in the region of 15% of staff. It said the 'Work from Home' program has demonstrated a very positive impact on customer service delivery and has also been a driver for increased staff satisfaction.

Toyota Financial Services New Zealand (TFS) has beefed up its customer service with the deployment of Interactive Intelligence's all-in-one IP business communications software suite.

Toyota is using Customer Interaction Center (CIC) to manage the telephony requirements of its national customer contact centre and Auckland-based main office, along with the co-located Auckland Sales Office of sister organisation, Toyota New Zealand. CIC went live in August and Toyota says it is already delivering an improved flow of calls and new self-help options resulting in "a better experience for customers and less double handling of calls by staff".

In addition, the ability to contact specific staff more directly is providing time-saving benefits to callers in regular contact with TFS. "We wanted the ability to add functionality for more complex call centre capabilities and to record calls or play disclosure statements as required for compliance reasons," TFS' Glenn Armishaw said. "We also sought integration with our CRM package and core receivables systems, plus looked for 'future proofing' as best possible."

The New Zealand chief executive for ANZ is confident his customers will remain loyal as the bank shuts down the National Bank brand.

Some National Bank customers are expected to be lured away by competing Australian-owned banks such as Westpac, BNZ or ASB, who are ramping up their marketing. David Hisco says customers will stay because the incorporation of National Bank creates a better proposition.

It's "the power of two", according to commercials by Patrick Jane (Simon Baker), the actor from US series The Mentalist, who is the face of the bank in Australia, New Zealand and 30 other markets.
ANZ has said it will phase out the National Bank brand over the next two years. Rather than the expected loss of frontline staff due to the closure of the National Bank, Hisco says the opposite will be the case. "With two different banks we reached 78%," he said. "With (the) merged banks allowing us to open new branches we'll reach 90% of New Zealand, spending $100 million along the way."

Australian non-profit organisations are increasingly turning to social media to boost fundraising and connect with potential donors.

With uncertainty still lingering around the world economy and a tightening local job market, Australian Non Profit Organisations are constantly evolving to find the best way to compete for the charitable dollar. Melbourne's Charity Nursery Incorporated (CNI), which provides free work space and fund raising services to other non-profits, has turned to social media to power its Chupa Chup Exchange initiative.

In a bid to raise funds, the CNI's Chupa Chup Exchange started with one lollipop, which was exchanged for a Nokia mobile phone. The phone was exchanged for a freshwater pearl and the trades continue to gather value. The campaign relies on the ingenuity and networking abilities of people on social media for publicity.

Commonwealth Bank has announced progress in a significant replacement and refresh program of its ATM network.

In an effort to upgrade its frontline customer service, the bank says it has so far refreshed over 1,260 ATMs across Australia, including 40 new deposit ATMs. The Commonwealth Bank ATM network handles up to $115 million withdrawals and one million customer transactions daily.

Commonwealth Bank's Michael Cant said the ATM network revamp is the latest way the Bank is making banking "easier, convenient and personalised for Australians." "Each Australian has different needs when it comes to banking," Cant said. "From mobile payments and online banking, to our ATM network revamp, Commonwealth Bank is committed to offering our customers a variety of ways to conveniently access and manage their money across different channels. We're also introducing a range of features, to ensure that our customers can have a more personalised ATM experience."

Hobsons Bay City Council says it has dramatically enhanced its ability to communicate with constituents after switching from analogue to IP telephony.

Hobsons Bay customer service manager Suzanne Paterson said since the success of the analogue to IP switch in mid-2011, the council now plans to add web chat to open a further channel for customer interaction. Before the transition, the west Melbourne council was using an outdated switch-based telecom system that required Hobsons Bay to request help from its telco whenever it needed to make any change.

"With the old technology came old [customer service] practices for using phone systems," Paterson said. "People were using their voicemail on their mobile phones" rather than the phone system and there were "old setups that didn't really facilitate much capacity for change," she said. Making matters worse were inconsistent practices across different departments. The council plans to add Web chat to its customer service channels later this year in response to an "increasing number of requests coming through our customer service inbox," Paterson said.

Computing company Hewlett-Packard has launched a hosted IT help desk offering called HP Service Anywhere.

HP says Service Anywhere provides a work area for help desk personnel to document and resolve IT problems within an enterprise. "We believe that SaaS as a delivery model and as a business model makes sense for many of our customers," HP's Lee Nackman said.

HP said that unlike on-premise IT service management (ITSM) software, Service Anywhere customers will not have to worry about upgrading the software, nor applying patches. Scaling the software to handle additional users should be eased through the cloud approach as well. The service also has a number of social media features, including Internet chat with multiple users and a directory listing of expertise.

Leading ISP iiNet says it will be able to improve its customer service after selecting BMC Software's Remedy IT Service Management 8 (ITSM8).

BMC's integrated Remedy ITSM8 platform provides significant out-of-the-box capability, requiring minimum customisation. This is expected to enable iiNet to enhance its customer service systems, as well as develop new offerings for initiatives such as the National Broadband Network.

"iiNet's strong focus on incident, problem and change management processes has led us to partner with BMC Software," said iiNet's Craig Nicol. "The new software will allow further operating efficiencies and help to make customer support, change management, asset management and request management even more integrated."

New Zealand telecommunications company Orcon expects to reduce staff as a result of its merger with Kordia Networks.

Some 50 jobs are expected to be cut at the Orcon contact centre, with roles outsourced to the Philippines. Kordia says it expects the former Orica staff will be quickly employed elsewhere.

Kordia CEO Geoff Hunt says Australian provider iiNet, which also has an Auckland contact centre, is keen to employ the Orcon workers. "Hate to make people redundant but in this case I think call centre people, most of them will find jobs readily in the Auckland area," Hunt said.

Federal Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Stephen Conroy has praised the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) for its role in a reduction in consumer complaints during the last financial year.

According to the TIO s 2012 Annual Report, the body received 193,702 new complaints in 2011-2012, a 2% reduction compared with the previous year. The TIO Complaints made against the three major telecommunications companies - Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone - declined in the last quarter of 2011-12, while consumer satisfaction with the TIO in hearing and resolving complaints is over 90%.

"The impressive decline in customer complaints reflects the importance of the TIO, as well as the industry s commitment to improving its customer service and complaints handling processes," Conroy said. "As an independent referee of telco complaints, the TIO not only ensures that complaints are heard and resolved, they are a permanent reminder to service providers of their obligations to their customers."

New Zealand insurance and financial services company Public Trust says its focus on customer service is to thank for its strong result in 2012.

Chairman Trevor Janes said Public Trust had been transforming its business to match its customers' needs and to be relevant to a wider range of New Zealanders. "Building blocks are being put in place to ensure Public Trust will help New Zealanders grow and protect their assets in ways that best suit their circumstances," he said.

Public Trust recorded a third successive net profit for the year ended 30 June 2012. "We have ongoing initiatives underway to continue to improve customer service and strengthen our position as we work towards our goal of being the leader in the New Zealand trustee services market," Janes said.

Cloud-based CRM company OneSaas has introduced a new customer-friendly website and partner program.

The changes are designed to make the integration, synchronisation and automation of product, sales and CRM data across more than 50 cloud-based and on-site software services both simple and end-user friendly. With 39% of SMEs expecting to be using one or more cloud services within three years, OneSaas said businesses are looking for ways to automate the data-driven workflow processes between accounting, billing and invoicing, email marketing, e-commerce, point-of-sale, event management, and CRM systems.

"By providing behind-the-scenes automation, OneSaas eliminates the need to manually duplicate data, saving time that translates directly to the bottom line, and ensuring that all systems have synchronised, up-to-date information," the company said. OneSaas has also introduced a global partner program, which lets professional services providers such as accountants, web developers and business and IT consultants add OneSaas connectivity to a suite of disparate services for bundled service offering.

Airlines Virgin Australia and Qantas have won major awards at the International Customer Service Month celebrations.

The awards, staged by the International Customer Service Professionals (ICSP) since 2003, are judged on a range of international customer service best practice measurements. Virgin Australia won the ICSP International Outstanding Business Award, while Qantas Inflight Customer Service Manager Elio Pilatti won the Outstanding Individual Award.

ICSP CEO Tricia Olsen said Virgin Australia's entry focused on the airline's training and development of its people, which was the forerunner to the airline's current branding campaign. She said Pilatti has been an outstanding inflight ambassador for Qantas for 17 years "consistently providing exceptional customer service."

Cloud-based customer service software provider Zendesk has announced the debut of Zendesk Voice in Australia.

Zendesk says the new offering allows customer service organisations to set up cloud-based contact centres in minutes, at a fraction of the cost of conventional voice systems. Zendesk is also offering Australian subscribers the ability to provide their customers with the option of calling a national telephone number.

"Zendesk Voice fully integrates phone conversations and messages in the world's leading customer service platform," Zendesk's Asia Pacific MD Michael Hansen. "Through Zendesk Voice, agents can resolve issues quickly and easily and companies can provide faster, more effective and cost-efficient customer care."

New Zealand foreign exchange broker ThinkForex has been awarded for Best Forex Customer Service at the prestigious UK Forex Broker Awards 2012.

The inaugural UK Forex Broker Awards present a clear representation of the best performing Forex brokers in the industry. "We are so delighted that we won the Best Forex Customer Service award," said ThinkForex MD Faizan Anees. "We are honored to be recognised for our strong customer service and we would like to thank everyone who voted for us."

Both foreign exchange traders and the private investment community were given the opportunity to cast their votes for Forex brokers they believe exhibit the highest level of performance. Auckland-based ThinkForex includes live chat, phone and email communications as part of its customer service platform.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority has highlighted the major shift toward better customer service in the telecommunications industry in newly-released annual report.

The ACMA says the centrepiece of the focus on consumers is the new Telecommunications Consumer Protections Code, a culmination of the Reconnecting the Customer public inquiry. "The new code is a world-class, consumer-driven blueprint that requires improved disclosure in advertising and point-of-sale," ACMA chairman Chris Chapman said. "It is supported by better complaints-handling processes, improved customer service and, importantly, the introduction of spend management tools."

The report also hailed the new Mobile Premium Services Industry Code, which came into effect on June 1 creating protections for people using premium SMS and MMS services. The ACMA said the number of complaints about mobile premium services recorded by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman fell by around 85% from their peak of almost 10,000 in the September 2008 quarter to just over 1,470 in the June 2012 quarter.

Many Australian retailers aren't yet at a place where they can compete with offshore online competitors, or even local businesses that only operate online and at lower costs, a new report has found.

The Experian Marketing Services report found that many retailers are still slow to adopt a multichannel model, with 53% saying they have no online sales channel and only 20% saying they have had online sales channels for more than two years. Just under three quarters of retailers get less than 25% of their sales from online - a finding the report says indicates retailers are yet to value online as a valuable sales channel of service point.

"Overall, the research points to reluctance among Australian retailers to invest in eCommerce," the report found. "Experian's experience indicates that, in general, there appears to be reluctance among retailers to divert attention (and budget) away from traditional sales channels that have always performed well."

Australian commuters are the most satisfied with customer service and products onboard Singapore Airlines, according to an Airline Satisfaction Report.

The study, conducted in August 2012 found up to 90.8 percent of Australians said they were satisfied with Singapore Airlines, followed closely by Air New Zealand with 89.6 percent. Qantas was in fifth place with 80.5% of Aussie travellers expressing satisfaction, while Thai Airways was sixth.

Despite the dip, Qantas remains ahead of the International Airlines satisfaction average, which remains at 77%. Researcher Jane Ianniello said Qantas recently announced alliance with Emirates Airlines will do much to build back customer relations. "The challenge for Qantas is to discover the factors that impact on their customers' satisfaction," Ianniello said.

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank CEO Mike Hirst says some of the public anger directed at Australian banks is justified and the only way to counter it is to treat customers well.

Hirst told a financial services conference in Sydney the hostility came from the way banks had treated their customers, especially in the 1990s and early 2000s when they closed branches and raised fees. "I think you combat it by doing the right thing as a bank," he said.

Hirst said the banks needed to better educate the public on how they were funded and clearly explain why they did not always pass on the Reserve Bank's rate cuts in full. "The industry hasn't done a very good job at explaining to the public how it works," he said.

Australian agribusiness company Elders has launched a new service, Agsure, powered by NetSuite providing the first nationwide eCommerce store selling farm supplies.

Agsure uses NetSuite's SuiteCommerce for managing its entire business cycle, including CRM, eCommerce, financials, supply chain, inventory, distribution, order management and marketing. Agsure now has real-time visibility of its entire business to support timely inventory refreshes and seamless interactions with customers using contact centre, Internet and smartphone.

"Farmer buyer behaviour is changing; they're shopping around, researching online and are looking to buy at a time, and price, that suits them," said Elders' Mark Geraghty. "Elders has always been in the business of offering solutions to help farmers get the most out of their operations and Agsure offers an alternative that hasn't existed in the Australian market until now."

The New South Wales government is looking to improve its customer communication through a consolidation strategy and new technologies, says NSW Customer Service Commissioner Michael Pratt.

Pratt, who has a banking background, became NSW's first customer service commissioner in July was charged with creating an entity called Service NSW to improve interactions between people and their government. Pratt said the banking industry is ahead of government by a "decade" on service delivery.

Recent data shows that only 69% of people in NSW are satisfied with the government's service delivery, Pratt said, the lowest rate among all Australian states and well below 93% in Tasmania. Pratt said consolidation is a key element of his strategy, adding NSW government currently has 380 shop fronts, 30 contact centres, and more than 900 websites and 8000 phone numbers. "From a consumer point of view, contacting government is a nightmare," he said. "From a government point of view ... I see cost opportunity."

The New South Wales Police Force has signed NEC Australia to a multi-million dollar support and maintenance contract.

Under the terms of the deal, NEC Australia will maintain and support the multi-vendor voice and data systems for Australia's largest police force, across more than 500 urban and regional stations in NSW, including its corporate offices in Sydney and Parramatta. The contract is designed to improve the reliability of customer services for NSW Police's core communications functionality, including its 000 Support Centre and the Police Assistance Line, managing incoming emergency calls from the public.

The arrangement builds on NEC Australia's eight year tenure, delivering voice platform and services to NSW Police Force and helping the organisation manage technological and operational change. The three-year contract with NSW Police contains two one-year extension options and covers all the organisation's telephones, PABX units, the Genesys call centre system, Cisco Call Managers, Cisco switches, routers, firewalls, wireless LAN, and IP networks.

Australian customer service specialist Salmat has launched a cloud-based solution that enables contact centre staff to manage inbound and outbound customer queries via telephone, email, the web and social media.

Dubbed "Reach" the scalable, pay-as-you-go solution allows businesses to select what features they need depending on demand and ramp up or down when necessary. Salmat said consumers are demanding choice and flexibility when it comes to customer service, and businesses are struggling with how to best service their customers across so many channels. It also monitors social media platforms, websites and forums, as well as inbound call centre queries, to alert contact centre staff of trending service issues.

Salmat said large businesses and SMEs can now outsource their customer service needs to a Salmat contact centre, or access the technology through a hosted solution without the need to invest in expensive networking equipment or software. "By creating deeper and longer lasting relationships, Reach empowers Australian businesses to take control of how they communicate with their customers," said Salmat CEO Grant Harrod.

Australian credit card users are far happier with their customer service than those of Indonesia, India, Singapore and China, according to a global survey.

When it comes to satisfaction, only 14% of Australians are unhappy with their credit card provider, compared with 63% of Indonesians, 60% of Indians and more than half the Singaporean and Chinese consumers surveyed by electronic payments group ACI Worldwide. And despite almost a third of Australia credit card users falling victim to fraud in the past five years, only 3% had switched credit card providers.

"Apparently, the Aussies are far more forgiving or just don't expect better treatment from another company," the survey said. By comparison, 45% of Indonesian credit card users had changed providers after being deceived despite having a much lower rate of payments fraud.

Bank of Queensland (BoQ) says it is deploying a new cloud-based CRM system in a bid to dramatically simplify and add flexibility to the way it deals with customer accounts.

BoQ says it is already currently implementing a new Salesforce.com CRM system for front-line staff. It says the platform is a "low cost front-end system" which would deliver "enhanced sales performance & improved workplace efficiencies".

Among other benefits, the system is expected to cut down the number of procedures required by staff to create new accounts. In addition, it will feature a better ability for branch staff to focus on sales activities, and will free up resources in BoQ branches by removing some existing processes.

Brisbane City has started to equip its water crews with tablets computers equipped with a mobile workforce management tool to dramatically streamline customer service.

The FOCUS tool from FieldTec is fully integrated with the Council's systems and streamlines communications among the field crews, the dispatchers, and the contact centre staff with messaging very similar to SMS, except in more detail. The real time communication and flow of information allows Brisbane City Council to provide better service to its customers.

When using the FOCUS system, work crews can go directly to job sites without having to start their day by going into the main office. FieldTec says the simple user interface allows the field crews to direct their attention to completing their work, instead of stopping to do reports. Together, these features lead to expeditious completion of jobs, which improves customer satisfaction.

Australian fleet management company FleetPlus has selected BMC Software's Remedyforce Service Desk solution to meet the demands of double-digit growth.

By adopting the cloud-based BMC Remedyforce Service Desk solution the company has secured more transparency into its service desk operations, and acquired a solution able to grow in sync with FleetPlus. In addition, the solution has also introduced greater rigor, discipline and transparency, "improving service levels and reducing risk".

The previous approach to service desk management involved staff emailing their requests to the help desk. About 500 tickets per month were generated as a result, but only a fraction represented genuine service requests. It was clear that such service management processes weren't going to scale with FleetPlus as it continued to grow, but the company did not want to weigh itself down with a large capital expenditure for a new system.

New Zealand Telecom will expand its customer service, by delivering Video-as-a-Service (VaaS) to its business customers with a Polycom unified communications solution.

NZ Telecom will use the Polycom RealPresence Platform to power hosted video offerings, benefiting from the unique open-standards approach of the platform. The VaaS offerings will deliver face-to-face communication and collaboration capabilities to customers through a subscription based model, providing businesses with access to the full suite of Polycom's video systems, including availability over tablets and mobile devices.

"In today's competitive market, New Zealand businesses are tasked with finding the most efficient and cost-effective ways to accelerate operations," said Telecom Group's Leanne Buer. "We work alongside a broad range of corporate, government and business customers who are looking for new ways to connect with customers and staff who are on the move or working remotely."

IT analysts Ovum say many CEOs and senior executives still fail to see how social media adds value to their overall customer relationship strategy.

The Ovum report found that skeptical senior managers are therefore reluctant to invest internally or externally in the social media concept, even though it does not require a huge investment. "Social media often only requires a minuscule fraction of the seats and revenue required for traditional channels, yet it can provide enterprises with valuable real-time market data," Ovum's Margaret Goldberg said. "However, enterprise executives are yet to see this value."

Goldberg said more customers are using social networks to voice complaints and praise. "This is a trend that will continue as the generation that grew up with social media matures," she said. "Social media is a horizontal technology in a vertical structure that, if used well, can help a company position itself more competitively."

Australian online surf and fashion retailer SurfStitch is expanding its overseas customer service with Oracle ATG Web Commerce.

Launched in 2008, SurfStitch first selected Oracle ATG Web Commerce in 2009 to support its rapid expansion. Since then, the solution has helped SurfStitch convert more than its average daily 30,000 unique visitors into buyers, generating larger orders and promoting more repeat visitors.

In addition, SurfStitch uses the Oracle applications to closely monitor sales and visitor behavior, providing insight with which to quickly respond to market conditions and customer activity and helping to ensure it increases customer satisfaction. "SurfStitch prides itself on delivering the highest levels of customer service and satisfaction," said SurfStitch director Lex Pedersen. "As a pure-play business, we have to get our e-commerce offering right, in order to deliver on our promise both for our brands and our customers."

Telstra chairman Catherine Livingstone has defended the telco's move to offshore some of its contact centre operations to the Philippines, saying they provided the flexibility with the same level of service.

Speaking at Telstra's annual general meeting, Livingstone said by offshoring, the telco can better manage call volumes, with the Philippine centres held to the same standards of customer service, privacy and security as their Australian counterparts. CEO David Thodey said the need for contact centres was diminishing as an increasing number of Australians used the internet to interact with Telstra. "Interestingly, more than 30% of all interactions we have with customers are now online and that figure will be closer to 50% by the end of this financial year," he said.

Telstra shareholders were also told that while about 2000 local contact centre jobs have been lost, it has been offset by the creation of the same number of jobs in other fields including social media, web design, IT and network design. "During a year in which call centre staff numbers fell, our employee numbers stayed almost exactly the same," Livingstone said.

Major Asia Pacific brands are leading the world when it comes to investment in tools to meet the needs of the "digital mobile consumer".

Consults company TCS surveyed 664 executives across the globe, and reported that the average firm expects to spend $17.9 million on mobile technologies, marketing, customer service and similar areas in 2012. That figure declined to a low of $13.5 million in Latin America and $1 million in North America, but rose to $20.1 million in Europe and $22 million in Asia Pacific.

The respondents expected annual expenditure on these activities to hit an average of $23.2 million in 2015. Asia Pacific again led the spending, posting an anticipated expenditure of $26 million. By category, energy companies boasted the highest levels of investment today, at $30.8 million each, with telecoms firms on $28.6 million, airlines on $27.2 million and automakers on $22.3million.

ANZ Bank's New Zealand operations say no frontline jobs will be affected as it phases out its National Bank brand and merges adjacent branches.

National Bank's black horse and green branding are licensed from the UK's Lloyds TSB under an arrangement that expires in 2014. Dropping the National Bank brand will see the bank reduce total branches to 280 from 300 in New Zealand.

The merged brand will be known as ANZ Bank New Zealand and will be "the best of both banks" with ANZ's strength across the Asia Pacific region and National Bank's reputation for customer service, CEO David Hisco said. The bank said while workers such as technology contractors would come to an end as the project winds up, no frontline jobs would be affected. "For most National Bank customers it will be business as usual - they will see the same people, just wearing a different uniform," ANZ said.

ANZ Banking Group has revealed a range of new customer service technology initiatives including video conferencing equipment at 43 remote branches.

The program, dubbed Banking for Australia, will also see 800 new look ATMs introduced at branches and a live chat feature on anz.com to enhance customer service channels. The Cisco videoconferencing technology will give remote and regional customers greater access to specialist advice, the bank said.

"A key pillar of ANZ's super regional strategy is maintaining a leadership position in Australia and the Banking in Australia program is about investing in our business to make it easier for more Australians to bank with ANZ, while also simplifying the way we do business," ANZ Australia CEO Phil Chronican told reporters. Mobile apps to be launched include a mobile wallet for Android phones and Transactive for corporate cash management.

Australia is still the region's biggest market for BPO as new research tips the Asia Pacific market (excluding Japan) to reach $9.5 billion in 2016, up from $5.9 billion in 2011.

The Gartner data found largest BPO consumer in Asia Pacific in 2011 was Australia, with a market size of more than $4.63 billion, over 3.5 times larger than the second largest India ($1.26 billion). It said the fastest-growing BPO markets within Asia Pacific will continue to be led by China and India.

"The Asia Pacific BPO market is still relatively underdeveloped and underexploited (with the exception of Australia and New Zealand) when compared with other markets or regions," said Gartner's T J Singh. "This presents opportunities to BPO service providers that are willing to invest in the region. Asia/Pacific is an immature market for BPO services. No one provider dominates every type of BPO service, and very few BPO providers can successfully demonstrate true regional or Pan- Asia Pacific BPO capabilities for multiple processes."

The Australian retail industry should be concentrating on service rather than blaming its woes outside factors, according to an internationally accredited strategy expert.

In her whitepaper, Breakthrough Growth Opportunities in Australian Retail, Robynne Berg states that retail executives who continue to blame their current profit woes on external factors, including online retail, market fluctuations, GST thresholds or the economy, have no one but themselves to blame. Berg blamed poor Australian retail performance on the endemic problems of poor customer service, ignorance regarding today's consumer and a persistent discounting mentality.

"Unless retailers change their business models and embed an innovative culture they will continue to become less sustainable," she said. Berg pointed to retailers including Harrods in the UK, Apple Stores and Zara who have adapted innovative business models and put customers at the centre of their strategy resulting in exceptional revenue, profit and customer loyalty.

Australia's largest retailers have mostly rated poorly in a new customer service survey by consumer advocate group Choice.

While Harvey Norman scored the poorest customer service rating, Choice said the majority of stores surveyed provided a "frustrating" shopping experience, with staff frequently ignoring customers and showing a lack of product knowledge. Struggling department stores Myer and David Jones also received poor report cards. In particular, shoppers consistently complained of sales assistants engaging in conversation with each other while they waited for service.

Bunnings was the stand-out performer, with shoppers reporting "friendly, helpful and knowledgeable" staff. Big W, Target and Dick Smith also received largely positive feedback. "Retailers who are laying the blame at online shopping for poor sales without also reviewing things within their control, like improving customer service, are not helping themselves in this increasingly competitive environment," a Choice spokeswoman told reporters.

IT company Cisco has extended its partnership with the National Broadband Network (NBN Co) that will see it provide technology that supports customer care and operational functions.

In late 2010, a consortium led by Cisco was awarded the contract to provide NBN Co with a data centre platform. Together with its technology partners EMC and VMware, Cisco was commissioned to build a scalable platform to run essential applications, including customer care, billing, service provisioning, network management, inventory management and fulfillment systems, as well as a web portal to support customer self-service and the corporate website.

The latest contract is for the supply of Multi-Protocol Layer Switching on Cisco routers and firewalls to support NBN Co's National Connectivity Network (NCN) in a deal estimated to be worth up to $38 million over five years. In particular, the NCN will play a key role in activating and assuring services as homes and businesses across Australia connect onto the NBN.

Community CPS Australia has been named Australia's Best Credit Union in the 2012 Mozo People's Choice Awards, just four months after receiving Money magazine's Credit Union of the Year award.

The Mozo Awards, organised by the Mozo website, saw more than 25,000 banking and finance customers across Australia rate almost 180 financial institutions, judging them on overall consumer satisfaction, price, features, customer service, convenience and trust. Community CPS chief executive officer Robert Keogh said the award was nationally regarded as the most comprehensive consumer report card on the Australian financial services industry, and receiving the top award was an exceptional achievement.

"Winning the Mozo Award and being recognised as Australia's Best Credit Union for the second time this year is great feedback that we are meeting consumers' needs in a wide range of categories," Keogh said. "This award is mainly the result of our staff's exceptional work, who go above and beyond consumer expectations, and of our members' ongoing support and feedback, which helps us to tailor our products and services to meet the highest standards."

Telstra, Western Power and Edith Cowan University were the big winners at the Customer Service Council's (CSC) national awards announced last month in Perth.

The CSC said the awards were "deserved recognition of exceptional efforts in 'raising the standards' to provide outstanding customer service excellence." The CSC runs the Annual Award Program to encourage individuals and organisations to achieve and promote customer service excellence, innovation, and best practice.

"Best Practice" covers the key elements of customer satisfaction around response times, quality and depth of service including product, people and process, along with staff satisfaction, innovation, communication, technology, customer access, reporting and other key areas, the CSC said. The assessments are carried out during June, July and August followed by the Awards Event "Raising the Standards".

CSC 2012 winners for Outstanding Customer Service Excellence:

Small Enterprise or Division of Business - < 50 FTE
Gold Medal: Edith Cowan University Contact Centre
Silver Medal: Loans.com.au
Bronze Medal: Landgate - Perth Office

Medium Enterprise or Division of Business - 50 to 100 FTE

Gold Medal: Western Power Customer Service Centre
Silver Medal: Teletech - Aussie Homeloans and St Andrews Australia Customer Service Centre
Bronze Medal: Multi Direct Charity Fundraising Contact Centres

Large Enterprise or Division of Business - > 100 FTE

Gold Medal: Telstra | Connect@717 - Melbourne Contact Centre
Silver Medal: iiNet
Bronze Medal: Computershare Communication Services - Client Services

Western Australia's Department for Child Protection (DCP) has contracted Fujitsu to support its PeopleSoft CRM system.

The DCP has a network of social workers across the state working to provide care for children in need and their families. "We deliver some of the most critical statutory services for the community in Western Australia," the DCP's Cheryl Barnett said in a statement. "Our staff require a high level of skill, commitment and resilience."

With Fujitsu on board to support the PeopleSoft CRM system, DCP will have support for its remote workforce, Barnett said. One of the key reasons Fujitsu received the contract was for its ability to resource large scale, application specific support in Western Australia.

Managed IT, service desk and professional services company Applaud has upgraded its help desk ticketing system with BMC Software's Remedy IT Service Management (ITSM) solution.

"The biggest benefit we're getting is being able to service our managed service customers a whole lot better by managing the lifecycle of their assets properly and helping them quickly remediate any problems", said Applaud's Mark Richards. "BMC Remedy has allowed us to give our long-standing customers the confidence that we're maturing as a business and growing with them. If you can deliver a consistent ITIL-standard, outsourced managed service that in itself is a differentiator because there are not too many companies that can do it."

The volume of tickets handled by the Applaud service desk is typically 6,000-7,000 per month from its 15 customers. Because of this, the improved end-to-end ticket management has delivered the greatest benefit. Measured by mean time to repair, ticket management has improved substantially.

Wellington's Rydges Hotel has won the Supreme Champion title at this year's Hospitality Association of New Zealand (HANZ) Awards for Excellence.

Rydges Wellington won awards for Excellence in Customer Service and Best Accommodation Hotel en route to taking out the supreme national award at an industry dinner held in Wellington last week. Hospitality New Zealand chief executive Bruce Robertson said while many businesses in the hospitality sector were finding it hard to continue trading profitably, others like Rydges Wellington were prospering with smart strategies.

"Those points of differences showcased by award winners like Rydges Wellington include service offerings, delivering customers a totally unexpected yet far superior experience to what they were anticipating, providing an ambience or atmosphere far removed from the local competition, and embracing new technology," Robertson said. Rydges Wellington GM Simon White said the hotel has concentrated its efforts on customer service through guest recognition programs and making itself available to our guests. "That in turn gives us the opportunity to continually improve the hotel product through guest and staff feedback," he said.

Outsourcer Stellar is set to hire around 200 people for its new contact centre for the Australian Taxation Office on Queensland's Sunshine Coast.

Stellar confirmed in a statement on its website that it will manage the new centre, with the local council reporting the 200 new jobs figure. The contract should be worth around $68 million over five years with services beginning this January.

The council is to hold four career information sessions are to be held in three locations across the local area from October 8-10 in a bid to find suitable candidates for the new centre.

New Westpac Chief Executive, Australian Financial Services, Brian Hartzer says the bank's best strategy for success starts with the basic notion of looking after its customers.

Harzer has spent the first month on the job talking to people to get a feel for what staff think and where the bank should go from here. He also agrees with the regulator push for banks to work harder at regaining the public trust.

Harzer has returned to Australia from three years running Royal Bank of Scotland's retail bank in London. He told reporters British banks went astray because they concentrated too much on their shareholders by chasing higher returns that meant minimising capital. He said a sustainable bank needs to look after community, regulators, shareholders and, most importantly, customers.

Most New Zealanders rate their bank highly and the country's banking sector rates well above other service sectors, according to a new survey.

The survey of 13,000 people conducted by Consumer NZ found in August that banks outshone other industries with an overall satisfaction rating of 92%. By comparison, similar surveys found satisfaction for electricity companies was 78% (June 2012), with 72% for internet service providers (December 2011) and 55% for appliance retailers (May 2012).

"Banks put a huge effort into customer service and it's great to see this reflected in the survey results," New Zealand Bankers' Association chief executive Kirk Hope told reporters. "The high level of satisfaction with our banks shows how competitive the sector is. By providing excellent service, banks work hard to attract and keep their customers. This is good news for New Zealand households and businesses."

As local governments across Australia renew their efforts in connecting with their residents, Toowoomba Regional Council has been named the best small contact centre in the national ATA awards.

The council's team overcame a strong field to emerge national winners of the 2012 Contact Centre of the Year in the category of under 30 fulltime employees. The centre beat Adelaide City Council, as well as UniSuper and Teachers Health Fund to the award.

The team also took out the implementation category ahead of the National Australia Bank and Sunsuper. Customer services portfolio Leader Cr Anne Glasheen said the award reflected on the high level of customer satisfaction achieved by the team.

ATA Award Winners

Contact Centre Champion of the Year - Operations Category:

Julie Ireland - Smart Service Qld

Contact Centre Champion Year - People Category:

Danielle Warrak, FlexiGroup

Contact Centre Teleprofessional of the Year:

Damian Jeffrey - A&G Insurance Services

Contact Centre Team Leader of the Year:

Dimitra Panagos – CommInsure

Contact Centre Manager of the Year:

Ben Lamb, FlexiGroup

Implementation Category & Contact Centre of the Year - <30FTE:

Toowoomba Regional Council

Contact Centre of the Year - 31-80 FTE:

CommInsure

Contact Centre of the Year - 81-150 FTE:

O'Brien

Contact Centre of the Year - > 150 FTE:

National Australia Bank

While Australian consumers have some of the lowest customer service expectations in the world, new research shows they are also more likely to share their experiences with others.

The latest American Express Global Customer Service Barometer found that 80% of the consumers surveyed agree small, independently or locally-owned businesses "provide a more personal customer service experience", while 37% strongly agree. More than three quarters feel small businesses "understand their customer better" than large companies, while a third strongly agree.

When it comes to waiting on the phone for service, Australians are prepared to wait, on average, 14 minutes before hanging up, putting Australia in third place behind India and Mexico. However, compared to last year, consumers tell significantly more people on average about their customer service experiences, both good and bad. On average, consumers tell 15 people about their good experiences (up from nine in 2011) and 24 people about their bad experiences (up from 16 in 2011).

Boutique financial services provider Bendigo and Adelaide Bank has upgraded its customer service with Noble Systems' ShiftTrack Workforce Management (WFM) software.

Noble ShiftTrack WFM provides the Bank with an industry-leading solution for managing and scheduling its contact centre workforce to improve customer service. With more than 1.5 million retail customers via a national network of more than 500 customer service outlets, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank is one of Australia's largest financial services providers.

"We are pleased to partner with an iconic Australian brand like Bendigo and Adelaide Bank," said Ashley Clayton, head of sales for Noble Systems' Asia Pacific region. "Deploying the ShiftTrack WFM solution in their contact centres will optimise efficiency and speed customer service activities."

As more and more consumers turn to social media for customer service, IT company LogMeIn has launched Twitter integration and social media management capabilities for its BoldChat online customer engagement offering in Australia.

Designed to help businesses and customer service agents manage the rapidly growing number of customer interactions on Twitter, the new capabilities complement BoldChat's multi-channel suite for web chat, email, SMS, and click-to-call features. With the new capabilities, customer service teams can use a single, unified tool to manage customer conversations across online, mobile, email, phone, and social channels, while providing a comprehensive view of customer interactions.

BoldChat Twitter Management comes standard with the BoldChat Enterprise edition, and is immediately available as a free update to BoldChat Enterprise customers. "Twitter is quickly becoming a go-to channel for customer engagement, but to date, managing these customer conversations has meant trying to turn a social media marketing tool into a customer service tool," said LogMeIn's Steve Castro-Miller. "BoldChat Twitter management is designed from the ground up for engaging and managing customer conversations."

The National Broadband Network (NBN Co) has opened its Gold Coast-based contact centre to take calls on questions about the roll-out of the superfast broadband network.

The call centre, first announced in April, is located in Varsity Lakes, and will employ up to 130 people to take enquiries from the general public, property developers, and businesses on the government's NBN roll-out. "This is another example of the Gillard government's investment in the National Broadband Network creating local jobs and boosting local economies," Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said.

The opening and ministerial welcome comes despite a recent run-in with the Gold Coast mayor over treatment of NBN Co executives. Last month, Conroy called for Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate to apologise to delegates from NBN Co who had travelled to the Gold Coast to explain the NBN roll-out in a council meeting. Tate cut NBN Co executive Darren Rudd off after he had only been speaking for 8 minutes, stating that the agenda was "too full" for the day.

New Zealand tertiary institution Otago Polytechnic has had its customer service recognised with an Australasian-wide award for its IT Service Desk.

Otago Polytechnic received the Excellence in Student Administration and Customer Service honour at the Association for Tertiary Education Management (ATEM)/Campus Review Best Practice Awards in Adelaide. Otago Polytechnic's IT Service Desk not only offers support to the Polytechnic's staff and students, but is also contracted to provide the same service to Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology staff.

The service is accessed through an 0800 number and utilises remote control tools that allows Service Desk staff to administer solutions to any computer. "It's a free service at Otago Polytechnic and we believe we are the only Polytechnic or Institute of Technology in New Zealand offering this to both staff and students," says Information Systems and Support Customer Support Manager, Colin Armstrong. "We are now in our second year of providing support to NMIT, and the institute is very happy with our service."

Perth Airport had admitted to deficiencies in its customer service, pledging a massive investment to turn its offering around.

Airport chief executive Brad Geatches admitted "we deserve the flak" because the experience at the airport was very poor in peak periods. "International arrivals is the worst experience of all," Geatches said. "We rate our customer service as C in peak periods but much better at other times."

"The $750 million we are investing will see As all round," he said. "The terminal developments we have under way will make a dramatic difference. The new regional domestic terminal, which opens early next year, is looking great." In the past five years, the number of passengers using the main terminals has leapt 44% to 12.6 million for the year to June 30.

Telstra CEO David Thodey has told retail shareholders that the company expects to reduce the number of contact centre employees over the next five to 10 years, as customer service moves online.

Telstra announced in August it would shed 651 jobs across Australia, with the company closing customer service centres in Lismore and Townsville, with a number of Sydney and Melbourne jobs outsourced to the Philippines. Speaking at a retail shareholder event in Sydney last week, Thodey said that as more and more Telstra customers begin to interact with the company online, rather than over the phone, more jobs will likely go.

"You will continue to see our call centres decline. That's just the way of the world, unfortunately," he said. "We are seeing a reduction in call volumes, and we are moving people to an online experience. The numbers in our call centres will continue to reduce over the next five to 10 years, because most people would like to be online."

As local governments across Australia renew their efforts in connecting with their residents, Toowoomba Regional Council has been named the best small contact centre in the national ATA awards.

The council's team overcame a strong field to emerge national winners of the 2012 Contact Centre of the Year in the category of under 30 fulltime employees. The centre beat Adelaide City Council, as well as UniSuper and Teachers Health Fund to the award.

The team also took out the implementation category ahead of the National Australia Bank and Sunsuper. Customer services portfolio Leader Cr Anne Glasheen said the award reflected on the high level of customer satisfaction achieved by the team.

ATA Award Winners

Contact Centre Champion of the Year - Operations Category:

Julie Ireland - Smart Service Qld

Contact Centre Champion Year - People Category:

Danielle Warrak, FlexiGroup

Contact Centre Teleprofessional of the Year:

Damian Jeffrey - A&G Insurance Services

Contact Centre Team Leader of the Year:

Dimitra Panagos – CommInsure

Contact Centre Manager of the Year:

Ben Lamb, FlexiGroup

Implementation Category & Contact Centre of the Year - <30FTE:

Toowoomba Regional Council

Contact Centre of the Year - 31-80 FTE:

CommInsure

Contact Centre of the Year - 81-150 FTE:

O'Brien

Contact Centre of the Year - > 150 FTE:

National Australia Bank

Last week saw the return of the ATA's Australian Contact Centre Summit. The annual conference, held at the Hilton Brisbane, featured presentations from such accomplished public speakers as Charlie Brown, Technology Editor of Channel Nine's Today Show, and Rachel Robertson, the second woman in history to lead an Antarctic research expedition to Davis Station. 

The two-day event was compered by A&G Insurance Services' Mark Deighton who introduced the ATA's new CEO, Fiona Keough, and welcomed to the stage Dan Gregory who gave the first keynote speech of the conference. Mr Gregory spoke of the continual increase in customer expectations and the convergence of marketing and customer service functions. The current challenge for the customer service industry, as he pointed out, is how to successfully represent an organisation’s brand and values through each service interaction.

Linda Simonsen, CEO of Futurepeople, gave a very educational speech which discussed the importance of Emotional Intelligence in the work place (the ability to identify, assess and control the emotions of oneself and one's staff) and revealed a revolutionary approach to motivating employees. Comminsure's Nikki Bower followed with an excellent case study which divulged how to drive a better staff and customer experience through process excellence and how to implement an effective Continuous Improvement programme.

The general consensus from delegates was that this year's ATA Contact Centre Summit was an extremely beneficial event for all Contact Centre management and supervisory staff looking to collaborate with industry peers and discuss common challenges and solutions. We hope that next year’s event will be just as insightful.

Australian consumers are increasingly relying on smartphone apps, social media and websites over traditional customer service channels, according to new research.

The latest Avaya Asia-Pacific Customer Experience Index found that 60% of Australian consumers look to resolve their queries via a company's website before calling a contact centre. This number is even higher among Gen Y consumers, at 72%. Web chat usage has also increased, and the number of Australians who believe they will be using web chat in the next few years has increased from 14% in 2011 to 20% in 2012.

Avaya said the reason behind the growth of smart phone and portable web usage included convenience, fun to use, good for simple queries, and easy to use. "Web-based service offerings, including live chat, and smartphone apps linked to live agents, will become increasingly important tools in the battle to win long-term customer loyalty in Australia," Avaya Australia and New Zealand MD Tim Gentry said.

Global IT giant Citrix has acquired New Zealand's privately-owned cloud-based service desk Beetil.

Beetil's mission is to streamline technology costs through cloud-based incident tracking, end user self-service, configuration, change management and release management functionality. The acquisition will help Citrix with the expansion of its GoToAssist cloud-based support product line into the region. Beetil, meanwhile will have the opportunity to offer its solutions to Citrix's customer base.

"We founded Beetil to deliver a better cloud-based support and service management experience based on the best practice ITIL framework," Beetil CEO Dan Lee said. "We succeeded by delivering a complete support desk tool that is easy to use, easy to learn, and easy on the pocket."

Cloud computing, social media and demand for a new kind of customer service are transforming the contact centre industry landscape toward a "Heartonomics" revolution, according to a new report by FuturePeople Recruitment.

FuturePeople's Heartonomics Report is a guide specifically for Australian contact centre managers that helps them understand and take advantage of the "current contact centre revolution". CEO Linda Simonsen said the contact centre industry is in the throes of massive change, as the rise of technology and both staff and customer needs challenge the way the contact centre industry has always done business.

"To meet the two core changes of technology and people, the industry must put a philosophy like Heartonomics at the core of their priorities. I define Heartonomics as the economic value of genuine human connection," Simonsen said. Heartonomics report includes of case studies and interviews with contact centre industry leaders, like Daniel Bergan, Head of Contact Centre Operations, Australian Financial Services, Westpac Group and Paul Cahill, Director Consumer Services, Telstra Customer Sales & Service.

A group of staff members from the Fiji Beach Resort and Spa have attended a one-week attachment at sister Hilton resorts in Australia managed in an effort to improve customer service.

The educational trip gave the eight participants an opportunity to experience the lifestyle at one of Fiji's core markets. Fiji Beach Resort and Spa training manager Eremasi Rova said the objective of the trip was to get exposure to Australian service standards in related departments and a familiarisation with Australian culture.

"The eight individuals are members of the Panorama team currently in the final phase of a two-year management trainee program," Rova said. The participants spent at least four hours of attachment daily observing and 'buddying' with Hilton counterparts in Australia to identify some best practices that they could bring back with them to the Fiji property's operations.

The New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) economic development agency has selected US-based FreeCRM.com for the government workplace.

NZTE will use the FreeCRM.com SaaS solution to advise and handle inbound and outbound relationships with establishing firms within New Zealand wishing to work with and in the nation. The FreeCRM.coms web-based CRM tool offers contact center automation, call tracking and outing, and knowledgebase attributes.

Companies that engage with the NZ TE interact by means of internet tools and conventional channels such as inbound telephone, fax, and mail. FreeCRM.com is expected to manage all the interaction channels.

Riviana Foods has adopted StayinFront’s EdgeCG SaaS CRM and Analytics solution to streamline its customer service.

Riviana Foods is an Australian-owned manufacturing, distribution, sales and marketing company and one of the largest and most successful food importers. The company has 500 products under its portfolio, including some of the country’s most well-recognised brands.

Riviana Foods selected the StayinFront EdgeCG solution as a full-function, hosted package with the technical flexibility to deploy to a retail grocery team using Android devices, as well as to food services reps, who require higher quality presentation capabilities on iPads. “With StayinFront consumer goods CRM software available on Android devices and iPads in the field, we believe our teams will impress our customers on every level,” said Riviana Foods’ Steve Weston.

New Zealand's Rotorua District Council (RDC) has taken out top spot in the ALGIM (Association of Local Government Information Management) Customer Centre Awards.

RDC was named Ultimate Local Government Customer Service Centre in recognition of best practice in customer service among New Zealand local authorities. RDC's Roanna Dunn said the council's customer centre had clearly ticked all the right boxes with the panel of judges.

"This year's awards received the most entries ever so our team is absolutely delighted to have been named New Zealand’s Ultimate Local Government Customer Service Centre," she said. "Our mission is to strive for excellence, continuous improvement and value for customers, in line with the council's Vision, Mission and Values statement, and that really struck a chord with the judges."

Outsourcer Stellar has announced it has been selected to manage contact centre services in partnership with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).

The ATO sought a partner who will maximise value while increasing operational flexibility and agility particularly during seasonal peaks. Stellar Customer Solutions Specialists will manage ATO enquiries throughout the year and will also support extra volume in the lead up to and during the busy tax time period.

"We are thrilled to have been awarded this opportunity with the Australian Taxation Office and look forward to forging a long term relationship based on excellent service outcomes, transparency and innovation," Stellar CEO Melissa Hamilton CEO said. "The Stellar team is looking forward to working with our new partner."

While Australian organisations spent fairly 'liberally' on Unified Communications from 2008 and into 2009, many have since employed greater scrutiny on their investments; reconsidering large scale deployments and opting for a piecemeal approach.

According to Frost & Sullivan, this strategy has lengthened the sales cycles for channel partners, which are forced to reduce their dependency on a few major deals in favour of a greater number of small-medium deals. Cloud based UC or UC as a Service (UCaaS) will be one of the key enabling factors that will drive widespread uptake of UC. Traditional on-premise applications, while adequate for the demands of previous decades, often struggle to meet the real time communication and collaboration needs of current users. Cloud based access is already having the effect of making UC available to a wider range of organisations and end users.

Frost & Sullivan predicts the Australian UC market will grow at 8.6% from 2011 to 2018. "The overall UC market is expected to be worth $1 billion by 2016 with the largest adopters, BFSI (Banking & Financial Services Industry) and Government sectors accounting for 40% of this revenue. Other sectors driving growth during the forecast period include professional services, education, healthcare and mining", said Frost & Sullivan’s Anand Balasubramanian.

A senior lecturer at Melbourne's RMIT University says ISPs should be providing greater transparency over National Broadband Network (NBN) processes to help customers gain a better understanding of the initiative's benefits.

Mark Gregory of the school of electrical and computer engineering said better customer service could be provided through secure customer portals for the NBN, allowing customers to view active installations to monitor where the installation process is at. "This would provide a better understanding of the roll out and give the public a way to participate in the roll out," Gregory said.

"A new level of customer service transparency should be implemented," he said. "Customers should be able to see service orders online at each step of the process." Gregory said having a web portal for customers would help to dramatically reduce the number of complaints in the telco industry, with the telco industry way behind other industries in regards to product tracking.

New Zealand's Earthquake Commission (EQC) has defended itself after reports of customer dissatisfaction over ongoing claims for loss or damage.

EQC GM of customer service Bruce Emson said the September 4, 2010 earthquake in Christchurch forced 22 EQC staff to respond to an event 15 times the size of the previous biggest event - Inangahua in 1968, which generated 10,000 claims. Emson said, "EQC is now working its way through 460,000 claims, made up of 690,000 individual exposures - numbers matched only by Hurricane Katrina." He added, "To put that number in further context, it is more than double the number of every claim for every type of natural disaster in EQC's history prior to September 4, 2010."

Emson said the NZ Press's comprehensive survey of EQC customer satisfaction, showing that where claims for building damage are concerned, about half our customers are unsatisfied, mirrored EQC's own periodic customer satisfaction surveying, "but are no more acceptable for that". "Insured Kiwis have no choice but to be EQC customers, and that means we need to work harder than our private insurer counterparts to provide a quality customer experience."

Global outsourcer the Serco Group has successfully renewed its BPO contract with the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to provide contact centre services to Australian taxpayers, businesses and tax professionals.

Under the five-year contract, Serco, in partnership with the ATO and other suppliers, will be responsible for providing advice and responding to enquiries relating to tax numbers, refunds, business activity statements, debt management, return submissions and tax information packs. It is also anticipated that there will be opportunities to expand these activities to support additional communication channels.

Serco, and previously Excelior which was acquired by Serco in November 2011, has been providing these services on behalf of the ATO for the last four years from its contact centres in Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania. On average, these centres handle over a quarter of a million customer engagements each month, consistently meeting their performance targets for quality of service. In the last two months, six Serco employees have been awarded 'Gold Call' status, the ATO's highest accolade for this work.

Queensland's Townsville City Council has won the Government Contact Centre 2012 Summit award for the Most Innovative Project for its recent implementation of IMC Communication's livepro Knowledge Management solution in its customer service centre.

Townsville City Council's Megan Leavy said the livepro implementation had streamlined customer service processes and supported business continuity. "Since implementing livepro there have been numerous positive impacts on the CSC business," she said. "One of the key impacts is the reduction in Average Handling Time (AHT) and on-hold time; our AHT is now down by an average of 8 seconds and on hold-time has decreased by an average of 12 seconds per call."

Leavy said livepro has helped the council simplify its processes around complex service requests, reducing the amount of errors made by customer service representatives. Reducing errors has made it easier for other business units to complete service requests and thus helped to strengthen the relationships between the CSC and other business units. "Also, by providing basic training to the other business units, they now better understand the role of the CSC and are able to provide Customer Service Representatives with real-time updates and alerts directly through livepro," Leavy said.

The Victorian Government's Environmental Protection Authority has upgraded its service technology by deploying version 7.0 of German software company SAP's CRM platform.

The EPA protects the state's environment through regulation, granting licences for industrial activity, conducting environmental audits, monitoring the environment and setting standards. SAP said the EPA had been looking to conduct a technology refresh program that would underpin its operations for the next 20-30 years, including delivering an "integrated and holistic" view of its clients, stakeholders and communities to help deliver on its corporate objectives, as well as improving its overall organisational performance.

SAP's CRM 7.0 platform will be deployed to fulfil functions such as client management, which will assist the EPA with its compliance efforts. "At the end of July 2012, EPA went live with the first phase of the transformation program, and it has proven to be a great success," SAP said. "The SAP CRM solution supports EPA in the execution of its duties and centres around customer service, core approvals and licensing, compliance inspections and the generation of regulatory notices."

Westpac's New Zealand arm has extended its seven-year deal with outsourcer Gen-i in a new two-year contract for contact centre, data, voice, contract management, mobility and access services.

Gen-i said the contract extension was worth more than $NZ50 million ($A38.5 million), with a spokeswoman noting that it did not add any new services to the existing deal. She said the new contract was to be managed by Westpac New Zealand, outside of a vendor management team that the Westpac Group recently established in Australia under its multi-sourcing strategy.

The contract extension came in addition to Gen-i's 2011 contract to host Westpac New Zealand in its new data centre in Auckland. Gen-i's spokeswoman said the build was completed on time and on budget, early this year, and migration of Westpac's production systems from an existing IBM data centre was underway.

The Australian division of technology distributor Ingram Micro has launched the MaintenanceNet Service360 cloud-based service contract management platform and complementary Auto Quote solution as a high-value tool for its reseller partners across the Asia-Pacific region.

The solution, which is already in place in the US and Canada, is offered free of charge to Ingram Micro channel partners and has been branded for Ingram Micro Australia as the Cisco Services Portal, powered by MaintenanceNet. It is designed to automate the administrative tasks of creating service renewal quotes and to ensure that partners can quickly take action on "low-dollar" service contract renewal opportunities.

"Low-dollar contract renewals require constant attention because of their sheer volume, and staying on top of them is a complex process for our partners," Ingram Micro Australia's David Lenz said. "Auto Quote is a channel enablement tool that eliminates the time and hassle of tracking ongoing service expirations and sending renewal notices to customers. With this new automated capability, our resellers are able to sell more services, increase renewal rates and keep a better pulse on customer needs."

New research indicates that not only is positive emotion from sales staff contagious to a customer, but that a satisfied customer also improves the salesperson's mood.

The Government Contact Centre Summit (GCC) in partnership with the Customer Contact Management Association (CCMA) has announced the 2012 Government Contact Centre Excellence Awards Winners.

IT Company Interactive Intelligence says companies need to ensure customer service is not an afterthought with mobile applications as it investigates how mobile devices are impacting customer satisfaction. 

Web-based service Matchboard launched earlier this week. Matchboard matches buyers and suppliers working under the mantra, "Smart Sourcing for Sales, Service and Back Office".

The National Australia Bank (NAB) is considering a trial of work-from-home customer service centres by the end of the year after rolling out an IP -based virtual contact centre platform last month.

NAB moved 3200 agents – including customer service and help desk staff – off legacy PABX systems in July under a three-year program. NAB’s head of network services Graham Cronin told a Genesys customer conference in Sydney last week that the platform moved the bank away from a traditional "bricks and mortar" structure to a more flexible, customer-centric environment.

He said NAB's contact centres were in an "old world" prior to the virtual contact centre rollout, citing capacity constraints, high real estate costs and ageing technology as reasons for change. Coupled with the bank's AccessNAB thin client application, Cronin said the platform could allow contact centre staff to work from home. "We haven't put anyone in a home agent site yet," Cronin told reporters. "It'll be a trial that the business will now come and talk about."

A new Telecommunications Consumer Protections (TCP) Code- developed by the Communications Alliance (CA) and registered by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has come into effect.

Polaris Communications has announced the release of the Soundshield Wireless Headset – the world's first wireless headset designed specifically for contact centres.

The City of South Perth has gone live with a customer service solution for local government from global provider Kana Software.

A social media expert says Australian marketers need to stop treating sites like Twitter and Facebook as a contact centre and start seeing them as a sales tool.

Jeff Jordan, senior product manager for social media at Adobe told reporters the growth of interest in social media as a marketing and communications channel needed to be backed by a better understanding of what brands wanted to accomplish. He said companies needed to make the jump from seeing it as a way to deliver simple messages to being a fully-fledged revenue source.

"The first stage, which is the stage we are in currently, is to help social media marketing become a mature, robust, predictable ROI (return on investment) mechanism," Jordan said. "(We need to) take it from where it stands currently for most companies as a customer service arm, which is a valuable use for it, and turning into a revenue-generating marketing channel the same way paid search and display (advertising) and things like that are - tying all that social media marketing goodness back to revenue."

ComputerCorp has selected US-based CRM cloud service provider FreeCRM.com to provide 200 remote agents access to automate its sales force, customer service and field service technicians.

As well as providing sales force automation tools, deal pipeline tracking and reporting, tracking sales goals and commissions, the FreeCRM.com solution manages customer support, task management and events, call tracking and automated marketing. FreeCRM.com says the ability for field service reps, sales people and customer service to all use one integrated system raises business efficiency and ROI.

FreeCRM.com is one of the world's leading on-demand CRM providers for businesses worldwide. FreeCRM says the solution is available to any business wishing to automate their sales and customer support without the need for any special software.

Japan's Fujifilm Holdings has signed a definitive agreement to buy Australian customer service company Salmat's BPO division.

The BPO division encompasses Salmat Document Management Solutions, its 11 subsidiaries, as well as Salmat Asia Limited. Salmat said the BPO division would be "better suited to an owner with global reach and broader outsourcing ambition". The company said the divestment marked the beginning of a broader partnership with Fujifilm that would exploit the parties' geographies and services. "For Salmat, this is a potential opportunity to drive growth by bringing our customer communication services and solutions into the Asian market with a highly credible provider."

The deal, which is subject to approval by the Foreign Investment Review Board, is expected to be completed in mid-October and includes an 18-month transition agreement. Salmat's business covers retail catalogues, door-to-door sales force, contact centres and a digital business built on a grab-bag of businesses (including the shopping portal Lasoo) acquired from the troubled Photon for $75m. Salmat said its traditional business was in a strong position because it occupied "leading market positions" and was protected by "high barriers to entry in major markets".

A German contact centre is offering frustrated people a new swearing hotline to blow off steam by abusing an operator at the other end.

The "Schimpf-los" ("swear away") service was created by two German entrepreneurs who realised everyday people need an outlet to release their pent-up frustrations. "With us you can blow off steam, no strings attached. We don't judge people who are angry," co-creator Ralf Schulte told reporters.

When callers find themselves lost for words, customer service operators goad them with provocations such as, "That's the third time I've heard that today - is that all you've got?" The service costs 1.49 euros (US$1.85) a minute.

Regional New Zealand's Hamilton Airport has introduced online booking for its car parking, making it the first regional airport in New Zealand to offer the service.

The airport is using Chauntry's Parkspace system, which allows it to offer customers the convenience of online booking without making additional investment in infrastructure or technology. Airport users can access the automated car park booking service directly from the airport's website.

The Chauntry system, supported by a dedicated customer service team, is also used by Auckland and Wellington airports, New Zealand's main international hubs. "We are extremely pleased to see this in operation at an airport such as Hamilton, because it demonstrates that regional airports with a clear focus on service and commercial growth can achieve their objectives with the right partners in place," said Chauntry CEO Theresa Hughes.

Interactive Intelligence has signed a purchase agreement to acquire Bay Bridge Decision Technologies, a U.S. supplier of contact centre forecasting, capacity planning and strategic analysis technology.

Bay Bridge's long-term forecasting and planning technology helps contact centres optimise delivery strategies, agent resources, and performance by getting the right number of agents, in the right place, at the right time, to deliver better service. "This acquisition enables us to bridge the gap between our basic workforce management features, and the advanced forecasting and planning capabilities in the Bay Bridge products, so we can now offer a true strategic planning solution for mid-size and large contact centers," said Interactive Intelligence founder and CEO, Dr. Donald E. Brown.

Bay Bridge is a privately-held company founded in 2000. Interactive Intelligence purchased the company in an all-cash transaction effective Aug. 1, 2012.

KANA Software this week launched its KANA Express multi-channel web customer service solution aimed at mid-sized businesses.

KANA Express offers comprehensive and end-to-end customer service and interaction management capabilities delivered via the cloud using a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. "Mid-market companies must match or exceed the level of customer engagement of their enterprise peers to stay competitive and relevant, yet are especially challenged in doing so due to smaller budgets and IT staffing," said James Norwood, CMO for KANA. "KANA Express offers exceptional multi-channel web customer service functionality with the requisite reliability, ease of use, proven low total cost of ownership (TCO), and rapid return on investment that only the cloud can offer, enabling mid-sized businesses to successfully execute on their customer experience strategies."

A single, integrated platform ensuring consistent customer service across all channels including phone, email, live and automated chat, web self-service, and social media, KANA Express unifies customer contact records and knowledge resources and automatically delivers contextual help and information when and where it is needed. The solution is scalable to handle hundreds of thousands of transactions a day, even for businesses with as few as 20 call center agents.

Myer chief executive Bernie Brookes says customer service is still an important part of the retail business and admitted he made a mistake when he slashed staff numbers to cut costs.

Over the past few years, he said, Myer had increased staff numbers and implemented more training to improve customer service. Brookes also predicts traditional big retailers will embrace internet service and retailing to the extent that they will the top 10 shopping sites within five years.

"If we produce a list in three years of the top ten internet sites in Australia, it will be dominated by Myer, DJs (David Jones), Kmart, Target, the Just Group, the existing group of retailers" he said. Brookes said Australian retailers had been slow to move into online shopping, due partly to the higher costs involved in delivering goods in a geographically large country with a relatively small population.

Unified communications company NSC Group has been selected by NICE Systems to become the contact centre IT company's first platinum partner in Australia.

NSC MD Craig Neil said the decision to partner with NICE was driven by the needs of customers. NICE, develops technology that helps analyse interactions and transactions in the contact centre space.

The NICE SmartCenter portfolio includes workforce management, call recording, customer feedback and quality management applications, which are designed to help contact centres enhance agent productivity and performance, bolster inbound sales revenue and strengthen customer loyalty. "There's a lot more to it than simply installing the software," Neil said. "And this is why NSC's consulting-led approach to providing solutions for our customers is such a good fit with NICE.

The New Zealand Labour Party says massive redundancies at the Internal Revenue Department have taken a huge toll on frontline customer service.

"The IRD plays a critical role in maintaining the overall health of the economy and yet we've got people waiting for hours to have their calls answered, with many giving up completely," Labour's State Services spokesperson Chris Hipkins said. "In the past four years the IRD has dished out over $31 million in redundancy payments. Clearly that's having an impact on its customer service record, particularly in the regions."

Hipkins said statistics show that people are waiting for two and a half hours just to have their phone calls answered by the IRD's contact centre. "Increasing numbers of Kiwis are getting so frustrated they're just giving up completely. Last year over one million people hung up before their call had been answered. A further 260,000 gave up after being placed on hold."

Cloud CRM company Rackspace Hosting has upped its local customer service with the launch of its first Australian datacentre in Sydney to offer "Fanatical Support" to the US company's ongoing growth in Australia.

Rackspace says it has its own global benchmark for tailored customer support levels. Its customer service experience called Fanatical Support, provides personalised service 24/7, 365 days a year. "Our local customers have learnt that Rackspace is synonymous with the latest in innovative cloud hosting solutions, but the key success driver that really sets us apart from the competition is our focus on service by providing customers with Fanatical Support."

The datacentre will allow Rackspace to offer local dedicated hosting and managed solutions to larger IT contracts. It will also serve as a launch pad for Rackspace's own, OpenStack-based Open Cloud platform, which is also expected to launch into the local market. Rackspace entered the ANZ market in 2009 and has been building a significant customer base since.

South Korean electronics company Samsung will increase its face-to-face service in Australia with the opening of its Australian experience store in Sydney.

The store, to be operated by Australasian Mobile Telecommunications Group (AMT), will open this week at 450 George Street in Sydney, near Apple's Australian flagship store at 367 George Street. The store is to be the first of many planned by Samsung according to a job advertisement on the Seek website.

The Seek job ad says Australian Retail Management Services has teamed up with Samsung to open and manage a number of new stores in Australia. "We currently have full-time customer service and sales opportunities available in our brand new Samsung store located in Sydney CBD." Australian Retail Management Services is a subsidiary of AMT.

Regional telco specialist Southern Phone has beefed up its customer service technology with Noble Systems' ShiftTrack workforce management.

Established in 2002, Southern Phone is owned by 41 local councils as nationwide provider of mobile, home and business telephone and Internet services. "Providing excellent customer service means ensuring we have the right personnel in place at the right time to serve the needs of our customers," Southern Phone operations manager Jenny Allen said. "That's why we chose to deploy the Noble ShiftTrack WFM solution. It allows us to accurately forecast call volumes, predict how many staff we require to meet our service levels and schedule staff with matched skills at each location."

Noble says ShiftTrack WFM provides predictive and analytical features that allow the telecommunications provider to maximise results from their team of customer contact specialists. "Southern Phone chose to work with us not only for the effectiveness of our product, but also for our commitment to support their long-term growth," said Ashley Clayton, head of sales for Noble Systems' Asia Pacific region. "We're excited to serve a company designed to meet the telecommunications needs of Australia's regional population."

Australian telco Telstra has announced plans send hundreds of customer service roles from Australia to Asia.

Telstra says it will shut contact centres Melbourne, Sydney, Lismore and Townsville, with services to be taken up by existing centres. Overall, the telco is cutting 422 Telstra jobs, along with a further 229 outsourced roles as it consolidates a range of roles. More than half of the jobs are being sent offshore, mostly to the Philippines.

"We operate in a fast moving, highly competitive market," a Telstra spokeswoman said. "To keep pace with this changing environment and remain competitive, like every business we're constantly reviewing the way we work to identify opportunities to improve customer service and simplify our business."

America's Virtual Hold Technology has demonstrated a new solution to enable customers to request a callback from customer service through internet-connected smartphones, televisions and other devices at the Genesys G-Force Asia Pacific conference in Sydney.

VHT's Conversation Bridge is a multichannel callback solution that launches callback requests to connect customers with live-service when they have reached a self-service dead end. The Conversation Bridge blends automated support with the human touch by offering access to live agents when customers are contacting them through channels such as mobile apps, social media and websites using devices such as smartphones, internet-enabled televisions, game consoles and store kiosks.

"Today's demonstration shows that companies can offer an easy and efficient way to satisfy customers who have tried to help themselves but have run into an obstacle and require human assistance," VHT's Robert Brazier said. "Whether your customers are trying to make a purchase or reservation, solve a problem or manage an account, there's no reason to leave them stranded and frustrated in a self-service dead end, no matter what channel they are using. Providing callback with context is the solution."

Airlines PNG has recruited a new Airports Manager to implement a new customer service strategy for the carrier.

In a statement, Airlines PNG said Mike Wells says he has over 30 years airport management experience with Qantas and Virgin Australia in customer service and business improvement. It says Port Moresby, Lae, Mt Hagen and Brisbane Airports are key sites for the airline to address its service strategy.

Wells' brief will be to build and develop world class customer service and customer support programs at the airports. These programs will be rolled out to other ports in the airline's network, which has been recently expanded.

A social media expert says Australian marketers need to stop treating sites like Twitter and Facebook as a contact centre and start seeing them as a sales tool.

Jeff Jordan, senior product manager for social media at Adobe told reporters the growth of interest in social media as a marketing and communications channel needed to be backed by a better understanding of what brands wanted to accomplish. He said companies needed to make the jump from seeing it as a way to deliver simple messages to being a fully-fledged revenue source.

"The first stage, which is the stage we are in currently, is to help social media marketing become a mature, robust, predictable ROI (return on investment) mechanism," Jordan said. "(We need to) take it from where it stands currently for most companies as a customer service arm, which is a valuable use for it, and turning into a revenue-generating marketing channel the same way paid search and display (advertising) and things like that are - tying all that social media marketing goodness back to revenue."

Contact centre industry veteran Fiona Keough has been appointed the CEO of industry association the ATA.

In her time as interim ATA CEO, Keough has guided the association through a challenging four months, impressing the ATA Board with her capacity to lead, inspire and innovate. "The board needed to adopt a process in order to appoint the next CEO of the ATA and, on this basis, consulted with a number of industry recruitment specialists, outlining the key attributes and competencies the role required," acting ATA chairman Malcolm Angell said.

"We initially appointed Fiona to assist us while we went through our process. To say she has impressed the board with her performance would be an understatement," Angell said. In accepting the role, Fiona Keough said the ATA board and national office, in consultation with the state chapters, have laid the foundation for the ATA's future growth and development. "I can't wait to implement those plans and take the organisation to new levels of membership, success and leadership," she said.

Contact centre industry veteran Fiona Keough has been appointed the CEO of industry association the ATA.

In her time as interim ATA CEO, Keough has guided the association through a challenging four months, impressing the ATA Board with her capacity to lead, inspire and innovate. "The board needed to adopt a process in order to appoint the next CEO of the ATA and, on this basis, consulted with a number of industry recruitment specialists, outlining the key attributes and competencies the role required," acting ATA chairman Malcolm Angell said.

"We initially appointed Fiona to assist us while we went through our process. To say she has impressed the board with her performance would be an understatement," Angell said. In accepting the role, Fiona Keough said the ATA board and national office, in consultation with the state chapters, have laid the foundation for the ATA's future growth and development. "I can't wait to implement those plans and take the organisation to new levels of membership, success and leadership," she said.

A German contact centre is offering frustrated people a new swearing hotline to blow off steam by abusing an operator at the other end.

The "Schimpf-los" ("swear away") service was created by two German entrepreneurs who realised everyday people need an outlet to release their pent-up frustrations. "With us you can blow off steam, no strings attached. We don't judge people who are angry," co-creator Ralf Schulte told reporters.

When callers find themselves lost for words, customer service operators goad them with provocations such as, "That's the third time I've heard that today - is that all you've got?" The service costs 1.49 euros (US$1.85) a minute.

Regional New Zealand's Hamilton Airport has introduced online booking for its car parking, making it the first regional airport in New Zealand to offer the service.

The airport is using Chauntry's Parkspace system, which allows it to offer customers the convenience of online booking without making additional investment in infrastructure or technology. Airport users can access the automated car park booking service directly from the airport's website.

The Chauntry system, supported by a dedicated customer service team, is also used by Auckland and Wellington airports, New Zealand's main international hubs. "We are extremely pleased to see this in operation at an airport such as Hamilton, because it demonstrates that regional airports with a clear focus on service and commercial growth can achieve their objectives with the right partners in place," said Chauntry CEO Theresa Hughes.

Interactive Intelligence has signed a purchase agreement to acquire Bay Bridge Decision Technologies, a U.S. supplier of contact centre forecasting, capacity planning and strategic analysis technology.

Bay Bridge's long-term forecasting and planning technology helps contact centres optimise delivery strategies, agent resources, and performance by getting the right number of agents, in the right place, at the right time, to deliver better service. "This acquisition enables us to bridge the gap between our basic workforce management features, and the advanced forecasting and planning capabilities in the Bay Bridge products, so we can now offer a true strategic planning solution for mid-size and large contact centers," said Interactive Intelligence founder and CEO, Dr. Donald E. Brown.

Bay Bridge is a privately-held company founded in 2000. Interactive Intelligence purchased the company in an all-cash transaction effective Aug. 1, 2012.

The New Zealand Labour Party says massive redundancies at the Internal Revenue Department have taken a huge toll on frontline customer service.

"The IRD plays a critical role in maintaining the overall health of the economy and yet we've got people waiting for hours to have their calls answered, with many giving up completely," Labour's State Services spokesperson Chris Hipkins said. "In the past four years the IRD has dished out over $31 million in redundancy payments. Clearly that's having an impact on its customer service record, particularly in the regions."

Hipkins said statistics show that people are waiting for two and a half hours just to have their phone calls answered by the IRD's contact centre. "Increasing numbers of Kiwis are getting so frustrated they're just giving up completely. Last year over one million people hung up before their call had been answered. A further 260,000 gave up after being placed on hold."

The Chinese contact center market is expected to overtake Australia as Asia Pacific's second most lucrative after India by 2017.

The Chinese market reported a total revenue of US$116.8 million in 2010 and will be worth US$255 million by 2017. Much of the revenue over the next three years will come from system upgrading and expansion activities by existing customers.

Lu Shui Shan of consultants Frost & Sullivan said another driver for growth in China is the increasing awareness and adoption rate of advanced applications such as work force management, speech technology and other multi-media applications. Also, the increasing demand of other unified communications solutions will drive the market in the long run, while, local vendors use relatively low pricing to attract a larger number of customers.

Australian Stock Exchange company ASX Limited says it experienced a 45-minute wait on a help desk line when its trading system crashed on October 27.

As part of the regular supervision reports the Australian Securities & Investments Commission produces on the ASX, it was revealed that when the ASX system failed just after trading opened at 10.05am, it called service provider NASDAQ-OMX's overseas help desk. But "while contact with NOMX was initiated within 15 minutes of the incident occurring, it took over 45 minutes for a NOMX support person with a requisite understanding of the trading system's underlying code . . . to be brought in to assist", the report said.

The help desk is understood to have been either in New York or Stockholm. The outage ended up lasting four hours on what was also an options expiry day, causing extra difficulty. In its report, ASIC said it had asked the ASX to make sure its service provider had an office in Australia to shorten the response time.

The Australian Grand Prix Corporation (AGPC) hopes to improve customer service and efficiency with new Sage ERP Accpac and Sage CRM solutions.

The integrated software is being used to manage the AGPC's substantial annual budget and will contain all data relating to corporate customer sales and sponsorship relationships. It has replaced separate financial and customer relationship management (CRM) packages, and numerous independent spreadsheets.

The AGPC is the statutory authority responsible for both the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix, and the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix. As a government agency, "corporate customer data is crucial as the corporation derives a significant proportion of revenue from the sale of corporate entertainment packages and corporate sponsorships for each event."

A team from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) will visit India later this year to evaluate standards of Indian customer service and IT providers amid their growing role in overseeing functions for the country's largest four banks.

An APRA spokesman told the Australian Financial Review that all new and existing outsourcing arrangements must adhere to Prudential Standard CPS 231, which came into force on July 1, and ensure that APRA has access to the offshore operations relevant to all Australian lenders. According to the report by the Australian Financial Review, the team will assess the operations of companies that outsource for the financial services players, the Indian operations of other multinational IT suppliers, and the ring-fenced operations of Australian institutions, such as ANZ Banking Group.

The APRA team will travel to India in the final quarter of 2012 under the leadership of the head of IT risk, David Pegrem. Commonwealth Bank of Australia technology chief Michael Harte said CBA had been involved in outsourcing and off-shoring activities for more than 14 years, and that APRA's wish to monitor the situation on the ground should be applauded.

Consumer electronics company Bush Australia has outsourced its warranty after-market service business in Australia to Dutch company Teleplan.

Teleplan has developed a centralised service solution for Bush Australia which will be fulfilled by Teleplan's operations in Sydney. The in-warranty service solution encompasses customer contact centres, logistics, swaps, refurbishment and repair.

Teleplan said Bush Australia realised its customer satisfaction can be improved through its after-market services and chose Teleplan because of its track record with leading manufacturers of electronics. "We understand our customers' needs and look forward to provide a pleasing service in the future. Teleplan will play a key role in this process as our newly selected service partner", Bush Australia MD Daniel Todd said.

The Chinese contact centre market is expected to overtake Australia as Asia Pacific's second most lucrative industry by 2017.

The Chinese market reported a total revenue of US$116.8 million in 2010 and will be worth US$255 million by 2017. Much of the revenue over the next three years will come from system upgrading and expansion activities by existing customers.

Lu Shui Shan of consultants Frost & Sullivan said another driver for growth in China is the increasing awareness and adoption rate of advanced applications such as work force management, speech technology and other multi-media applications. Also, the increasing demand of other unified communications solutions will drive the market in the long run, while, local vendors use relatively low pricing to attract a larger number of customers.

The Fairfax newspapers group reportedly plans to outsource some customer service operations as part of its cost cutting strategy.

The Crikey.com news website reports that Fairfax will put some of its inbound and outbound customer service operations out to tender later this month. While Fairfax has not revealed which teams' tasks will be outsourced, Crikey says it's clear some contact centre staff will lose their jobs.

Fairfax has announced it will cut 1,900 jobs as part of a restructure designed to address falling revenue in the traditional media industry. Some 60% of the job cuts are expected to come from outside the company's editorial and printing press employees.

Foreign travelers have a very mixed view of Australians and their service, according to advertising and brand specialist Russel Howcroft.

Howcroft chief executive of Y&R Brands and a regular on television's The Gruen Transfer, told the National Tourism and Events Excellence Conference in Melbourne new global research on Brand Australia weren't particularly encouraging. The research indicated that, while Americans see Australians as carefree and rugged, they don't think Australians deliver quality or good value. Chinese think Australians are "stylish and classy", but not very helpful, while Indians feel Aussies are daring but also arrogant. The British, meanwhile, see Aussies as "charming and independent", but untrustworthy.

Howcroft said 80% of foreign markets viewed Australia as "different", 60% had knowledge of the country, half thought Australia was relevant to them but only 30% held Australia in high esteem. With the high Australian dollar and the cost of coming to Australia Howcroft said the quality of Australia's "the product just isn't up to it, according to much of the feedback I've been getting for years." "So much of the 'product' is what we call service. It's not rocket surgery. In my opinion, too many people in the customer service side of tourism are being dragged in off the street without specialist training. And it just doesn't cut it for the industry to be whingeing about the mining industry stealing all its best staff."

Interactive Intelligence has partnered with TechnologyOne to deliver a combined unified IP business communications and CRM solution to Australian and New Zealand public sector organisations.

The companies say the integrated solution being developed will help streamline communications and provide an enhanced customer experience by embedding Interactive Intelligence features, such as click-to- dial and presence management, within TechnologyOne's CRM application. "Our integrated solution will give contact centre agents a single interface to manage both customer interactions and information for faster, more effective service," said Interactive Intelligence MD for Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Brendan Maree.

TechnologyOne will offer the joint solution to its public sector customers, which include Australian and New Zealand education departments, as well as local, state and federal government councils. "Our partnership with Interactive Intelligence will benefit public sector customers who want more business value delivered by fewer vendors," said TechnologyOne Executive Chairman Adrian Di Marco.

KANA Software a global leader in customer service solutions has acquired the award-winning process-based contact centre provider Ciboodle from the Sword Group.

The Ciboodle acquisition adds new complementary product offerings and industry expertise, extending and enhancing the overall KANA value proposition - particularly around agent desktop, business process and case management in the contact centre, and social CRM communities on the web - and comes on the heels of KANA's acquisition of Trinicom, a provider of cloud-based web customer service and customer interaction management, announced April 2012, which expanded the company's market reach to mid-sized businesses globally via software-as-a-service (SaaS).

"KANA is creating a new global customer service leader that is increasingly the choice for mid-sized and large enterprises alike," said KANA President and CEO Mark Duffell. "With the acquisition of Ciboodle, we are bringing together two significant enterprise players in the customer experience management arena with strengths in depth for both the contact centre and for web customer service."
Continuing to operate under the KANA name, the newly combined entity will have more employees and office locations across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific from which to support a growing base of customers numbering some 900 organisations.

Technology consulting and services company Kiandra IT has been recognised for outstanding customer service, winning the Service Excellence Award at Australian Business Awards.

The Australian Business Awards encompass the private, public and non-profit sector organisations in Australia with comprehensive business and product award categories. Kiandra IT MD Cameron Brookes said it was gratifying to be recognised for providing a superior customer experience, which was the foundation on which Kiandra was established.

"Being named as a winner is a reflection of our success in providing seamless IT solutions for our clients, as well as reporting strong, sustainable growth and focusing on initiatives that will drive the company into the future," he said. "This recognition belongs to the dedicated team of people we have, going above and beyond every day for our clients."

An Australian man claims he was put on hold by a Qantas customer service line for 15 hours - so long he managed to read an entire managerial textbook.

Andrew Kahn told Fairfax newspapers he phoned Qantas to confirm plans to travel to New York, and was placed in a queue with a recorded message saying someone would be with him as soon as possible. "I wanted to find out what exactly they meant would be as soon as possible," said Kahn.

After some time had elapsed the Adelaide businessman said he did not want to surrender his place in the queue and left the call rolling while he went onto other things - "surfing the net and working". The call was placed at 7.22pm on Wednesday evening and Kahn said he finally hung up at 11.01am on Thursday without speaking to anyone. "I hung up in the end simply because I had had enough," he said. Qantas declined comment, although it told the newspaper it had no record of someone being on hold for 15 hours that day and "the longest wait time was 17 minutes".

Public Transport Victoria (PTV) says customer satisfaction with Melbourne's public transport has slightly increased since December.

PTV's Customer Satisfaction Survey for the March quarter shows people are only slightly happier with tram, train and bus services compared to the end of last year. Customers ranked trains, trams and buses an average of 63 points out of 100 for this quarter. The last survey, customers ranked public transport 62.7 points.

A sample of randomly selected people were asked to rank public transport - train, tram, bus, coach and taxi services out of 10. Interviewees were asked to indicate their usual public transport usage, as well as their level of specific aspects of public transport and the service overall.

National Australia Bank has revamped its customer service systems by replacing nine PABX systems with one web-based virtual contact centre.

NAB chief information officer Adam Bennett said it was the first time in Australia that a phone-based network of its size had been replaced with a web-based virtualised system. The new system will service 3000 operators in 36 contact centres.

Bennet said NAB spent three years implementing the system at a cost of $30 million and the bank expected the virtual contact centre to save 30% of ongoing costs. He said the new system included scalability and the ability to implement virtual PABX infrastructure in a new locations immediately. "In the future agents will be able to work from other locations, including their homes," Bennett said.

Australia this month welcomed its first airlines complaints watchdog aimed at improving customer service and giving consumers a new tool to determine who to fly with.

New Airlines Customer Advocate Julia Lines says while customers should try resolve their complaint with the airline first, carriers that fail to respond to consumer complaints will now be named and shamed. The body's website went live on July 1 covering complaints regarding flight delays or cancellations, telephone or internet reservations, customer service at the airport or in-flight, baggage services.

People are also welcome to raise issues like fees and charges, safety and security, airport lounge facilities, frequent flyer program terms and conditions, discrimination and services for customers with specific needs and requests for refunds. Lines ranked to top consumer complaints as flight delays, cancellations, telephone reservation services, fees and charges, baggage services and loyalty frequent flyer schemes. Lines said "we will be reporting publicly on the complaints we receive".

Unified communications specialist Noble Systems has relocated its Sydney office to the city's CBD to better accommodate its fast-growing staff and support operations.

The regional headquarters supports clients and staff throughout the Asia Pacific, including Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Singapore. "While we didn't move very far, the new location is much bigger and better suited to our operational and training needs," said Noble Systems Australia MD Paul Luketich.

"As one of the largest and fastest-growing contact centre technology providers in the region, it was essential to find a space that met our needs while keeping us in the heart of Sydney's dynamic business community," he said. The new Sydney location is expected to meet significant training demands while maintaining sales, support and leadership functions.

Fashion chain Noni B has attributed its strong rise in profit to a focus on customer service basics.

The 30-year-old womenswear retailer expects net profit for the 2012 financial year will come in between $2.5 million and $2.7 million, up from $200,000 in 2011. Joint managing director David Kindl said the result was largely aided by improving the way store staff deal with customers and the fashions they sell.

"It's is one of the greatest differentiators we have," he told reporters. "Customers should be made to feel very welcome and be able to find something they are looking for and that fits. ... Then hopefully they will buy it and leave with a smile on their face."

The NSW government is promising improved customer service for commuters with the franchising of Sydney Ferries.

The Harbour City Ferries consortium, made up of Transfield Services and Veolia Transdev, has begun the $800 million, seven-year contract to maintain and operate the ferry services. NSW Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian said handing over the operations of the ferries had been a smooth transition.

"Customers won't notice the difference in the next few weeks," Berejiklian said. "But we're confident that they will notice the difference in the months ahead when customer service is enhanced and we provide additional parts of our great waterway."

The NSW state government will open about 100 "one-stop shops" to bypass queues and contact centres at various departments and allow people to deal with 210 state government services.

The Service NSW centres will be in cities and regional centres, with concierges greeting customers and directing them to the counter they need to do anything from renewing their driver's licence to applying for a beekeeper's permit. The centres will open from 7am to 7pm weekdays and 9am to 3pm on Saturday, accompanied by a 24-hour phone service, and a new internet portal.

Premier, Barry O'Farrell has also appointed NSW's first customer service commissioner, Mike Pratt, to oversee the service across the NSW public sector. "Increasingly, private sector organisations are moving to deliver their products and services across a range of distribution channels such as contact centres, internet and branches to make it more efficient for consumers and to improve the customer experience," Pratt said. "The citizens of NSW rightly expect their government to do likewise, and it is pleasing to see the government moving to deliver services in a much-improved and integrated manner."

Online businesses in Australia are failing to engineer their customer offerings to capitalise on the worldwide nature of the web, according to new research.

The annual Sensis e-Business Report found that while 87% of SMEs with an online presence sold goods and services to local customers, overseas customers made up just 5% of their main e-commerce customer group. Some 27% of SMEs reported at least some sales to overseas customers, unchanged from the previous year.

Report author Christena Singh said the report showed that Australian small business were grappling with how to use the internet to target overseas customers. "If small businesses want to make the most of the new world of mobile and internet-enabled customers, they really need to think strategically and put in place a strong digital business plan."

Telco Optus has won an award for demonstrated excellence in Consumer Commitment to Customer Service at the industry ACOMM Awards with its new web chat service.

The Optus web chat is a customer service offering which facilitates interaction online with customers and resolution of their enquiries in a live chat environment. Optus' Vicki Brady said the service has increased chat engagement with customers by more than 600% between April 2011 and February this year.

The service team has increased its chat engagement to almost 34,000 customers each month compared to 4,000 customers a year ago, Brady said. She said web chat provides "a greater level of convenience and control for customers seeking assistance with their products and services," and delivers a "personal, proactive approach to first contact resolution."

QantasLink, the regional division of national carrier Qantas, has opened a new lounge and customer service facility at Brisbane's Domestic Terminal.

The new lounge offers access to two additional boarding gates, an easy-to-locate customer service desk and seating for 150 guests. QantasLink executive manager John Gissing said the gate lounge is a symbol of the strength the airline has garnered from the growing domestic market in recent years.

"QantasLink is committed to Brisbane as it is the gateway to 13 QantasLink destinations in Queensland which support the state's booming resource sector and world class tourism destinations," Gissing said. QantasLink is also celebrating being named Air Transport World's Regional Airline of the Year 2012' by launching a new element to its aircraft livery.

Placard-bearing protestors have signed a petition and a letter addressed to Brisbane's mayor demanding the council reverse its decision to close its Inala, Wynnum and Garden City customer service centres.

The cost cutting measure will slash frontline services such as settling rates, dog registrations and building searches, protesters said, adding the decision fails to recognise the growing aged population and non-English speaking residents who don't have access to the internet, credit or debit cards and readily available transport. Richlands Ward Councillor Milton Dick, who represents Inala, said his constituents needed access to council support, especially when 10 out of 11 suburbs in his area were paying some of the city's highest rates.

"This is a massive blow to our community and it means that some of our most vulnerable residents will have to travel further to pay their rates, dog registrations and to complete pensioner remission forms," Dick said. Brisbane Lifestyle Chairman Krista Adams said Council announced the consolidation of the three offices with its regional business centres at a budget meeting late last month.

SugarCRM has announced the addition of 12 new technology partners in Australia and New Zealand to sell, deploy and provide support for the SugarCRM customer care product suite.

SugarCRM has doubled the number of its ANZ channel partners since its Sydney office was established in June 2011, and has over 400 channel partners worldwide. The 12 new channel partners include: Baseline, Task Exchange, CloudTech, Holistec, Nexright, Genix, Evolution Marketing, Acceler8 and ISW who are an IBM Premier Partner.

SugarCRM ANZ MD Tony Hughes said the local expansion in SugarCRM's channel partner program is an important component of the company's aggressive growth plans this year. "On top of adding new channel partners to the mix, we will also be bringing on new employees to grow our business in the Asia Pacific region. We're looking forward to keeping our strong momentum going," Hughes said.

A Tasmanian parenting helpline says it is expanding its availability by transferring some calls to a 24-hour interstate contact centre.

News of the outsourced parent helpline comes as a national survey revealed one in five Australian mothers of children under the age of two has depression. Health Department deputy secretary for children Associate Professor Des Graham said the Tasmanian government used the national call centre, Health Direct, to "extend the hours and operation of the Tasmanian Parent Helpline".

"Since this is a phone-based service, the most important consideration is the quality of the service, not its location," Graham said. "All messages are treated seriously and responded to," he said. "Less urgent calls are referred back to the Child Health and Parenting Service in Tasmania, where appropriately trained and experienced staff can deliver an appropriate response."

Telstra chief David Thodey says retailers need to get back to basics and improve their service rather than blame their problems on the rise of online shopping.

"I think retailers need to be very careful that they don't just say it's all gone to an online world because that's not true," Thodey said. "There's still that experience in the shop that's really important."

Thodey did, however, concede the internet is changing the way Australians shop, posing challenges for traditional retailers. "People now when they're in a store will have their mobile phone with them and actually go and look at pricing or what's available on their mobile phone as well as having that retail presence experience," he said.

Virgin Australia has sent its cabin crew into a program called Elevate which includes an etiquette class designed to enhance the airline's customer service for business customers.

The program that covers everything from grooming, body language and wine-appreciate, stems from an effort to try and gain business customers from Qantas. Among the changes, the air crew has been asked to stop calling passengers, "mate" unless the passenger has given consent in the airline database and is a frequent flyer.

Virgin Australia group executive Mark Hassell has taken out the pool table in the Melbourne Airport lounge and replaced it with coffee baristas and a buffet to attract business clients. "We want to retain of the spirit that exists within Virgin service style and service behaviour, but put it in a context that is equally relevant for business-purpose and corporate travelers," he told reporters. Earlier this year flight attendants were also given whisper classes in which they learn to whisper in a calming way for Upper Class passengers.

Vodafone Hutchison Australia's (VHA) has pledged to improve its service in a bid to stem the exodus of customers from the mobile phone company.

VHA lost another 178,000 customers in the first half of its 2012 financial year, reducing its total customer base to 6.8 million. "These results speak very clearly to a need to refocus on the quality and consistency of the experience we deliver to our customers," VHA CEO Bill Morrow said in a statement.

"Our customers can expect to experience improvements in the network and customer service throughout the remainder of 2012, and we will make further announcements on our 4G (LTE) plans for next year," Morrow said. VHA has been struggling to overcome negative perceptions about its mobile phone service in Australia, amid network faults and claims of poor customer service. The company says a renewed focus on customer service has already led to a reduction in the number of complaints to the telecommunications ombudsman.

New customers service standards have been developed and launched by Whyalla City Council to ensure residents and customers continue to receive an improved level of service.

The new program details a clear level of service with associated timeframe to address enquiries and service requests. Whyalla City Council CEO Peter Peppin said it was essential that the council provided certainty of service delivery times to its clients. "Over the centuries we have seen the agricultural, industrial and technological revolutions and I see the 21st century as the customer revolution where customers rightly expect a high level of service coupled with a suitable turnaround time framework," Peppin said. "It is hoped that many requests could be finished through a one-shop approach."

Peppin emphasised that the new standards would not be a document "just sitting on the shelf", but would be promoted throughout its workforce and the community. "A report will be presented to council every three months indicating the level of compliance achieved in relation to the various new standards as part of its quarterly budget review process, with outcomes also included in council's annual report," Peppin said.

Supermarket retailer Woolworths will extend its insurance offering, promising an easy to understand approach to customer service.

Woolworths entered the insurance space in August last year with life and pet insurance, and will now add car and travel cover. The company has pledged to make its policies easy to understand, using everyday language and a simple three-step application process.

Woolworths head of insurance George Hughes told reporters that the company wanted to "make insurance easy, accessible and affordable for our customers." "Our first step into the sector with Pet and Life Insurance has been very successful and has exceeded our expectations."

Some 40% of Australians consumers feel that businesses fail to meet their expectations, according to new research.

The latest American Express Global Customer Service Barometer shows that Australians would happily spend, on average, an extra 12% if it meant they received better service. The study also found that two- thirds of consumers have abandoned a purchase because of a poor service experience in the past year, but more than half have spent more with a company because of a history of positive customer service experiences.

American Express Australia MD Lisa Vehrenkamp said the survey was a wake-up call for Australia that customers were not feeling appreciated and businesses were missing out. "With businesses competing for sales at a time when consumers are shopping around for the best deal, outstanding customer service can be the deciding factor in getting customers through the door," she said. Vehrenkamp said the tough economy over the past three years meant businesses often felt obliged to cut back on training staff to deliver good customer service, which ultimately further damaged their business.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) today revealed it will take on the likes of Apple and PayPal in the next generation payments market with the launch of its own Point-of-Sale (POS) tablet and iPhone attachments.

As reported by FST Media, CBA will provide the solution directly to retailers in a bid to bypass EFTPOS machines and other third party POS devices. The hardware consists of an Android 4.0-based tablet, called Albert, and an iPhone attachment called Leo. Both can accept credit card and Near Field Communications (NFC) payments and are fully mobile with 3G and WiFi technology built in as standard. Other hardware features include a camera for QR and barcode reading, and optional printers for receipts.

The bank also developed an application ecosystem called Pi, in collaboration with IDEO, which is open to third party developers to create a wide range of customised applications to meet the needs of different retail verticals. Ten applications have already been developed including a restaurant bill-split application, a loyalty club and a Small-to -Medium Enterprise (SME) analytics tool that will allow businesses to drill down into what credit cards customers are using and where they are located. "If there are no solutions on the market to resolve your needs, you need to make them," says Rosmarin. "Forty- six per cent of customer payments are at POS, and we needed to find efficiencies there. Customers want better customer experience, more personalised interaction, more security and they want to see intuitive technology."

US CRM agency Merkle has expanded its mobile customer service offering with the acquisition of Australian-founded 5th Finger.

5th Finger, founded in 2000 in Sydney and now based in San Francisco, specialises in mobile tools, as well as media and marketing for retail and pharmaceutical clients. Among its achievements is the development of a mobile platform called "RedShop" to create mobile websites and apps and tablet commerce, with differing products tailored to retail and the drug category.

"Our intent is to extend [5th Finger] to other verticals Merkle has expertise in," Merkle's Craig Dempster said. This is the third acquisition for Merkle in recent years after the purchase of Facebook marketing specialist Social Amp agency Impaqt.

Gympie's taxi company has returned its contact centre to the regional Queensland city in a bid to improve customer service.

Golden City Cabs managing director Jackie Fallon said shareholders in the business decided to revert back to a Gympie contact centre after 10 years of outsourcing to an out-of-town centre. Fallon said the move was all about improving customer service to Gympie residents after the business found that using an outsourced contact centre had hampered its ability to give great service to the local consumers.

"Our calls have dropped over the 10 years," Fallon said. "We found a lot of times the calls were made but the taxi never arrived and we couldn't do anything about it.... People couldn't rely on us." Fallon said the new call centre would allow the business to take back control. The new centre will cost the business more money, but she said it was worth it to be able to give personalised service again.

The ability of businesses to offer live chat customer service has become a real differentiator in the market, according to an industry commentator.

David Twigg of Brisbane-based Online Marketing Consultants told reporters that consumers generally have plenty of questions when they're looking to make a purchase." Good websites should be answering most of those, but no website will either be answering all questions or have every answer easily accessible," Twiggs said.

"Live Chat is a great innovation that not only stops customers drifting off to the competition but ingratiates great customer loyalty simply by the fact that you have offered that level of support. He said it also allows live chat operators to upsell by discussing differences and benefits of a higher priced offering.

Virgin Australia's customer service has won two major honours at the 2012 Skytrax World Airline Awards.

Virgin won the Best Staff Service award for Asia Pacific, as well as picking up the coveted Best Airline award at a ceremony in London. The awards were in recognition of Virgin's agility in beating established carriers to the award and for product and service that "clearly impressed passengers". The World Airline Awards are decided on by airline passengers from around the world, who judge their end- to-end airline experience in a voluntary survey.

Virgin Australia's Mark Hassell said the win was in part due to the carrier's recent branding refresh and repositioning. "Over the past eighteen months, we have introduced a range of new product and service initiatives designed to enhance the travel experience and we are pleased that they are making a real difference for our guests", Hassell said.

TelstraClear's Manila-based contact centre looks likely to be returned to New Zealand under the telco's proposed takeover by Vodafone New Zealand.

Vodafone NZ, the country's largest mobile operator, is set to acquire TelstraClear, the New Zealand subsidiary of the Australia-based Telstra Corporation, in a NZ$840m cash transaction. The acquisition will include TelstraClear's voice and data services, network infrastructure and customer base in New Zealand. The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2012, subject to regulatory approvals.

Vodafone NZ CEO Russell Stanners, who will lead the combined company, told reporters that TelstraClear's offshoring would likely come to an end. "New Zealanders like to be serviced by New Zealand people," Stanners said. Last month, Vodafone previously confirmed its support for local service, announcing it would bring 100 technical roles, currently handled in India, back to New Zealand.

Cloud-based help desk software Zendesk has announced its Facebook solution now supports private messages.

The extension will allow companies to engage in private conversations about customer service issues without leaving the Zendesk interface. While more than 900 million people create 3.2 billion interactions on Facebook each day, customers do not always want their customer service conversations to be public.

"Communicating with customers via social media has created a fundamental shift in customer service," said Zendesk's JD Peterson. "There is a new generation of consumers who spend time on Facebook and use Private Messages as a replacement for email. Companies need to serve these customers just as they would on the phone or by email."

New Zealand phone counselling service Lifeline Aotearoa has replaced an ageing telephone system at its Auckland centre with the new Customer Interaction Center (CIC) software suite.

"We evaluated several vendors, but when we saw CIC we realised that the solution could provide Lifeline Aotearoa with critical functionality for skills-based routing as well as workforce management and enable the organisation to scale and build out its counselling service through internal control of the software," said Lifeline Aotearoa's Jody Lane. The organisation also intends to use the capabilities of Interactive Intelligence's CIC to 'hire out' the software and its own call centre staff when workloads are light.

Lifeline Aotearoa CEO Jo Denvir said: "We will also aim to increase our revenue base by tapping into CIC's new IP PBX functionality and offering contact centre resources for New Zealand business organisations requiring both inbound and outbound calling expertise at times when our call volumes are traditionally slack."

Telstra CEO David Thodey has reportedly warned his staff that the customer privacy breach that occurred over the Smart Controls scandal "must not happen again."

In a letter to staff published by websites last week, Thodey said revelations this month that Telstra had worked with Canadian software vendor Netsweeper to collect and monitor data from Next G mobile subscribers, created an "an impression that Telstra does not care enough about the privacy of our customers". "Our customers' trust is a commodity that's both precious and fragile," he said.

Thodey said "customer privacy is not negotiable", and that "the damage to our reputation was already done" despite Telstra reacting quickly to the news of the Netsweeper scandal. He added that "some of our customers may feel we have broken their trust" and "are entitled to feel that way", and that "it will take months of hard work to win back that trust".

China Southern's Australian service has welcomed its first Australian cabin crew to boost the airline's customer service offering.

The Australian crew will help serve an expected increase in local clients as the Guangzhou-based carrier continues to expand into the Australasian market. "Our aim is to improve communication and customer service for the growing number of English-speaking passengers on flights between Australia and Guangzhou," said the airline's Sydney-based HR development project manager Jane Cen.

"Initially it will be one Aussie cabin crew member per flight from Sydney and our main hub in Guangzhou, rising to at least one in each Economy, Premium Economy, and Business and First Class as new staff are recruited and trained," Chen said. "Our plan is to continue to recruit and train local cabin crew as long as passenger feedback indicates it improves their in-flight experience."

Australian contact centre veteran Joe Tawfik is helping Arabian Gulf organisations boost their customer service as head of Bahrain-based personnel outsourcing firm Silah Gulf.

"People in this part of the world are really short changed when it comes to customer service," Tawfik told a meeting in the United Arab Emirates. "The standards are really low. The quality is nowhere near best practice and nowhere near what you would expect."

Tawfik pointed to global research that found 35% of Gulf companies don't empower their contact centre staff to use their own minds to help customers with a problem - far higher than the global average. He said that kind of strategy leaves workers feeling like robots or human dummies and can also irritate customers. Silah Gulf is operating in Bahrain and Kuwait, with plans for the UAE.

Commonwealth Bank (CBA) has extended its contact centre outsourcing arrangement with Gen-i for another five years.

Gen-i Australia MD Paul Wilson said that high volume customer service solutions require IT systems that are both exceptionally reliable and able to cope with surges in demand. Wilson said Gen-i's team help Commonwealth Bank to "seamlessly roll out new technologies which will allow more flexible working arrangements, and streamline the introduction of new client services and products".

Gen-i has been contracting to CBA since 2,000 and handles over 100 million calls each year, with high levels of self service, and intelligently routes calls to over 1,500 agent representatives. The platform is built on the Genesys suite of products. "Gen-i is assisting the Bank to move away from premise-based PBXs and call management systems toward a SIP-enabled, cloud based, intelligent call management solution," Wilson said.

IT service management provider Axios Systems has been selected by the New Zealand Department of Conservation (DOC) to optimise business process efficiency, enhance customer service and help reduce the overall costs of support services.

From this month, DOC will implement a new organisational structure including the centralisation of support functions into 'shared service centres'. Axios' assyst Service Catalogue will support the new model - providing a centralised tool for the request and management of a range of support services.

Axios' assyst will coordinate service requests between the national office, five service centres and 55 offices located around New Zealand. Around 400 staff will use the system to manage the delivery of services to approximately 1,800 internal staff.

South Australian ISP Adam Internet has recruited 24 new customer service staff to its Adelaide office.

Adam Internet executive chairman Greg Hicks said while other organisations may look to increase resources interstate or overseas, as a South Australian based company, it feels it is important to recruit from the local community. "This not only supports local employment and the local economy, but we believe enables us to provide a better service to our customers," he said.

Hicks said the recent recruitment drive Adam Internet was not just looking to increase numbers, but has been careful to select the right people to complement the existing team. Many of Adam Internet recruits have a personal interest in communications and IT, with some of the new recruits also coming from within the industry.

Telstra Global has expanded further into business cloud services with the announcement of a Virtual Contact Centre (VCC) powered by IPscape.

Telstra says the deal is for the provision of services in Asia, with the Australian rollout yet to announced. IPscape CEO Simon Burke told reporters the partnership with Telstra Global lets IPscape "focus on being a software company".

Telstra said the VCC service is the first enterprise-grade cloud application to be fully integrated into a global telecommunications portfolio. "Alongside Telstra Global's world class voice and data networks, it offers companies of all sizes access to a global multi-channel customer service experience with a single service level agreement," it said.

The Australian Centre for Health Innovation is streamlining its customer service and communications while showcasing Amcom Software's solutions.

Amcom Software's solutions will integrate with the Melbourne-based centre's nurse call and other clinical systems, Cisco phone system and wireless IP phones, as well as smartphones. The goal is to show how advanced communication technologies can help organisations deliver excellent patient care while enhancing clinician and staff effectiveness.

"When lives are on the line, being able to demonstrate full-scale, real-life implementations of communications technologies in action can provide an exceptional way to showcase the effective, creative ways we've developed to solve customer's problems," said Amcom Software, Asia-Pacific GM John Jordan. "The Australian Centre for Health Innovation is a great way for us to do that and help make decisions easier for healthcare administrators and managers."

American security software company XYPRO Technology Corporation has opened an Australian office offering sales, support and around-the-clock customer service.

"Having a highly skilled and expert team in place that is dedicated to meeting the sales, support and professional services needs of the Asia Pacific region is a natural step forward for us in terms of our global expansion," said XYPRO President Lisa Partridge. "We have been actively marketing and supporting customers in the region through other channels, and expect to continue our growth through our new direct presence in the region."

Partridge said the APAC region enjoys a strong demand for the HP Integrity NonStop Server, on which our XYGATE Merged Audit solution is shipped, and we are now seeing a strong demand for other XYPRO products and services in the market. "Our stronger presence in the APAC region will serve that demand."

Australian companies struggle to get the most out of their social media strategy, while others have more costly mistakes, inadvertently engendering ill will from customers, according to a new survey.

A Telsyte survey found that between 13% and 17% of staff time on public social networks is spent on customer feedback and interaction, suggesting companies have been quick to recognise the need for a social media presence that also serves as a conduit for customer service and expectations. "Companies are happy to market their wares through social channels, but they also take the user commentary seriously," said Telsyte senior analyst Rodney Gedda.

Gedda predicts the Australian market will see social media play a deeper role in how companies do business from this year onward. But organisations are warned that turning to social media can just as easily invite negative comments if the brand or offering is not right. "You have to take the good with the bad and don't expect a social or technological paradigm shift to cure all your company cancers."

Australia Post and Telstra will collaborate to develop an Australia Post Digital MailBox product to help promote and aid self-service customer care.

Acting like a digital vault for documents, the MailBox app is to feature 'bank-level security' to ensure customers wanting to pay bills, store files and receive emails can do so safely. The two organisations say the service will help users find documents and set reminders for bill payments, while the agreement between the two entities would see Australia Post offer Telstra customers access to the company's communication documents such as account statements and bills in the MailBox.

Australia Post CEO Ahmed Fahour said the development of the product aimed to increase Australia Post's market share. "If you go back a generation, Australia Post had a true monopoly on written communication," Fahour said. "Today, we have less than 1 per cent market share. We know that we need to offer a digital communication channel, simply because that is how citizens increasingly prefer to communicate."

Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) has selected an authentication framework from US company Entrust to provide security for its new line of consumer-banking applications on Apple and Android mobile platforms.

"Mobile devices are doing more and more heavy lifting in the digital lives of consumers and this includes conducting highly sensitive financial transactions," said BNZ's Nick Fantham. "By embedding the security credential within the mobile application, we have maintained a high level of security and sped up the login process significantly."

The Entrust IdentityGuard authentication framework and software development kit deploy soft-token authentication in BNZ's mobile applications. The one-time passcode authentication process takes place instantaneously and without the need for end-user interaction or involvement. Since launching its mobile apps, Bank of New Zealand has seen login volumes grow by some 250% in a very short timeframe.

$19.4 billion financial services company, Citibank, serving more than 100 million customers in 40 countries has integrated LivePerson chat to improve customer service.

Citibank wanted to find a way to initiate dialogues between Citi customer service agents and customers and actually resolve issues via social media sites. "When we looked at banks and social, they all looked alike. The whole challenge was differentiating the service we provide to customers," Frank Eliason, senior vice president of social media at Citibank. Using LivePerson chat integration, an online engagement solution that facilitates live chats within Twitter, Citi customers are brought to a secure chat within Citi's website and can start discussing whatever issue they have with the agent.

Citi says it speaks with about 160 customers each week in conversations that originated on Twitter. Eliason says that although the number of customer interactions is about the same as before the LivePerson integration, more interactions are being resolved. "The interactions were more phone tag. We're getting in touch with the customer the way they want. It's something that's easier and fits the customer's style," he said.

Online auction site eBay Australia is revamping its customer service and help site to replace automated agent 'Emma' introduced by the company last year.

eBay revealed the plans in an announcement board post that a revamped customer service page is gradually being introduced, with the rollout to be completed next month. "Emma was retired because she was past her prime," an eBay Australia spokesperson told reporters.

The new customer site will feature a simplified design, as well as an enhanced option to ask an eBay representative to call you, complete with an estimate of how long that will take.

Genesys has announced the integration of Klout Score within its Genesys Social Engagement solution to allow organisations to better manage social media customer service.

By integrating Klout Score capabilities, social media and other customer service interactions can be prioritised by the customer's social media status and sent to the best available resource for resolution. For example, customers with a high social media status and influence based upon their Klout Score should be aligned with a specialised or social savvy customer service agent.

Klout Scores are a key indicator about an individual's social media status and influence and are rated on a scale between 1 and 100. Klout Scores are calculated using variables that include an individual's number of followers, frequency of updates, the Klout Scores of their friends and followers, and the number of likes, retweets, and shares. "By incorporating Klout within Genesys Social Engagement, we're empowering social savvy enterprises to engage their customers in a new conversation based upon business value and social influence," said Genesys' Merijn te Booij.

Telecom New Zealand's ICT division Gen-I has introduced a new managed end-to-end unified communications solution based on Microsoft's Lync platform.

The managed service is designed to boost customer service and solve the communications needs of government agencies and businesses, while reducing ongoing operational costs. "When speaking with the leaders of government agencies around Australia, I often hear that they are looking to significantly speed up the introduction of new frontline services, while improving employee productivity and getting the most from their existing systems," Gen-i Australia MD Paul Wilson said.

The solution is managed and supported by Gen i's 24 x 7 service desk to agreed service levels. "Gen-i has invested heavily to build our local Australian team over the last 12 years. Implementing and supporting unified communications projects requires technical expertise across networking, security, and desktop computing infrastructure," Wilson said.

Media reports say Housing New Zealand has had to hire almost the same number of customer service staff to run its new contact centre as it made redundant to set up its "more efficient" system.

The state corporation changed the way it operated in April, shutting its local office doors to its 200,000 tenants and members of the public with accommodation emergencies, and directing inquiries through a new customer service centre. The changes led to 70 frontline customer service positions being axed.

The centre was touted as being able to cope with 1million calls a year but has failed to keep up with demand after receiving 119,000 calls in April alone, 53,000 of which went unanswered. Housing NZ has apologised for waiting times of up to 40 minutes, although Housing Minister Phil Heatley has said the average waiting time was about eight minutes.

Interactive Intelligence has introduced a new software platform to help Businesses looking to develop their mobile customer service via smartphones.

Interaction Mobilizer enables organisations to brand their own mobile applications then publish them on the appropriate app store - Android, Apple, Microsoft etc - or offer them from their own corporate websites for users to download. Customers can log on using their Facebook ID, or using company-supplied credentials.

As well as performing integrated tasks in the app, users can request a call-back from a service representative, and be updated as to when this will occur. In these cases the customer services agent is automatically provided with contextual information such as the customer's name and what device they are using. Chat, text messaging and video will all be supported in future versions. "Customers are demanding more efficient ways to use their mobile devices for business transactions," said Interactive Intelligence CEO Dr Donald E Brown.

InterGlobe Technologies (IGT) has expanded its customer service outsourcing relationship with online travel company Webjet.

IGT has been providing contact centre services to Webjet customers in Australia and New Zealand since 2007. Under the new arrangement, IGT has expanded its back office support to boost the hospitality services of Webjet.

"We have been associated with Webjet for over four years now. We are delighted to take this alliance a step further by supporting Webjet's customer experience in the hospitality domain," InterGlobe CEO Vipul Doshi said. Webjet enables customers to search, compare and book domestic and international flights, travel insurance, car hire and hotel accommodation.

Sydney's Kogarah Council has given itself permission to upgrade its former two-storey library site to incorporate a customer service centre.

The structure of the unoccupied building will remain, but internal changes will bring it in line with Australian Standards. Kogarah Council's customer service centre on nearby Railway Parade will move to the renovated centre once work is complete.

The customer service centre will be located on the top floor while ground floor space will be made available for the Cancer Council. A "green roof" featuring plants will be part of the renovation, though the roof will not be accessible to the public.

Social customer experience specialist Lithium Technologies has announced the official opening of its Sydney office focused on the Australia-New Zealand market.

The new Australian office coincides with the opening of Lithium's Singapore regional headquarters, which together affirms the company's "strong commitment to growing its Asia-Pacific business". The company also announced that Indosat, Indonesia's leading telecommunications network and service provider, has signed Lithium to deliver a social community to its consumers and fans. Indosat joins a strong roster of existing Lithium clients in the region including Optus, Telstra and Vodafone Australia.

"Social, mobile and cloud have changed how companies must deliver the customer experience," said Lithium President and Chief Executive Officer Rob Tarkoff. "Consumers in Asia-Pacific are incredibly connected and their adoption of social, mobile and cloud technologies will clearly surpass that of other geographies."

The New Zealand arm of global outsourcer Sitel is setting up a new customer service centre in Auckland.

Sitel is reportedly looking to hire more than 230 staff within three weeks to service a travel industry operator. BusinessDay reports the initial head count is expected to include 176 customer service and 55 support positions, all full-time roles.

It sites industry sources as suggesting the contact centre staff numbers could climb to as many as 500, depending on how the operation goes. The news comes as New Zealand's unemployment rate for the first quarter of 2012 rose to 6.7%, up from 6.4% the previous quarter.

In a case for multichannel strategies, new research has found customer uses on average six different customer service channels to contact their service providers.

The NICE 2012 Consumer Channel Preference Survey found 86% of respondents said that, on average, they are interacting more often or at the same level with companies as they did a year ago. Nearly 30% of respondents visit company websites at least once a week, making them the most widely-used channel for customers seeking assistance from service providers.

Meanwhile, 43% of respondents complained that web self-service does not lend itself to complex tasks, and it takes too long to find information. "The empowered customer who uses more channels, more often, is in effect creating a Big Data challenge and opportunity for businesses," said Benny Einhorn, NICE's chief marketing officer. Companies will be challenged to surface insights hidden in the large amounts of structured and unstructured data derived from customer interactions and use those insights to improve customer experience, Einhorn said.

Telstra is reportedly looking to offshore a slice of its customer service operations to an Asian partner to cut costs and simplify its business.

The telco has decided to outsource its credit management contact centre, which deals with unpaid bills and customer finance facilities, The Australian newspaper reports. The shift is expected to affect a total of 165 Telstra employees and a further 159 contractors with the closure of a Brisbane customer service centre and downsizing in Sydney and Melbourne.

Telstra says it has commenced consultation with employees and unions to discuss the changes. "These are difficult changes to make and we don't take them lightly but they are necessary as we strive to simplify our business and improve customer service," a Telstra spokeswoman said.

Telstra has won a contract to manage all telephone, data and contact centre services for the federal Department of Human Services.

The single-carrier model consolidates 20 existing contracts and is expected to save money and simplify services between the department's agencies. The department serves 40,000 clients through Centrelink, Medicare, Child Support, Commonwealth Rehabilitation Services and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Telstra will change phone numbers for some contact centres from 13 numbers - which incur costs from fixed lines and mobiles - to 1800 numbers, which incur costs from mobiles but are free to call from landlines. But only Telstra's mobile customers will get free calls to income management and child protection, BasicsCard, rural agent and ABSTUDY call centres. Clients who use other carriers will have to pay.

Global wine company Treasury Wine Estates (TWE), has boosted its customer service and cut delivery times from weeks to days through the implementation of a new cloud-based CRM system.

TWE field sales director Darren Campbell told reporters that prior to the implementation of Salesforce.com's Sales Cloud application in late 2011, customers of the global wine company, such as Woolworths, Dan Murphy's, restaurants and hotels, could be waiting up to two weeks for their wine orders to arrive. Now, with the new system in place, customers can place orders with a contact centre or via a smartphone-enabled TWE sales representative and have their orders turned around, within metropolitan areas, inside 24 hours.

"The sales representatives now go out and input information about our customers into the CRM, we can analyse that information and provide solutions for customers," Campbell said. "For example, the customer may have an allocation of 10 cases, but they've only got three cases in stock. People in the business may use the Chatter function to make an alert for the remaining seven cases which our field sales team will action."

Virtual Hold Technology (VHT) announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded the company Patent No. 8,112,069, A System & Method For Establishing Automated Call Back Using a Mobile Communication Device.

With mobile device adoption exploding, the callback technology which is integrated into VHT's new Conversation Bridge™ product, promises to enable companies to offer a more satisfying customer experience at this critical touch point, while at the same time achieving operational efficiencies.

The process provides a solution to the common customer service problem of dead-ending after exhausting self-service options in a mobile app and is also an effective alternative to calling a toll free number, starting all over and waiting on hold. The invention empowers customers to request a callback as soon as possible or allows them to schedule a callback for a more convenient time.

Vodafone will end its sponsorship deals with Cricket Australia and Australian motorsport to concentrate on building its customer service.

Triple Eight Racing have a sponsorship deal with Vodafone that ends after 2012, while Cricket Australia's 11-year relationship with the mobile carrier will expire at the conclusion of the 2012-13 season. "Our sponsorship of the Australian Test Cricket Team has delivered exceptional value and great experiences to many of our customers, so the decision to conclude the sponsorship at the end of the 2012/13 summer has not been taken lightly," said Vodafone's Noel Hamill.

"We feel that it's best to refocus our investment and attention on delivering the best possible network and service experience to our customers."

Customer service staff at utility company Western Power have been inundated as severe storms continue to lash Western Australia.

Western Power's contact centre received over 123,000 calls from midday Sunday, and had fielded a further 68,000 by 3pm Monday. The Bureau of Meteorology said that the fourth highest wind speed ever recorded occurred during Sunday's once-in-a-decade event, a 146 kph gust at the storm's peak.

The State Emergency Serviced had more than 700 calls for assistance as the result of the storm storm. About 120,000 customers had their power restored by Monday, but more than 50,000 customers remained without. Around 60 power poles are down and 270 power lines were down. Acting Western Power chief executive Paul Italiano said crews would work around the clock to fix the outages.

Westpac has turned to advanced analytics systems to "bring back the local bank manager" and rebuild personal relationships with customers.

Westpac's customer relationship marketing and digital chief, Karen Ganschow, is reportedly leading the "Know Me" program which aims to understand individuals and identify the banking products each person will need or want next. "We're already a big user of SAS analytic tools for customer data, we're now ready to deploy new marketing optimisation systems and then we'll integrate the intelligence into our key frontline tools," Ganschow told reporters.

"Using all available data, we hope to predict the kinds of products individual customers will find helpful, and put that insight into the hands of our bankers and contact centre staff," she said. Ganschow says the program involves applying "customer prioritisation leads", rather than relying on links generated from old-style marketing campaigns. But success will depend on developing appropriate engagement with individuals.

Woolworths has decided to scale back its self-service checkouts in inner-city stores to speed up customer service.

Woolworths has offered self-service checkouts since 2008 for customers in 400 retail outlets across Australia. The retailer presently has some 2000 self-service terminals across the country, which allow customers to scan, bag and pay for their own groceries.

Woolworths will now reportedly remove the self-serve checkouts from inner-city stores, such as its flagship Town Hall outlet in Sydney, to be replaced by a single-line queue. "At this stage, we are looking at reducing the number of self-serve checkouts in a very small number of stores in inner-city locations. This is all about increasing customer convenience, and getting them through the checkout in the shortest amount of time," Woolworths said in a statement.

US cloud-based customer service company [24]7 is reportedly hunting some of Australia's biggest companies.

Optus, and the local divisions of Lenovo and Avis are reportedly paying a total of around $40 million a year to [24]7, for a cloud based service developed to improve the customer experience while cutting out contact centre conversations. [24]7 CEO PV Kannan, who was in Australia last week, said his company's product is targeted mainly at larger organisations.

The company's average sized client runs a contact centre with at least 4,000 agents, but many have 15,000-20,000 agents in their contact centres. [24]7 customers pay a fee for the solution to allow a customer transaction initiated on the internet to be solved without human beings in the contact centre actually talking to the customer. "If they end up talking to a human being we don't get paid," said Kannan.

A group of young Aboriginals are gaining specialised customer service training as part of Horizon Power's new meter reading program.

Horizon energy said the new Field Services Officers employment and training program is in line with Horizon Power's Aboriginal Employment and Engagement Strategy, which is designed to deliver on its commitment to make its workforce more representative of our customer base. "And as a result, be better positioned to improve our engagement with and service delivery to Aboriginal Australians," it said.

Under the program, some 12 Aboriginal trainees will continue to receive mentoring, training and ongoing support. Horizon Power's Greg Will said the new trainees had enjoyed the training and were committed to delivering a great service to Horizon Power's customers once it was completed.

Many New Zealander restaurants believe tipping staff can lead to better customer service, according to new research.

While tipping is not a common practice in New Zealand, Auckland University of Technology senior lecturer in hospitality Marcus Pearson has completed research that indicates high-end restaurants in Auckland believe tipping has helped improve their service. "Generally in a restaurant there's 25% to 30% staff turnover - (the high end restaurants) didn't have those sorts of turnover figures. They paid a little bit more, the staff stayed longer, they became a bit more professional."

One restaurant manager interviewed for Pearson's research said tipping was an essential part of his business. "Tipping is extremely important to us, we place patrons in a good environment so it should happen. It's essential to keep good staff and promote good service."

Telstra has set up a mobile customer service centre to help ease the launch of its commercial services on the National Broadband Network (NBN) in Tasmania.

The new "Store on Wheels" provides face to face service in smaller communities where Telstra doesn't have a retail presence. "We have a long history of being on the ground locally and with our "Store on Wheels" we're taking that one step further," Telstra's Tasmania manager Michael Patterson said.

"Customers will have a lot of questions about their services on the NBN, and so they don't have to travel to talk to us, we're rolling this new store right into the heart of NBN enabled areas," Patterson added. "This is a new retail concept for Telstra and the first of its kind in Australia." Telstra's latest home phone and broadband bundles, which were launched earlier this year, are now available to households in regional NBN enabled areas in Triabunna and Sorell, along with other locations as they become ready for service.

Vodafone's mobile phone network has received 21 complaints for every 100 customers according to a new international review of Australia's mobile networks.

The rankings focused on consumer experiences in 10 key areas including drop-outs, late text messages and problems with accessing the internet from smartphones. Telstra was named best mobile carrier in all categories, while Optus was beaten by Virgin Mobile.

The research stated both Optus and Vodafone had to improve, but noted while network was considered most important, price and customer service could alter rankings. A Vodafone spokesman told reporters the data had been collated before significant improvements had been made at the telco in the past two months.

New Zealand contact centre software specialist Zeacom Group has been bought by Canada's Enghouse Systems for US$30.6 million.

Enghouse Systems is a provider of enterprise software solutions serving a variety of vertical markets. The company says its strategy is to grow and diversify through "strategic acquisitions and managed growth". Stephen Sadler, chairman and CEO of Enghouse says in a statement that Zeacom will help Enghouse address the small to medium business market more effectively and extend its reach into new territories.

Zeacom founder Miles Valentine will stay with the company as regional president of Zeacom and will remain based in Auckland, as will the 90 Zeacom staff currently employed there. "There's been very little change anywhere," Valentine said. "The main impact has been in the senior leadership team where we had overlap."

US airports are employing holograms of humans to assist frazzled travelers.

Fliers dragging luggage through JFK and LaGuardia airports in New York City and Newark airport in New Jersey will be treated to "computerised, hologram-like avatars" working alongside busy human employees.

The two-dimensional projection "smiles, answers questions, and can guide you to the nearest restroom or to your connecting flight," says The Associated Press. Each unit costs $250,000, but instead of making an outright purchase, The Port Authority of New York will spend $180,000 to rent five digi-helpers for a six-month period during the daunting summer travel season, when some tens of millions of people will pass through its three airports. Watch demo here.

Commonwealth Bank's Kaching customer service application is set to make its appearance on Android devices in the next six weeks.

"We have made a decision to go ahead and get Kaching out there with some other features that we think people will love," said CBA's Andy Lark. The iPhone version of Kaching was released in October last year and Lark said that with every device maker releasing their "own flavour of Android" the testing needs to be done on many versions of an operating system.

"We need ubiquitous availability and standardisation of near-field to ensure that every customer in Australia and hopefully beyond can enjoy this low cost and convenient capability," CBA CIO Michael Harte said.

The federal government say's its aged care reform package Living Longer, Living Better will feature a sophisticated contact centre as its gateway.

Health and Aging minister Mark Butler said the customer service centre will allow families and potential consumers to ring in get detailed advice about options and choices in their region. "Equally older people and families would be able to do that online in a way similar to how parents access to information about schools on the My School website," Butler said.

On the question of whether the gateway should include a "physical shop front", as suggested by consumers who attended the conversations on ageing, Butler said he didn't discount it as a possibility in the future but "these things need to be stepped out sequentially so you build it in a way that lasts". "There is currently very little information available to consumer and families about providers, certainly the sort of information that people want when they're canvassing the options of aged care in their region," Butler said.

National Australia Bank will restructure its UK operations resulting in the closure of the majority of its specialised customer service financial solutions centres.

NAB will close 29 financial solutions centres in its Clydesdale and Yorkshire bank subsidiaries, and pare back its network to concentrate on northern England and Scotland. NAB chief executive Cameron Clyne said the UK was still suffering from the financial downturn and NAB's British operations would now focus mainly on retail banking and small business lending.

"We have undertaken a review of the UK banks and we continue to see a deterioration in the economy and the operating conditions," Clyne said. "There has been a double dip in the property market and the recovery has stalled."

New Zealand company Indigo Software buys US customer relationship management (CRM) software system Empower.

Indigo Software's MD, Patrick McKay said they were partly inspired by online accounting software firm Xero, with which cloud-based Empower should soon interoperate. "We decided we wanted to provide something, based in New Zealand, that we could take to the world. People talk about 'New Zealand 2.0' - with the cloud, you don't have to be based in the US or Britain to provide a world-class service," McKay said.

Deciding to focus instead on making software applications work better on mobiles, Indigo's husband and wife owners - and sales manager Rachael Staples - decided to take Indigo "to the next level". Empower is used by about 30 clients in the US, Britain, New Zealand and Australia, Staples says.

Pizza Hut will boost its customer service after reportedly becoming the first Australian customer to implement FrontRange's cloud-based of IT Service Management (ITSM) solution.

With 277 stores throughout Australia alone, Pizza Hut will leverage FrontRange's IT Service Management solution to more effectively manage and support the company's internal IT department including the implementation and execution of critical IT processes. "Having previously used a legacy, on-premise Incident Management solution, we recognised the need to introduce a more robust IT service management platform, which could offer a complete set of enterprise class ITIL based service management capabilities, beyond incident management alone", said Pizza Hut Australia's Ross Portas.

Pizza Hut decided to introduce a cloud-based solution so that it could be implemented quickly, across a number of disparate sites throughout Australia.

Australia Post has pledged its commitment to face-to-face service while rolling out a range of new customer-friendly technology.

"Nothing will ever replace face-to-face customer service - customers appreciate that human, face-to -face contact," Australia Post's Christine Corbett said. "We know customers don't have all day, so we're offering them a choice of how they do business to get the best result for them."

A new concierge-style set up will direct Australia Post customers who only want to buy a stamp or pay a bill to use self-service, while those who know they're going to take longer will be seen by an Australia Post employee. "No one likes waiting in line, but what we're saying is that you're going to be given more and more choice," Corbett said.

An Australian woman who ran a customer service centre and recruitment agency in New Zealand has been fined $17,000 for tax-related offences.

The woman faced two charges of aiding or abetting Job Shop Employment Solutions to knowingly apply PAYE for a purpose other than payment to Inland Revenue. Lawyer Nic Soper said his client's father started a contact centre business with Australia-based clients in 2007.

A contact centre in Queenstown employed backpackers and a second company was started to hire staff, Soper said. Job Shop failed to account for PAYE and provide schedules to the IRD, triggering an investigation into its tax affairs. Wooldridge explained she failed to account because she thought there were insufficient funds.

Car rental company Hertz has expanded customer offering by introducing its customer loyalty program into Australia and New Zealand.

Gold Plus Rewards provides customers with a range of flexible reward options including points that won't expire, online redemption on hertz.com, point accrual for international rentals, and a wide variety of car rewards including cars from Hertz's Adrenaline and Prestige Collections. "With the addition of Australia, New Zealand and Brazil to Hertz Gold Plus Rewards, we have taken another step in expanding our customer loyalty program across the globe," commented Mark P. Frissora, Hertz Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

The new additions come on the heels of expanding the European market with four additional countries, including Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. In the past two years the program expanded to more than 15 countries and territories around the world.

Energy retailer Australian Power & Gas has adopted the Microsoft Dynamics CRM system to cope with a surge in its customer base.

With just under 350,000 customers, Australian Power & Gas CIO Joseph Gullotta told reporters the company had received over 10,000 customer emails over the last 12 months relating to enquiries, complaints and the retention of customers. Gullotta said the return on investment and ease of use were key factors that led to the company's strategic decision to adopt the Microsoft business solution.

"The Microsoft Dynamics CRM system is a platform that is very stable, customisable, and empowering, allowing us to take all the complexity out of what can be a very complex environment," he said, adding "Profiling and understanding our customers is important to Australian Power & Gas which is why the CRM component has been so useful."

Organisation are increasingly employing "professional conversationalists" to engage directly with their customers via social media.

Marketing communication company Aegis has reportedly formed a division, AegisLISA, to monitor the platform and act as hired brand advocates on it. The company is hiring what it describes as "highly skilled social media conversationalists" to staff the unit.

Aegis Australia president Chris Luxford told reporters the agency was hiring dozens of skilled staff to act for clients as the voice of brands in social media. "A lot of organisations send out bland commentary, but social media is all about personality and people don't want a canned response," Luxford said.

Peugeot Australia has set up an in-house contact centre to deal with customer support as part of plans to boost sales by 25% this year.

The move toward the in-house contact centre is designed to provide better service to new and existing Peugeot owners. Peugeot general manager Bill Gillespie says the French company can't grow its market share if it can't take care of its existing owners.

As well as new car models, Peugeot is beefing up its customer service offering with an assured service plan, which will see the 508, 308, 3008, 4008 and 208 models 208 come with fixed priced servicing. Gillespie said the aim of the plan was to assure buyers that owning a European car doesn't mean paying over-the-top servicing fees.

Restaurateurs have been warned to work harder on customer service in the social media environment.

The warning comes from Restaurant and Catering Australia following new research that reveals almost a quarter of poor dining experiences are communicated on social media by the diner within a minute or two of leaving the restaurant, if not while they are still seated at the table. The national survey of Australian diners by American Express found one-third of Australians use social media to rate their dining experience, with a quarter of Generation Y diners favoring Facebook to share their views.

Of all diners, Generation Y are most likely to jump online to share their experience (40%), compared to Generation X (26%) and Baby Boomers (19%). Conversely, the majority (60%) of diners are just as likely to rate a good dining experience as they are a bad one. "The prevalence of smart phones and increasing ease with which diners can congratulate or condemn their dining experience means the power of social media is the sleeping giant that cannot be ignored," said Restaurant and Catering Australia CEO John Hart.

Online shoe retailer StyleTread attributes much of its rapid growth to a commitment to customer service.

Majority Australian-owned and operated, StyleTread has grown to over 70 employees across its headquarters and warehousing operations in Sydney, and has recently launched in New Zealand. The company says it prides itself on customer service, attracting more than one million visitors per month and more than 60,000 Facebook likes. It also has a more than 40% repeat buyer rate.

StyleTread has proved to be a big success in the Australian online shoe market since launching in 2010, due to its "excellent customer service and wide product offering". The company offers more than 65,000 designer shoe styles and accessories, with free next day delivery, a 365-day free returns policy and dedicated websites.

Unitywater has deployed a Gentrack Velocity CRM solution to help manage customer service for its Queensland operations.

Unitywater is a new local government owned operator servicing over 670,000 customers in South East Queensland. "The Unitywater project extends our footprint in Australia's water and sewerage industry to five states and territories, and further supports our position as the premier vendor for water billing and CRM solutions," said Gentrack CEO James Docking.

Docking said Gentrack was engaged with Unitywater to optimise the billing system and ensure they achieve their "100 per cent billed" objective, fulfilling a user pays commitment to their communities. "This project has been an exciting challenge for our project teams given the volume of customer, meter and billing data that was consolidated into Gentrack Velocity from the councils' legacy systems," he said.

Only 66% of field service industry professionals rank customer service as a top priority at their place of employment, according to new research.

The survey, conducted by Australian mobile field force technology company Retriever Communications at this year's Field Service 2012 tradeshow at Las Vegas, found just 51% listed high service quality as the key value in the organisation. This was despite them operating in a technology market sector specifically dedicated to service.

"Today's dynamic wireless environment increases employers' expectations of technicians in the field, but these same businesses have found difficulty adopting solutions because they have prescriptive workflows and practices," said Retriever Communications CEO Mary Brittain-White. "Field technicians should be equipped with solutions that reflect their company's processes and their customers' needs, rather than a software company's idea of a standard service process that competitors may also use."

Fosters brewing has launched a new online initiative to connect with social media users in the UK.

Fosters launched an online Good Call Centre to complement its British Good Call TV advertising campaign that features helpful Australians Brad and Dan. The site gives consumers the chance to share their friends' problems, from a list of options, in order to receive humorous advice from Brad and Dan.

The game has been publicised on Fosters' YouTube channel and Facebook page, with responses to the campaign reportedly highly positive. Social media analysts WaveMetrix say responses to the Fosters' Good Call Centre have been largely positive, with most describing the initiative as "excellent".

Housing New Zealand has hired more customer service staff after the closure of local offices left its contact centre swamped by enquiries.

The state housing department began an overhaul last month and was expected to cut 70 jobs and replace some local offices with a national contact centre. Housing Minister Phil Heatley told NZ Parliament that the overhaul had not been completely smooth, and the contact centre would receive more employees to deal with the high number of calls.

"The transition has not been without its challenges and that's why next Monday another dozen staff will be employed. The following week another group of staff... will be employed, and the following week another group of staff will be employed," Heatley said. He said it was still a good service which would improve with time.

Real estate company LJ Hooker says its adoption of a Zendesk CRM solution has helped it better support its customers as well as its agents.

LJ Hooker replaced its agent-focused support tools with a Zendesk solution in its Sydney-based support centre in January last year. It is running 45 Zendesk Plus licences and expects to expand this to more than 60 this year.

LJ Hooker support and systems manager Joshua Evans told reporters Zendesk's reporting capabilities and the flexibility and usability of the interface were features that appealed the most. "Ideally, we were looking to give the customer one destination for whatever their question or query may be and then that would make its way to the department that needed to respond." Since implementing the new solution, LJ Hooker has reportedly experienced a significant improvement in customer response and resolution times, with 78% of support queries now resolved in less than two hours and 93% resolved in less than 24 hours.

National Australia Bank has identified the completion of its contact centre voice infrastructure and payments systems replacement as key IT priorities for the remainder of this year.

Single customer view capability and CRM systems have been flagged under NAB's NextGen or re-platforming project. A new credit risk engine will reportedly undergo testing and funds transfer pricing capabilities will be deployed.

"Good progress has been made in the group's technology transformation and its initiatives to enhance its reputation and further differentiate itself from industry peers," NAB said. The customer process transformation will cover enhancements to its online service UBank and a new private client platform. NAB said it would "continue transforming customer processes to provide a better banking experience".

Polaris Communications launches its new Soundshield 4G™ Acoustic Safety Device; a device that has been specifically designed for Contact Centre workers, providing them with unsurpassed acoustic protection, excellent HD wideband sound quality, as well as an intuitive and user friendly touchscreen.

With a heavy focus on 'the user experience', hundreds of contact centre workers were surveyed during the redesign process and their work practices analysed. "We wanted this product to provide more than just acoustic protection," says Polaris' Managing Director, Wayne Guest. "We wanted the Soundshield 4G to connect with the actual users; with the contact centre agents who are on the phones all day and who require a device that enables them to easily and effortlessly manage their calls, as well as switch between PC and desk-phone functionality."

In addition to its advanced functionality, a lot of effort has been put into the design of the Soundshield 4G; making it slimline and stylish to reflect the modern desktop, and taking up a minimal amount of desktop space. "This is a desktop device that is not only functional but that will take pride of place on anyone's desk!" comments Wayne Guest.

Telstra has launched a new Facebook application that it says allows its customers to become the first in Australia, and among the first in the world, to control their pre-paid mobile service directly from Facebook.

The My Telstra Pre-Paid app for Facebook app allows Telstra customers to track their mobile balance, recharge their service and view usage history. Telstra Mobile's Warwick Bray said the app is the first of its kind launched in Australia and makes "topping up and managing a pre-paid mobile service as quick and easy as posting a status update."

Once customers are signed up, the app sits in a customer's Facebook homepage apps list and no username or passwords are required to manage the account while signed into Facebook, but each transaction requires a unique pin to ensure authorisation. "We know our pre-paid customers love spending time connecting with friends on Facebook," Bray said. "We also know they find running out of credit a hassle. So we're introducing the My Telstra Pre-Paid Facebook app which lets customers track their mobile balance, recharge their service and view usage history from one of the most popular places on the web."

Victorian-based Agile IT Solutions has sought to expand its managed service suit of application to meet the needs of Australian wine industry.

Agile IT Solutions says it strives to provide IT solutions that meet the ongoing and changing requirements of the businesses they cover in Mornington, Frankston and Greater Melbourne. In addition to IT support services, Agile provides backup and disaster recovery solutions and virtualisation, as well as help desk services to ensure sales, marketing, accounting and shipping departments run smoothly.

"The Australian wine industry is like many of the business models we serve currently," said Agile IT Solutions' Linden Jackson. "Every industry we work with has unique business challenges; however, technology shouldn't be one of them."

Melbourne's Moreland City Council has received Digital Local Government program funding to improve accessibility of its customer support services.

The Federal government funding of $412,500 will enable Moreland Council to make the most of its connection to the National Broadband network. "Through this project, customer service staff at Moreland City Council will be able to use videoconferencing to explain council processes interactively, in particular to residents who speak English as a second language," Senator Stephen Conroy said.

Moreland councillor Oscar Yildiz said he believe the "'Moreland Connect' pilot customer service program is the first of its kind in government in Australia. "The national broadband network (NBN) will enable us to improve and speed up our customer service responses in and out of working hours and this will save residents time and money," he said.

The Department of Human Services (DHS) is upgrading its customer service via a major ICT integration project.

DHS says the project includes consolidating HR and finance systems, as well as datacentres, and enable the Australian government to more effectively deliver health, social services, child support and disability services to thousands of Australians. DHS chief information officer Gary Sterrenberg, said technology is about empowering citizens, "with access to the best available services, and supported by the right platforms".

"The emphasis is on customer service delivery, while integrating and streamlining the ICT platforms," he said. "An integration effort simply cannot go wrong, because in the end, it affects services to citizens in need."

Unified communications provider Interactive Intelligence has launched new training facilities in Sydney to enable its partners and customers to participate in a range of certification courses.

Interactive Intelligence ANZ MD Brendan Maree said the new training centre has been designed to run a virtualised infrastructure enabling ten students at any one time to manage four individual virtual machines and establish their own IP telephony system, in a "world-class IP telephony environment." Maree said complementing the new training centre in North Sydney was a contact centre simulation room equipped with the latest company solutions for contact centre automation, enterprise IP telephony and enterprise messaging, and allowing resellers and customers to test their proposed deployment in a fully customised, 'live' environment prior to roll-out in their own contact centre telephony environment.

Ten different classes will be on offer in Australia, all designed to provide hands-on training in a lab environment, which students can translate into solutions for their own corporate production environments. "Training is a critical component for making Interactive Intelligence products work for our customers and as a result we are dedicated to fulfilling our customers' training and educational needs so that they can maximise productivity and improve the performance of their enterprise and call centre solutions," Maree said.

New Zealand's TSB Bank has introduced a new mobile service to enhance its self service capabilities for customers.

The [my]bank application allows customers to open, close and name their own accounts via iPhone, and transfer money using Bump technology. The bank said the new service allows users to make secure payments by simply setting up the payment in [my]bank and syncing their phone against another iPhone.

TSB's technology services manager Marie Collins said the bank has always prided itself on its exceptional levels of customer service and that the launch of [my]bank strengthens its commitment by providing easy access to all their banking needs using a secure iPhone application. "Backed up by our existing infrastructure, [my]bank is truly customer driven as it puts the customer in charge and lets them choose how the service evolves," Collins said.

UK customer service IT company Transversal Corporation has launched operations in Australia and New Zealand.

Transversal specialises in online, multichannel and self-service solutions for customer-facing websites, contact centres and internal HR functions. The company's new regional office opened in Sydney.

"We've been powering the self-service functions at some of the UKs largest businesses for over a decade," said Transversal CEO Dr Davin Yap. "We feel that Australia and New Zealand is a natural market for us given a similar culture and web-savvy consumers, many of which would prefer to serve themselves in the first instance rather than call or email an organisation. The Australia location also offers a springboard into the wider Asia Pacific region."

The Australian arm of electronics company Acer has chosen a Drishti Ameyo solution to upgrade its inbound customer service.

cer Australia said it required a solution to handle all interactions from customers and its wide-spread channel partner network by providing the right information to its agents in a unified screen for fast query resolution. "We were looking for a solution that could integrate with our backend system to provide appropriate information to agents, thus maximising their productivity, something which our previous solution was not forthcoming with," said Acer's Dan Balachandra.

Acer says the new solution provides the company with enhanced agent productivity, real-time monitoring of performance levels and allows management to make changes when required. "Providing our customers and channel partners fast and quality support can be a daunting task if our agents have to access disparate applications at the same time," Balachandra said. "Dristhi provided us with a comprehensive technology that integrated seamlessly with the ticketing system of the back-end CRM, and displaying a unified interface to our agents."

Adelaide City Council is expanding its range of free customer service apps with "Adelaide Report it".

The new app allows users to take a photo of potholes, graffiti and other maintenance issues in the city and submit it to the council's customer service centre from their mobile phone. "By adding this new facility, we hope that people will find it a quick and easy way to report issues or incidents to our customer service team," Lord Mayor Stephen Yarwood said.

"We're the first Council to trial this app in Australia - and join more than 20 other major US cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Honolulu and San Jose," Yarwood said. "It shows we're at the forefront of technology and willing to try new things for the benefit of the community."

Air New Zealand has selected travel company Discover the World to handle its sales and marketing in Indonesia.

Discover the World currently represents Air New Zealand in France, Greece, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, Russia, Singapore, South Korea and Spain and the airline will launch a new service between Auckland and Denpasar, Bali in June 2012. "We chose to work with Discover to take care of our outbound sales from Indonesia as well as local customer service for our inbound passengers arriving from New Zealand," Air New Zealand's Peter Walsh said.

Discover the World will operate an office in Denpasar, which will provide customer service to Air New Zealand's customers staying in Bali as well as providing off-line sales representation for the entire Republic of Indonesia with a sales and ticketing office located in Jakarta, the capital city.

Police are reassuring the public the switch to a 24/7 call centre in New Zealand Central District to deal with non-urgent crime will not decrease face-to-face contact with staff.

Police are rolling out a new system of "file management centres" nationwide which would deal with most non-urgent complaints and inquiries. Instead of being required to go to a police station to report crimes like burglaries and thefts, people will do it over the phone and be sent a form instead. "The purpose of these proposed changes is to cut back on the paperwork and bureaucracy that shackles frontline staff to computers and police stations and to free them up to spend more time in their communities preventing crime and supporting victims and witnesses of crime," said, Inspector Peter Thurston. "The aim is to improve the quality of service and to help people be safer and feel safer."

Inspector Thurston said the system was not new. "They [similar call centres] have been running successfully in other parts of the country for some years," he said. The call centre includes one in Palmerston North that will deal with the Taranaki rural and New Plymouth districts. Thurston said if the crime required a face-to-face visit a police officer would still go out to see the victims.

Auckland Airport's service has seen it named Best Airport in the Australia / Pacific region at the 2012 World Airport Awards for the fourth successive year.

Auckland Airport was also awarded Best Staff Service for the Australia Pacific region. "Auckland Airport is extremely proud to have been recognised on the global stage in the Skytrax World Airport Awards for the fourth year in a row as the best airport in Australia Pacific," said Auckland Airport CEO Simon Moutter.

"We are especially pleased to have reclaimed the award for Best Airport Staff Australia/Pacific," Moutter. He said the airport's focus on expanding the quality and range of products and services for consumers across all parts of the airport experience has been very well received by passengers.

Group buying website CatchOfTheDay has introduced a new customer service platform for its CatchOfTheDay and GroceryRun websites.

CIO Seamus Byrne told reporters CatchOfTheDay has been experiencing strong growth and in order to maintain that growth its IT strategy needs to deliver what customers want and expect. "Most recently, this month [we] introduced a new customer service platform for CatchOfTheDay and GroceryRun," Byrne said.

"That's been well received and it's delivered some real good insights into our customer service issues so that we've been able to identify issues before they become an issue," he said. Byrne said CatchOfTheDay has also implemented other customer service changes and improvements including its first mobile application with an incentive of a 5% saving for using the app to make purchases.

Commonwealth Bank of Australia CEO Ian Narev has outlined a new strategy for improved customer service and technology.

Narev said the bank wanted to improve access to its products, especially investment and insurance products, and better meet its customers' needs. He said product offerings could also be simplified. Narev said CBA had a group-wide emphasis on improving productivity, which could be achieved without sending jobs offshore through the use of "world-leading" technology.

Narev was reluctant to put specific performance targets on his key performance areas, with the exception of being number one in customer satisfaction. "Internally, we are going to be setting very clear benchmarks against each of these metrics," he said. "What we are not going to be doing is set targets, particularly for the long term."

Jabra's latest headsets, PRO™ 900 Series, include two new wireless headsets that make migrating from the traditional handset to wireless headsets both simple and more cost-efficient than ever before.

Inspiration was drawn from the technology Jabra uses today in its higher-end headsets, focusing on the basic headset functionalities and improving them, to create the new Jabra PRO 900 Series. "We see a clear need for an intuitive and inexpensive wireless headset tailored for the professional office worker that doesn't compromise on quality," said Fulvio Toniotti, Managing Director ANZ, Jabra.

The Jabra PRO™ 900 wireless headset series are now genuinely affordable for all call centres with the price of Jabra PRO™ 900 headsets now comparable to some corded headsets in the market. Key features of Jabra PRO™ 900 headsets include: - true "plug & play" capability with voice prompted set-up, deskphone or PC connectivity, variable density settings up to 120 metres, light weight headset design (27g), ACIF G616 acoustic safety compliance and superior audio & sound clarity with noise-cancelling microphone.

Industry Association, ATA, announced this week that CEO Michael Meredith has resigned from his position to pursue other business interests. Interim CEO Fiona Keough has been appointed to lead the Association, effective in May, whists the Board conducts a thorough search for a permanent CEO.

Derek Finch, Chairman, ATA recognised Michael's significant contribution to the contact centre industry in Australia over the 12 years of service at the ATA and thanked Michael for his tremendous endeavours over this period. "Michael has lead the ATA through many years of development, change and growth, including the introduction of the Contact Centre Standards and Accreditation (CCSA) Program and transforming the ATA National Awards and Conference into one of the highlight recognition events in the Contact Centre industry calendar," said Finch.

"In the last six months the ATA Board and National Office have been developing a roadmap for the future directions of the ATA and careful thought and consideration will be taken to ensure the organisation attracts the right person to fill this position permanently. In the meantime Fiona, a highly experienced Contact Centre Manager will help to steer the ATA through an exciting period of growth, development and new directions", added Finch.

Austar has moved to reassure its Gold Coast customer service staff after its acquisition by rival pay TV operator Foxtel.

Regional pay TV operator Austar employs about 600 staff at its Robina headquarters including a significant customer service operation. Austar executive Deanne Weir said Foxtel has made it very plain that the Gold Coast will be an important part of its future plans.

"It's really a matter for Foxtel in due course as to how they handle that integration process, so one can never say there are not going to be any redundancies," Weir said. "But I think there's no doubt the Robina office is going to be a very important part of the future new Foxtel."

Customer Service Strategy and Analyst organisation, Fifth Quadrant this week launched its Social Media Consulting and Training division. The new business unit will have a specialist focus on the development of Social Media as a customer service channel and will work with organisations to effectively integrate Social Media into existing service operations.

Dr Catriona Wallace, Director of Fifth Quadrant and leading international customer service analyst, stated, "Traditionally most companies have used Social Media as a channel for PR and marketing; only recently have organisations started to investigate the use of social media as a customer service channel. Fifth Quadrant's research has shown that by the end of 2015 Social Media will be the second most active customer service channel next to voice". Dr Wallace went on to comment, "Although many organisations have identified the need for a 'Social Service' channel, less than 20% have successfully integrated Social Media into existing service operations".

Dr Wallace is personally leading the Social Media practice and both she and her team of experts have already helped numerous public and private sector organisations develop and operationalise their Social Service Strategies. "We have exhaustively researched the global consumer market and Customer Service Industry with regard to Social Service demand and successful deployment. Based on that research and validation of best practice we have developed a model for the design and operationalisation of Social Service Strategy. We call this model SocialServe™," Dr Wallace said.

For more information on how Fifth Quadrant can assist your organisation to develop a successful Social Media service channel or for Social Media training courses please contact Max Kelly on +61 2 9927 3399.

The national broadband network's managing company NBNCo has selected the Gold Coast as its customer service centre hub.

The centre, expected to employ around 130 staff, will begin taking calls in the second half of this year. NBNCo's Head of Quality Mike Kaiser100 new positions are set to be filled within 12 months, with the company to begin recruitment for the new facility this month.

Kaiser said that as NBNCo rollout progressed there will be a need for a dedicated centre to manage inquiries. "The new centre will handle the anticipated escalation in NBN queries from the general public, property developers and builders now that the company has begun large-scale rollout of Australia's largest infrastructure project," he said.

Unified communications company Noble Systems has recognised the Royal Automobile Club of Western Australia's (RACWA) service commitment with its Technology Innovator Award.

"Our dedication to providing the best customer experience calls for the best and most efficient technology," said RACWA's Garry Laver. "We thank Noble Systems for the award, but more importantly, we thank them for the industry-leading tools we use to interact with customers every day."

The award was earned through innovative uses of Noble Systems' ShiftTrack WFM technology in RACWA's customer service centres and national roadside patrol staff. The system is integral in two key customer service centres in Perth and Joondalup and is used to forecast and schedule approximately 500 agents in their sales, service, roadside and claims divisions.

Outsourcer Salmat and Woolworths have announced the launch of a new customer service centre in Auckland servicing Woolworths Money customers.

The new centre, previously located in Australia, has created 40 new jobs in New Zealand. Dhun Karai, head of Woolworths Money, said the centre supports Woolworths credit card, pre-paid debit card and insurance customers. Karai said the Australian contact centre team was redeployed to other contact centres within the Woolworths Group.

"We're excited about the launch of this new contact centre," Karai said. "The Salmat team in New Zealand have significant experience in the financial services sector, this will enable us to continue to enhance the customer service experience for Woolworths Money customers."

Customer service IT company SAP has formed a new partnership with Global Speech Networks (GSN), a leading cloud contact centre provider in Australia and New Zealand.

GSN will offer SAP Business Communications Management via cloud to companies throughout Australia and New Zealand. "SAP and GSN have a shared vision for flexibility, scalability and cost predictability, and this was a major factor when it came to forming the partnership," GSN's Shane Verner.

SAP BCM provides a bundled, multichannel contact centre suite. It replaces traditional communications systems hardware with a software-based IP telephony solution that can help companies to improve the efficiency and performance of their contact centre operations. "This partnership with GSN allows SAP to deliver SAP BCM in the Cloud," SAP ANZ's Greg Harbor said. "It will help our customers to efficiently and flexibly manage their contact centres and customer service functions."

Cloud-based help desk software company Zendesk says it has signed its 1000th Australian customer after opening its Melbourne office in September.

Zendesk said McLaren's Young International of Melbourne was the 1000th customer to sign up, followed closely by Brisbane based Appointuit, with the number of Australians submitting tickets to Zendesk customers now at 1.4 million. "We are very happy to welcome both McLaren's Young International and Appointuit to the Zendesk family," said Zendesk's Michael Hansen. "Working with 1000 companies is the culmination of a big milestone for us, but the number of customers in the region is continuing to grow daily."

The company, which also provides customer service software to a number of Australian companies, including LJ Hooker, Servcorp and News Limited, has also signed more than 250 customers in New Zealand during the same period.

South Australia's CMI Toyota has won the 2011 Toyota President's Award for Excellence for the third time in four years for sales satisfaction and customer service.

CMI Toyota GM Roy Marando said to win the President's Award, a dealership has to achieve a number of best practice benchmarks across every facet of their operations, "including achieving excellence in customer sales satisfaction and customer service satisfaction." CMI was also awarded the 2011 South Australian Toyota Metropolitan Dealer of the Year Award.

"At CMI Toyota we know that selling a vehicle is just the first step in our customers' experience. What happens after that is even more important," Marando said. "We always strive to match the quality of our products with the very best customer service experience for as long as they own their vehicle."

This year's Airline Passenger Survey confirms that customer service is the most important consideration for air travel consumers.

The Airline Quality Rating survey gathers passengers' perceptions and opinions regarding U.S. airlines in addition to providing a forum to express concerns. The goal is to capture passengers' perceptions and experiences with U.S. airlines to more completely understand how perceptions of outcome and actual performance are at odds.

Airlines like Southwest who push a service-oriented message continue to score highest in passenger-friendliness for consumers in this ongoing study researchers. "Consumer perceptions are shaped by past experiences," AQR co-researcher Dean Headley said "small, often unnoticeable, outcome improvements do not get included into consumers mindset very quickly."

A review of Centrelink's Quality On Line (QOL) control, which supports the integrity of payments, has found the welfare agency has room to improve its service to customers.

The Auditor-General's review showed the nature of Centrelink's operations makes it essential that it have in place a quality assurance framework and effective controls "to support high quality service delivery, which minimises the risk of payment errors occurring." Centrelink adopted Quality on Line (QOL) as a quality control and it remains one of the key internal quality controls used by Centrelink today to support payment correctness.

The Auditor-General found there is scope for Centrelink to improve the operation of QOL by reviewing the underlying risk-based sampling approach and refocusing QOL towards higher-risk activities and excluding or reducing the sampling of low-risk activities where administrative errors were less likely to occur. "Centrelink could also refine its sampling for QOL to target a greater volume of new claims and reduce the checking of non-new claims (existing customer claims)," he said. "There is currently no control to provide assurance that administrative rework identified during QOL checking is being corrected by CSAs."

Consumers are increasingly turning online platforms for their customer service, according to new research.

The Site study of UK consumers found 15% of consumers aged 16-25 prefer to use social media for customer service over any other method, compared to 8% of 25-34 year olds and 3% of 35-44 year olds. Additionally, 16-25 year olds turn to social media first when they a problem with a product.

The research also showed that when a problem arises, the first thing 57% of consumers do is search for a solution online, using a variety of social tools. Across all demographics, 33% of consumers have used online forums or chat rooms, 25% have used video tutorials, either on YouTube or a company's website, 19% have posted a query on a question website, such as Quora, Facebook Questions or Yahoo Answers, and 11% have used a tutorial or demonstration on a blog.

India's Talisma Corporation has announced a strategic partnership with S1 Consulting to offer Talisma CRM to higher education institutions in Australia.

Under the partnership, Australian universities will have access to specialised higher education consulting expertise and solutions "that are powering over 1,700 college campuses, foundations, and not-for-profit organisations globally," the companies said in a statement. "The collective strength of S1 and Talisma Corporation in the higher education sector will bring immense value to all educational institutions in Australia," said Martin Halmarick, MD, S1 Consulting.

Talisma's Raj Mruthyunjayappa said with increased competition, it is essential for higher education institutions to offer a differentiated experience to students. "Institutions are looking at technology to address key challenges and engage students and other stakeholders effectively," he said.

The federal government funded $220 million customer service hotline set up to ease pressure on emergency wards is having no significant impact and is misleading the public, according to leading health figures.

An article, published in the peer-reviewed Emergency Medicine Australasia journal, said the National Health Call Centre Network - a free service for callers operated as HealthDirect - is not achieving its stated aim of reducing pressures on hospitals. The hotline is operated by a team of 100 doctors and more than 240 nurses.

Calls to the service are answered by nurses, but transferred to doctors when necessary. Many leading health figures have backed the position taken by the article's author, Professor Yusuf Nagree - a practising emergency medicine professor at the University of Western Australia.

Treasury Wine Estates will consolidate seven customer service solutions into one after signing a CRM deal with cloud computing company Salesforce.com.

Owner of Penfolds winery, Treasury will use the online system to provide a "single source of truth" for its fleet of sales people. The company has started using Salesforce.com's free corporate social networking tool called Chatter and has experienced stellar results, according to Treasury's field sales director Darren Campbell.

Treasury demerged from brewer Foster's last year and was left with legacy systems that catered mainly to beer sales. "Most customer information during that period of time was sitting across anywhere up to seven different parts of the business, so if we were trying to be specific with a customer around what their needs are, the credit department would have a different view from the sales representatives, the merchandiser, the wine educator, and the information was not captured in one central location," Campbell said. He said in future the CRM system would give Treasury a better feel when developing dedicated sales and marketing campaigns for each customer segment.

Australia Post has apologised for the level of customer service its Alice Springs residents have being receiving over the past couple of months and says it is working to lift standards.

The ABC says it has heard around eighty complaints from its Alice Springs audience via Facebook, email and talkback in the past six weeks relating to missing mail, unusually slow express post, and lack of notification when parcels arrive at the post office. Australia Post's Alex Tuomey says its contact centre has received 188 complaints from Alice Springs since January.

Tuomey said one of the reasons service and delivery speed has being poor is due to a delivery contractor that left Alice Springs with little notice, "We're happy to say we've now got a new contractor who is working really hard to fix service quality," he said. "(The contactor) is hiring new staff and is training them up as we speak, so we do have a solution in place and we're very sorry that's happened."

Specialty waste management company Cleanway Environmental Services has launched a new website and opened a new Western Australia office to improve its customer service.

The new Cleanway website, cleanway.com.au, provides information and enquiry details on Cleanway's services, while the Perth office allows the business to improve service to its growing customer base from Australia's mining sector.

Cleanway says the new website and office will work "synergistically" to improve awareness of and access to the business' wide range of environmentally friendly and regulation-compliant waste collection, transportation, recycling, disposal and cleanup services available to all industries across Australia.

Australian reseller M2 Telecommunications Group installed Cerillion's CRM and billing solutions as part of an initiative to upgrades its customer service.

M2 will use the solution to consolidate billing for its People Telecom customers and services, and provide fully automated fulfilment and provisioning to the host networks. M2 plans to migrate all of its retail and wholesale operations to Cerillion over time.

M2, a reseller of mobile, fixed and data telecoms services in Australia, has implemented Cerillion's Revenue Manager, CRM Plus, Service Manager, Output Streamer, Web Self-Care and Information Manager modules from the vendor's pre-integrated product suite. The new solution from Cerillion enables M2 to introduce new products and offers quickly across its multiple brands and achieve a significantly lower cost of operation.

Complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) about Internet Service Providers have fallen dramatically over the last year, according to the latest figures released in February.

The TIO, the last resort for customers who cannot resolve a problem with their ISP, recorded 16,704 complaints relating to internet plans over the last three months of 2011. This number of calls represents a drop of 45% from the October to December quarter in 2010, when complaints hit 29,097.

The biggest decrease in calls to the ombudsman related to complaint handling, with a 62% drop in complaints reaching the ombudsman, suggesting internet providers are getting better at resolving issues before they escalate. According to the Compare Broadband, the figures show ISPs have been working to improve customer service since last year.

The federal government's Small Business Support Line is on the verge of receiving its 50,000th call.

The Small Business Line offers advice and customer service to Australia's small businesses. Minister for Small Business Brendan O'Connor said the 50,000th call will be an important milestone for the small business sector.

"The Small Business Support Line provides small business owners with a first point of contact to get the information they need and referrals to the right experts," O'Connor said. "It is staffed by advisers with strong customer service skills and extensive experience in the small business sector." The Support Line will help the recently announced Australian Small Business Commissioner to provide small business with a one stop shop for services and information, particularly with information about dispute mediation.

Airline Virgin Australia has beefed up its customer service for premium passengers at Hobart Airport.

Virgin announced last month the continued development of its lounge facilities nation-wide and its exploration of premium service markets. "With our international airline alliance partners and the introduction of premium services such as Business Class and airport lounges, we are now able to cater to new markets, including business and high-end leisure travellers from Australia and around the world," Virgin Australia CEO, John Borghetti said.

The Priority Boarding service is available on all flights departing Hobart. The service encompasses a dedicated boarding lane at the gate, allowing premium guests the opportunity to board the plane when they wish. "The joint investment reflects the ongoing positive relationship between Hobart Airport and Virgin Australia. It will see continued growth into Tasmania as well as provide an excellent customer service experience for travellers," Hobart Airport's CEO, Rod Parry said.

Visionstream New Zealand has adopted TOA Technologies' ETAdirect workforce management solution to upgrade its customer service.

Visionstream, a contractor company that provides telecommunication and broadband network offerings among other services, is currently implementing ETAdirect in its New Zealand operations, with deployment to be completed later this year. Visionstream was looking for a solution platform that could be implemented quickly, and one that continuously creates value by evolving with the business.

US-based TOA says it continues to gain momentum in Asia-Pacific as more and more businesses seek to adopt a time-based, predictive and true enterprise-scale cloud solution. Many telecommunications, utilities, health and contracting services companies in Asia-Pacific are seeing the opportunity to evolve beyond these legacy systems and old thinking," said TOA's Yuval Brisker. "They're demanding a future-ready, real-time approach and proven cloud-based strategy for mobile workforce optimisation."

Technology solutions company Amadeus has redesigned its online travel agent support system, launching a new e-Support Centre in Australia and New Zealand.

The centre, operating in up to six languages and available 24/7, was created to "enhance the customer service experience" for agents. "This will help reduce the customer's need for support by increasing their knowledge and will simplify their lives by presenting all content in one site, providing learning and support when and where they need it," Amadeus' Sari Vahakoski said.

Hoping to improve productivity while decreasing money spent on calls to the help desk, the company also said the new system also allows travel agents hooked-up with Amadeus product to watch 'show me' videos on key topics and open 'how to' guides for cryptic entries and error messages. The product also offers new learning content, product guides, quick cards and technical manuals.

Retailer David Jones plans to create up to 300 new jobs to improve customer service.

The department store chain this month warned its net profit for 2011/12 would plunge by up to 40% after it reported its first half earnings dropped by 20%. David Jones outlined plans for a massive revamp of its business in the hope it will get customers back in its stores and splashing their cash.

It will create 100 new floor staff supervisor jobs plus 200 frontline service roles to deliver specialised services to shoppers. The retailer also plans to increase incentives for staff to sell more goods and provide extra staff in fitting rooms to help customers.

A new website plans to provide a forum for customers to complain of poor service, while making a profit from the information they provide.

uVent.com.au offers disgruntled customers an opportunity to name-and-shame companies for their poor service. It will in turn charges the companies, or their competitors, for access to their information to improve their offering.

The website allows unhappy customers of banks, insurance, utilities companies and airline passengers to post their complaints in private. uVent then forwards them to the companies to resolve. "Australians tend to be a little accepting of the poor service and the quasi-monopolistic structure of the way business works in Australia means customer service is poorly proportioned based on the number of customers," uVent founder Anthony Mittelmark told reporters.

Australasian warranty services providers ICF will upgrades its customer systems with Panviva's SupportPoint.

ICF plans to optimise the efficiency of its warranty services contact centres and enhance the call experience for customers and staff. SupportPoint is a unique, online technology that helps customer service agents navigate through customer calls, providing them with step-by-step instructions and presenting relevant product and procedural information at precisely the moment of need.

ICF's Sydney contact centre, where SupportPoint will be first implemented, takes approximately 35,000 warranty calls per month. "We expect to see reductions in our call handling times, improvements in our stats for exception handling and an increase in our first call resolution rates. We also believe that SupportPoint will help provide an enhanced experience for our customers and a real morale boost for employees," said ICF's Kevin Ellis.

Unified communications systems company ShoreTel has joined with Telstra to jointly market and support ShoreTel's IP telephony, unified communications (UC), contact centre and mobility solutions in Australia.

There are currently more than 20 Telstra Business Partners accredited to install ShoreTel's solutions in the Australian market, and according to ShoreTel the number of partners is expected to grow as a result of the new ShoreTel and Telstra partnership. "While Telstra Business Partners have been installing ShoreTel solutions for the past two years through the TBS program, until now there was no direct partnership between Telstra and ShoreTel," said ShoreTel's Jamie Romanin.

"Telstra partners and their customers now have the benefit of greater direct support from ShoreTel, streamlined certification and accreditation processes, and extended warranty support across both hardware and software." Telstra's Boris Corluka, said the new partrnership with ShoreTel meant that more customers would now be able to enjoy an end-to-end unified communications experience with Telstra and ShoreTel.

Insurer Allianz Australia says it already reaping the benefits of its new customer service platform, with the total two-year project nearing completion.

Allianz's head of architecture and program delivery Kerry Fullagar said the new claims platform, Servis, was far more automated and user-friendly than the three legacy, core systems it replaced. Claims staff are presented with 12 screens instead of the previous 40 and are able to lodge claims for customers over the telephone in three minutes instead of 18 minutes.

Fullagar said after the project team delivered online, self-service claims functionality in May 2011, said customers were able to lodge claims in six minutes instead of 12 minutes. "We're now in a position where we have 70% of claims lodged over the telephone and the other 30% of claims online - that's growing," she said.

New shipping company Ship2Anywhere says its online model will offer a better customer service experience.

The online start-up, which provides a parcel forwarding service for individuals and small-to-medium sized businesses, is giving Australian companies the chance to expand overseas. Ship2Anywhere director Jack Fitzgerald says the company is also making it easier and quicker for Australian businesses to operate compared to using the bigger couriers.

"We've invested a lot in technology, automated as much as we can, and created a really cool dashboard for the customers to manage and ship all their parcels," Fitzgerald told reporters. "By operating online, it makes it simpler and easier for businesses to get quotes and make bookings." He also said that by being based in Australia Ship2Anywhere are better able to tailor its business to the Australian market. "Giving customers the opportunity to pick up the phone and talk to us rather than sending an email and waiting 24 hours for a response really helps on the customer service side of things," Fitzgerald said.

In response to the growing influence of online customer service, Zendesk has launched a new Search Analytics feature that provides organisations with insight into how their customers use self-service content.

Cloud-based help desk software company Zendesk says the "silent" self-service customers often rely exclusively on self-service content to solve their issues, without ever trying to reach a customer service representative. "The understanding of how self-service customers behave is a powerful tool that organisations can use to help shape their customer service strategy," it said.

Zendesk's search analytics feature can be viewed through the reporting dashboard in Zendesk that delivers key metrics organisations can use to optimise the customer service experience. "Organisations with a solid understanding of the quality and helpfulness of their self-service content can better understand where there customers are struggling and getting frustrated," Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane said. "As a result, they can now see where there are problem areas and optimise self-service content appropriately."

A third of New Zealand's banking customers would not recommend their bank to family and friends, according to new research from Gallup Consulting.

Gallup Consulting said only 23% of customers were "fully engaged'" with their banks, while 20% were actively disengaged. The study also found that 88% of people did not feel any of the bank brands stood out from rest, while 34% would not recommend their bank to family and friends.

Of the major banks, Kiwibank rated best in terms of service and competitive offers, while ASB was seen as the friendliest and most innovative. "The study reveals many customers feel banks have become stale and rudimentary, providing standard levels of customer service but not going the `extra mile' to connect with customers and thereby create stronger brand advocacy,'' Gallup Consulting's Robyn Hart said in a statement.

Australia-based travel insurance and assistance provider Cover-More Group intends to expand its Asian operations in Asia by acquiring Shanghai-based Assistance Online.

Cover-More is expected to finalise the acquisition in April, when medical assistance and customer service company, Assistance Online, will become its wholly owned subsidiary. Cover-More Group CEO Peter Edwards said the group was on an "active acquisitive strategy in Asia, particularly in the area of health and medical assistance for travellers and mobile work forces."

Assistance Online provides medical and travel assistance and third-party administration services from 24-hour call centre facilities in Shanghai. It also has network providers in China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Macau, Taiwan and Mongolia, assisting local insurance companies, corporate and individual clients by providing immediate support.

Australian customer service web portal Service Uncle has expanded its operations into India.

The portal, which is a combination of a business-to-business and business-to-consumer site, provides information on a wide range of services and service providers in any city, across the globe. The site can be searched by service category, service provider or service area. It also offers added features like 'Get Information on Email', 'Get Information on SMS' and access to a help desk.

Service Uncle provides a trouble-free solution as the services are categorised into wide range of categories that affect day-to-day lives. "Today, the availability of service related information in India is highly disorganised," said Service Uncle MD Rajesh Nagpal. "With its one of a kind offering, I am sure people would find lot of value in our platform."

Cairns Regional Council has implemented a Council wide Service Quality improvement program called 'Connecting' with the desire to provide quality services to their community.

The 'Connecting' program, running since 2010, provides tools, support and training to help Council teams analyse their services using three key initiatives; User experience surveys, data based problem solving and Executive Team presentations.

Staff Workshops are held where feedback from the user experience surveys of Council services are used to influence and create change in an open and supportive environment. The Data based problem solving is achieved through measuring actual service performance levels and linking an outcome with customer satisfaction and efficiency. The 'Connecting' program has seen improvements in satisfaction both internally and externally. Internally customer satisfaction increased 12% and externally 5% from 2010 to 2011.

Chinese solar inverter manufacturer Samil Power has opened its Australian subsidiary and a service customer service centre in Sydney.

Samil said that the Australian base will allow the company to better satisfy local clients, simplify communication and reduce service response times. Samil also has local subsidiaries and service teams in Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and India.

Samil became the number one inverter exporter in China in 2011, and the second-largest inverter company in China, in terms of sales volume. Samil inverters have also been recognised as "the best in Asia" after being tested by Photon Lab.

Jabra enhances business efficiency by releasing the Jabra PRO™ 900 Series, which includes two new wireless headsets that make migrating from the traditional handset to wireless headsets both simple and cost-efficient.

When developing the Jabra PRO 900 Series, inspiration was drawn from the technology Jabra uses today in its higher-end headsets -focusing on the basic headset functionalities and improving them. "We see a clear need for an intuitive and inexpensive headset tailored for the professional office worker that doesn’t compromise on quality,"said Fulvio Toniotti, Managing Director ANZ, Jabra.

Key Features of the Jabra PRO™ 900 headset series include; Low cost of ownership, Superior audio: Noise-canceling microphone, Jabra SafeTone™, DSP, Lightweight design and comfortable ear cushions, Superior sound clarity and Improved density capabilities. "In our pre-evaluation trials with local partners, over 90 per cent said that they would recommend the Jabra PRO™ 900 headset to others, which I believe speaks volumes about how our customers view the quality of this product," Toniotti said.

Australian retailers are tipped to take more responsibility for their sales or lack of in 2012, according to consultancy WeAreDigital.

While retailers, including large department stores, have publicly blamed weak financial results on everything from the rise in international e-commerce sites and the strong Aussie dollar to droughts, floods and heat waves, that is expected to increasingly change this year. "Retailers will start to realise this year that having a decent product and brilliant customer service are the essential components to being a successful brand on and offline," WeAreDigital director Karson Stimson told reporters.

"Having a bricks and mortar presence is a huge advantage for retailers because you can showcase what you stand for as a brand in-store," Stimson said. "At the same time, the internet presents a huge opportunity. Retailers are starting to realise this and act, but we'll see more of this in 2012."

Customer service has emerged as a top priority for US retailers with an increasing number looking to promote their service achievements.

Service ratings company STELLAService says already this year, 50 companies have joined a list of hundreds of top retailers leveraging the STELLAService seal on their websites to tell the world about their customer service. STELLAService rates thousands of retailers each year across more than 350 metrics, including usability and online tools, shipping and returns and customer support.

The company uses a nationwide network of full-time mystery shoppers to evaluate each site undercover, ensuring findings that are unbiased and true to the shopping experience. "Our analysts have rated thousands of stores, and each day we receive more requests from those stores to display their customer service rating from STELLAService," CEO Jordy Leiser said. "Retailers realise they need to spread a credible, positive message around customer service."

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) is reportedly upgrading to a unified communications (UC) environment across its office locations.

Based in Canberra, AMSA is a federal government regulatory safety agency tasked with delivering services for maritime safety, aviation, marine search and rescue and protection of the marine environment. Its offices are located in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.

According to documents released by the agency, "The Unified Communications Project is responsible for implementing a converged collaboration environment to deliver voice, video, presence and text based communication features to each users' desktop environment across AMSA office locations and mobile workforce." The project has been initiated following a successful trial with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007.

IT services outsourcing company Distribution Central (DC) has signed a multimillion dollar deal to upgrade its customer service with NetSuite OneWorld CRM.

Under the terms of the agreement, DC will to replace a legacy on-premise ERP/CRM suite with NetSuite OneWorld to manage its CRM, payroll, inventory management, distribution operations, financials, multi-currency, and financial consolidation. DC managing director Nick Verykios said that the rollout of Netsuite's cloud based application and ERP solution will accelerate the company's expansion push in south east Asia.

DC currently employs 115 staff across Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. "We knew we needed a more robust ERP and CRM system when we opened an office in Singapore earlier this year," Verykios said.

Most Australians prefer self-service to face to face interactions when it comes to transactions and customer service, according to research by Nuance Communications.

The survey found that the majority of Australians (76%) see self-service as more convenient than dealing with a human customer service representative, and that 63% would choose self-service given the opportunity. "Australians are seeking convenience and control over their customer service experience and new technologies in self-service are now offering that," said Nuance Communications ANZ MD Peter Chidiac, managing director.

Chidiac said there will always be customer service tasks that require the involvement of a human, "but we're seeing a big shift in consumer acceptance towards self-service". "Effective self-service can lead to opportunities for businesses to deliver a competitive advantage while providing great convenience to customers in line with their mobile lifestyles and expectations," he said.

Pepper Australia, has gone live with a new 100-seat contact centre powered by the Interactive Intelligence's, Customer Interaction Centre (CIC).

The Parramatta contact centre, known as the Pepper Servicing Centre (PSC), was established in January to manage an increase in call volumes and house new staff following Pepper's 2011 acquisition of the former GE Capital Australia and New Zealand home loan portfolio. CIC automatically routes and manages all PSC's inbound and outbound calls, speeding service and enabling agents to offer a more personalised customer experience. Customers simply key in their loan number to have their call directed to their personal, dedicated loan manager.

"We wanted a solution that would support the PSC by providing contact centre automation and unified messaging capabilities. It had to be cloud-based to give us the flexibility to expand with additional sites over time. We also wanted something that could be used in the future to potentially allow PSC agents to work from home," said James Henshaw, Pepper's Head of Information Technology.

The likes of Katies, Michel's Patisserie and Fasta Pasta are among the winners of Roy Morgan's Customer Satisfaction Awards.

The inaugural awards are based on Roy Morgan's ongoing single source survey, which includes the interviews of 50,000 Australian consumers. There were more than 35 winners across a full range of categories, with women's fashion retailer Katies taking out the title of Clothing Store of the Year.

Michel's Patisserie was named Coffee Shop of the Year, while Fasta Pasta was named Quick Service Restaurant of the Year. Roy Morgan Research's Michele Levine said the awards were presented to businesses that are leading their individual fields when it comes to satisfying their customers.

Organisations who underestimate the impact of social media have been likened to those who were slow to view the internet as a new platform for commerce more than a decade ago.

The 2011 IBM Global Chief Marketing Officer Study included more than 1700 face-to-face interviews with the world's most prominent chief marketing officers (CMOs) in 19 industries and 64 countries. One of the study's cornerstone findings is that CMOs have trouble capturing insights from the unstructured data that people produce on social platforms.

"The inflection point created by social media represents a permanent change in the nature of customer relationships," said the IBM Institute for Business Value's Carolyn Heller Baird. "About 90 per cent of all the real-time information being created today is unstructured data."

Gentrack, a leading provider of specialist software for water utilities, Victoria's largest regional urban water corporation Barwon Water will upgrade its customer service after selecting Gentrack to deploy its specialist water billing and CRM software.

Gentrack was awarded the contract to deploy its Velocity software to Barwon Water "Water utilities need specialist, flexible systems to support new technologies and customer engagement strategies." said Gentrack CEO James Docking.

"Our goal is to provide the billing, customer information and process management tools that will enable Barwon Water to meet its business aspirations," Docking said. Established in 1908, Barwon Water delivers water, recycled water and sewerage services to over 280,000 customers. The numbers of serviced customers can more than double during the year as holiday-makers move into Barwon Water's catchment region.

The Christchurch earthquakes have created demand for customer service staff among the many workers in the Christchurch rebuild and to fill vacancies across New Zealand.

New Zealand companies need both customer-facing and contact centres staff throughout the country. Insurance companies, banks and finance companies have been inundated by customer inquiries.

Jason Walker, MD of recruiters Hays New Zealand, says it's not easy to bring in contact centre workers. "There is often a credit check which needs to be done for certain individuals, particularly if they're working in the financial services market. We find a lot of them don't get through just for minor problems, which elevates the skills issue that we're having."

NEC Australia has unveiled a business transformation with the goal of becoming "Australia's leading communications systems integrator by 2014."

NEC says the transformation is the culmination of several internal technology upgrades and strategic management realignments throughout 2011. The plan is to unify its services and solutions portfolio across "managed services, biometrics, mobility, video, unified communications, network services, contact centre and cloud communications."

NEC Australia and New Zealand managing director Alan Hyde, said with a new organisational structure firmly in place, the company's technology investment in 2012 will focus on the launch of cloud communications solutions in the local market; strengthened unified communications offerings; innovative contact centre solutions; expanded capabilities for our national private Nextep broadband network; cutting-edge biometrics solutions; and continued commitment to enhancing customer's communications investments through all offerings.

Complaints from small businesses about their telecommunications services increased 52 per cent in the last financial year, the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) reports in the latest issue of TIO Talks, published this week.

More than 22,000 complaints were made in 2010-11 by small businesses unable to resolve issues with service providers. Complaints about inadequate or incorrect customer service advice, poor mobile phone coverage, broken promises and bill disputes were the most common issues.

"More small businesses rely on modern, effective telecommunications -in particular, a functioning internet and effective mobile telephone services - to stay competitive or trade at all. Problems with telecommunications can severely impact on their viability and profits. The TIO provides an important service where small businesses cannot solve complaints with their telcos," said Ombudsman Simon Cohen.

Fifth Quadrant has researched and published Australia and New Zealand's first comprehensive market report on Customer Self-Service.

This unique report profiles the current and future use of self-service channels by consumers and explores how consumers engage with self-service channels compared to traditional voice channels. The report covers online, social media, mobile apps, IVR and speech recognition channels amongst others. The report also features case examples of leading organisations and their deployment of self-service channels as well as commentary from industry suppliers.

The contents of the report include:

1. Self-service Strategic Plans
2. Consumer Usage of Self-service
3. Customer Engagement with Self-service
4. Future Self-service Channel Usage and Implementation
5. Vendor commentary on trends in Self-service technologies
6. Report Available Monday 12th March 2012

Report price: $199 + GST

Pre-Order order: $175 + GST offer valid til Sunday 11th March 2012.

Contact Max Kelly on 02 9927 3347 or mkelly@fifthquadrant.com.au for more information or order here.

Today, Service Strategy Management Consulting firm, Fifth Quadrant Pty Ltd (previously callcentres.net Pty Ltd) announced the launch of its Customer Service Industry Analyst practice. The practice will have a specialist focus on industry analysis and best practice in the customer service sector.

Building on Fifth Quadrant's highly successful Asia Pacific Contact Centre Industry Benchmarking practice, operating over 15 years, the new practice has expanded to provide Customer Service Industry analysis beyond the contact centre as well as a wider range of services including:

1. Service Industry Market Reports
2. Analyst Briefings
3. Benchmarking Services
4. Service Industry Best Practice Models

The first practice of its kind in the region, Fifth Quadrant's Customer Service Industry Analysts will report extensively on Australian, New Zealand, Asian and North American customer service markets. Analysis of the consumer experience, organisational capability and vendor performance will be conducted across all traditional and new media service channels including online, voice, face to face, social media, mobile apps and correspondence.

Dr Catriona Wallace, Director of Fifth Quadrant and leading international customer service futurist, stated, "Enterprise-wide Customer Service Strategy is now recognised as one of the top three organisational strategies directly linked to revenue and business performance, yet only one in five Australian companies have one. At the same time, the rapidly changing consumer landscape and the rise of the Consumer Power Economy, where power is shifting from business to its customers, through the coming of mediums such as social media and smartphone apps, means that organisations are struggling to deliver effective and efficient service. Our Customer Service Industry Analyst practice will provide evidence based reports, case studies, benchmarking and best practice models to assist organisations navigate this shifting environment and have more profitable relationships with their customers."

Different to other analyst organisations, Fifth Quadrant's Customer Service Industry Analyst reports will deliver a triangulated assessment of customer service by integrating consumer research, organisational research and vendor analysis.

Reports to be published in 2012 include:

1. Customer Self-Service Industry Report
2. Enterprise-wide Service Strategy Report
3. Social Media and Mobile Apps Customer Service Report
4. Customer Experience Research Best Practice Report
5. Service Industry Technology Report
6. Service Industry Human Resource Management Report
7. Service Industry Analytics & Performance Management Report
8. Service Industry Workforce Optimisation Report
9. Outsourcing Management Best Practice Report
10. Telecommunications Industry Customer Service Report
11. Banking, Finance & Insurance Customer Service Report

Dr Wallace stated, "Our commitment is to provide high quality customer service related data and insights to support Asia Pacific based organisations perform to global best practice standards. Industry reports, benchmarking studies, best practice models, analyst briefings and other services can be purchased individually or accessed through subscription models."

For more information please contact us on +61 2 99273347 or info@fifthquadrant.com.au

Despite the boom in online shopping, new research suggests New Zealanders still prefer race-to-face retail customer service.

The AMP Capital Shopping Centres (AMPCSC) poll reveals 76% of connected Kiwis still prefer to shop in-store rather than online, with just 24% agreeing that they regularly do their shopping over the internet. Some 63% of survey respondents enjoyed the fact that they can be assisted in-store if they need help.

"While more and more Kiwis are connected to social media and emerging technology, our research shows that people still want to experience the sensory and social aspects of shopping in-store," said AMPCSC's Desiree Clark. "These results present an opportunity for retailers to not only focus on providing an exceptional in-store experience, but also to consider how they cater for the digitally savvy."

Australian retailers are investing in the latest technology and e-commerce solutions in order to attract both local and international consumers.

Many retailers are already using easily accessible internet tools such as social media in order to improve their customer service efforts and form a more lasting relationship with customers. This is in connection with the industry's standard of engaging more with customers in order to gain additional repeat sales and customer retention.

Myer's IT GM Mark Doro told reporters technology has made customer service more possible and earning sales a lot easier thanks to the far reach of the Web. "This has enabled the company to reduce transaction times at POS, improve target marketing to consumers, provide more immediate and accurate information regarding stock on hand in any of its stores, as well as increase security in store for staff and customers." James Corby, head of digital marketing company Oracle Digital, said its customers need and demand transparency," with the introduction of our new support desk, that is exactly what they will receive. We are totally inspired to deliver what we consider the fastest and best customer experience that any tech customer will experience in Australia."

McDonald's is to offer a national qualification in the principles of customer service, which can count towards a hospitality apprenticeship, to all unemployed "Games Maker" volunteers at the London 2012 Olympics.

The fast-food chain said it expected around 1,000 people to take up the offer. Around 70,000 Games Makers are taking part during the Olympics and Paralympics. The online course, a City & Guilds Level 2 Award in the Principles of Customer Service, forms part of the McDonald's apprenticeship programme. The qualification is transferable and counts towards just under 10% of an apprenticeship in hospitality in the future.

Jez Langhorn, vice-president, people, at McDonald's UK, said: "This summer all eyes will be on Britain as we host the world's greatest sporting event. It has always been our ambition to use our role as Presenting Partner for the Games Maker programme to deliver a lasting legacy that will create opportunities for the volunteers themselves, and will raise hospitality standards in our own business and across the service sector as a whole." McDonald's also indicated that it would offer a job interview to all the people who completed it.

ParraConnect Advisory Committee has launched the ConnectCard project, a smartcard that will help create a virtual marketplace in Sydney's Parramatta.

The program will see participants use smartcards or Near Field Communication (NFC) mobile phones to shop from participating retailers, access car-parks, work buildings, libraries and used as part of loyalty programs. The smartcards are capable of carrying up to $100, in the same way as a debit card. Customers can load onto their cards.

Businesses that participate will be equipped with an Android Tablet and a (NFC) card reader. Customers simply 'wave' their smartcard or NFC-enabled phone past the reader or tablet to purchase items or access services. Launched in 2009, ParraConnect Advisory Committee is a partnership between the Parramatta City Council, CivicTEC and the local community.

Australia Post has opened the first in what will be a series of new "super stores" in a bid to better engage with its customers.

The first super store opened as an expansion of a post office in Brisbane, with plans to open 30 by June in all states, taking in both metropolitan and regional areas of the country. "The super store concept is really all about Australia Post increasing the access, convenience and choice for customers in how they do business," Australia Post's Christine Corbett said.

The super stores will feature six zones for small business and consumer customers, including a face-to-face customer service zone, an "online essentials" e-commerce zone, a financial and identity services zone, a travel zone in association with American Express, and a 24-7 zone with vending machines and parcel lockers offering self-service options for any time of day or night.

Australia's largest family-owned wine producer Casella Wines has selected StayinFront's on-demand Consumer Goods CRM solution, StayinFront EdgeCG to optimise the service, sales and marketing operations within its retail and wholesale network.

Casella Wines CFO David Alpen, said StayinFront offers a system with effective information recording and analysis framework. "This will enable our sales force to develop better strategies to achieve heightened performance," he said.

The StayinFront EdgeCG suite has been developed to ensure the efficient capture of order information and seamless two-way transfer of customer data and delivery communications between Casella Wines and its distributors. Key to Casella Wines' decision to adopt the solution was the rapid deployment capability of the on-demand solution with minimal disruption to the sales team.

Almost three quarters of contact centres who do not use home-based workers believe telecommuting would bring greater flexibility by being able to add new agents and open for longer hours.

The ContactBabel research from the UK Contact Centre Decision Makers Guide also showed that 18% (up 15% on 2010) of this year's respondents use homeworkers, with 92% agreeing that the flexibility was an advantage. Benefits of telecommuting included increased agent productivity, decreased staff turnover and claimed cost savings of 20%.

Iain McKenzie, president of customer service IT company Enghouse Interactive said remote homeworking is becoming a real option for an industry that faces difficulty with recruitment and the pressure of 24/7 opening hours. "Cloud-based solutions are perfect for supporting homeworkers, enabling organisations to benefit from a pool of agents that can be ramped up quickly in the event of one or more facilities going down, seasonal trends or extreme weather conditions," he said.

Australia's regional lenders have justified their higher mortgage rates by saying better customer service is a better way to combat the big four banks.

Banks like Bendigo Bank, Adelaide Bank and Suncorp Bank, have been beaten on loan pricing by Commonwealth Bank of Australia, ANZ Banking Group and National Australia Bank, The Australian Financial Review reports. Bendigo chief executive Mike Hirst said competitiveness could not be judged on price alone.

"Competing just on price is a race to the bottom," Hirst said. "If everybody was price conscious there would only be one brand at one price." He said customer satisfaction and engagement rates at the regional bank are higher than those of major lenders.

The ACT government's Canberra Connect customer service initiative responded to almost 1.3 million customer enquiries in 2011.

"Canberra Connect had a very busy year in 2011 with more than 500000 visits to its five shopfronts, more than 5.2 million visits to its online services, and answering more than 775000 calls at the contact centre," ACT chief minister Katy Gallagher said. Gallagher said the importance of the service was highlighted in September when it played a central role in providing information to the community about the Mitchell fire.

"During a four day period in the fire's aftermath, they received an extra 8000 calls in addition to their normal daily workload." Canberra Connect is manned by about 160 people in Canberra. Independent research showed that customer satisfaction was 90 per cent for Canberra Connect services overall, with the shopfronts achieving 93 per cent satisfaction.

Bankwest has been named the overall winner of the Financial Review Smart Investor SMILES Survey 2011/2012 for its outstanding customer service.

The Smart Investor SMILES Survey 2011/2012 asks customers for their direct feedback taking into account a range of factors including; service, quality, fees and product offerings to identify the companies providing the best customer service. Along with being named the overall winner for customer service, Bankwest was named Best Homeloan Provider and Best Day-to-Day Banking winner.

Bankwest said it continues to focus on a strategy of Happy Banking by ensuring it meets the needs of its customers and "deliver innovative products and services that give our customers a great banking experience".

The former operators of a Melbourne contact centre have been fined $31,680 for failing to pay five workers $3300 in wages.

Melbourne man Mark Vincent Gulifa has been fined $5280 and the company he formerly owned and operated, Reacta Staffing Solutions Pty Ltd, has been penalised a further $26,400, following a prosecution by the Fair Work Ombudsman. Reacta Staffing Solutions conducted a telemarketing business trading as Big Mouth Malone with an outbound sales contact centre at Ravenhall.

The Federal Magistrates Court in Melbourne imposed the penalties after finding Gulifa was responsible for Reacta Staffing Solutions failing to pay five casual employees a total of $3326 in wages. The employees - four of whom were aged 17 to 21 at the time - each performed between four days and two weeks' work between August, 2009 and March, 2010, but received no pay.

New Zealand ISP Orcon has pledged that no local jobs will be affected by its decision to open a new contact centre in the Philippines.

The new Philippine centre will employ between 20 to 30 people and be managed by Auckland-based Datacom. The team will focus on non-technical enquiries such as account information, billing, and other general queries; while technical queries will be dealt with by Orcon's existing New Zealand contact centre.

Orcon CEO Scott Bartlett told reporters the new centre will help alleviate customer wait times, and improve overall user experience. Bartlett said Orcon plans to hire a further 13 to 14 new staff for its New Zealand centre. "There are absolutely no roles being removed from our business as a result of this call centre," said Scott. "This isn't us going through a reduction, if anything it's because of massive growth in the last year."

ANZ Bank says customer service roles will be mostly unaffected by its plans to cut around 1,000 permanent jobs in the next four months.

ANZ said the decision to cut jobs comes as profits are squeezed by higher costs, tighter regulation and a drop in lending. The positions affected would be in middle management as well as back-office and support roles, the bank said, with customer-service remaining mainly intact.

ANZ said affected staff would receive assistance to find jobs elsewhere in the organisation and would have access to training and financial support. ANZ chief executive Australia Philip Chronican said the bank had to adapt to a difficult environment and become more lean, more agile and more customer-focused. "In this environment, the right thing to do is to be upfront with our staff and with the community about the changes needed in banking and their implications," Chronican said.

Medical equipment supplier J.A. Davey has contracted global CRM company StayinFront to upgrade its customer service.

J.A. Davey wanted to lift the effectiveness of its national pharmacy team with a strategic shift from paper to a cloud-based, fully automated field force sales and marketing solution. The key requirements were for a fully-hosted SaaS solution which could be rapidly implemented and was easy to use, minimising disruption to the J.A. Davey field representatives.

"The functionality being introduced to our national pharmacy team will enable them to maximise their territory opportunities and more easily provide the highest levels of customer service," said J.A. Davey director Simon Mitchell. StayinFront will also support J.A. Davey' s planned expansion into the grocery sector.

NBN Co, the consortium formed to manage the government's new National Broadband Network, has handed a $1.5 million, three-year contract for contact centre software to Australian company Veridian.

Veridian won the tender this month after competing with three other bidders believed to include UXC, IBM and Dimension Data. An NBN Co spokeswoman said the contract, which will see Veridian implement call switching and management software for the company's Melbourne-based Network Operations Centre, service activations team and public facing customer service centres.

The solution will sit on top of NBN Co's existing Cisco-based telephone system, but use software from Genesys.

The New Zealand government's 24-hour free health advice and customer interface phone service, Healthline, has celebrated its 2.5 millionth call.

Health minister Tony Ryall visited the Healthline contact centre in Wellington and presented flowers to the nurse who took the call. Healthline started as a pilot system in 2000 with five call takers before going nationwide in 2005.

Ryall said nearly 250,000 Healthline callers have been advised to seek emergency or other urgent care in the 11 years the 24-hour free service has been operating. The telephone triage service is currently under review as the Government looks to better integrate primary health and make the services more efficient, the media release says.

Internet analysts topseos.com.au has named its list of the ten best social media marketing companies for the month of February.

The company says the best social media optimisation companies offer a service to help their customers manage their various social media accounts in popular channels while communicating effectively with their customers in order to improve the customer service experience. The list is used by businesses who hope to better utilise the latest social media channels and technologies through the use of a professional online marketing service.

Each company underwent an evaluation process which focuses on the five most critical aspects of evaluation, customer references, and other resources. The Top 10 Social Media Optimisation Companies in Australia are:

1. Webgenies
2. SEORank
3. SEO Company Sydney
4. SEO Company Ltd
5. Switched on Media
6. Demonz Media
7. Wispa Group Pty Ltd
8. Mitash – Results Driven Interactive Agency
9. SMO Technology
10. Big Click Studios

Medical insurer HBF has selected Panviva's SupportPoint to optimise the efficiency of its contact centre and branch network.

The SupportPoint online technology is expected to enhance service for its members, provide support for staff, and lower operational costs. SupportPoint guides agents through every type of query providing them with step-by-step instructions and presenting relevant product and procedural information at precisely the moment of need.

HBF's Guy Sanders believes SupportPoint will significantly reduce the complexity of HBF's information environment, enabling shorter handling times, reduced time to train staff and higher first point of resolution rates. "Those add up to lowered costs, and higher levels of service for our members," he said.

Telstra says an improvement in customer service has seen a dramatic drop in complaints and calls to its contact centres.

Telstra CEO David Thodey said the telco has experienced a 28% reduction in calls from customers to its centres and a 24% reduction in complaints to the industry ombudsman because of the improvements. The improvement coincides with reported first-half earnings of almost $1.5 billion with a jump in mobile subscribers.

Telstra said it added almost one million new mobile services in the six months ending December 31. In the ongoing trend away from home phones, fixed-line telephone revenue continued to drop while domestic mobile revenue increased almost 11%.

New Zealand government agency Housing New Zealand has opened a new contact centre in Manukau to complement its existing service in Porirua as part of a customer service revamp.

From now on clients will have to call one of the centres to make an appointment to see a tenancy manager, rather than arranging the visit directly with the regional offices. Routine matters will now be handled over the phone and clients would get "exactly the same service wherever they are in the country", said department project leader Philippa Jones.

There will also be a software system for managing social housing supplied by British firm Northgate. Tenancy managers would still match people to houses, inspect properties and liaise with other social services, Jones said.

Queensland-based fitness chain Jetts has won the inaugural Canstar Blue Most Satisfied Customers' award for gyms.

The award, from the independent customer satisfaction ratings company is in recognition of Jetts' growth of more than 400% over the past three years continues its trend and its "focus on friendly staff and round-the-clock access".

Jetts Fitness Founder and director Brendon Levenson says he is honoured to accept the award and to see the 24/7 gym network recognised by its customers. "From day one, we built our business around the customer and focused on what they value. Low fees, no contracts, 24/7 access, great equipment and friendly, qualified staff," Levenson said.

Australian publicly listed law firm Slater & Gordon Lawyers will inherit a new customer service strategy with plans to buy the UK counterpart Russell Jones & Walker (RJW).

London-based personal injury and employment law specialist RJW has a major contact centre in Manchester selling volume legal insurance products for businesses and consumers. RJW CEO Neil Kinsella said the acquisition would bring security and growth to the firms' business model.

"Our commitment to making justice and legal services accessible and affordable to all remains, but our ability to do this increases as a result; this development will bring real benefits to our clients and affiliated organisations," Kinsella said. Subject to regulatory approval, the acquisition of RJW should be completed by April.

The building that houses Westpac Bank's administration and customer service centre in the Sydney suburb of Concord is on the market.

The Westpac operations centre, at 7 King Street, was purpose-built for the bank in 1997 and houses all Westpac's administration, processing and contact centre services for a number of its business units. Westpac recently re-signed its lease at the property.

The Australian Property Growth Fund is selling the building, which is one of the biggest campus-style centres located close to the Sydney central business district. Real Estate agents CB Richard Ellis's Rob Sewell said the extension of the Westpac lease commitment would be a significant attraction for local and offshore investors.

Consumer goods maker Reckitt Benckiser will maintain its customer service in Australia despite its decision to offshore manufacturing.

Reckitt Benckiser, which has been making products like Mortein and Dettol since 1963, will axe 190 manufacturing jobs at its Sydney factory. The products will be made offshore but a sales force of 300 people will be retained.

Reckitt Benckiser also says its customer contact centre will remain in Australia. Reckitt Benckiser chief executive Lindsay Forrest said production would move to other global manufacturing sites in Europe, Asia, South Africa and North America.

Sony Australia's electronics division will reportedly outsource its service and support business to Sydney-based InfoTeam Oceania.

InfoTeam Oceania is already the service provider for Sony Computer Entertainment, which oversees Sony's successful PlayStation business. "From 1 April 2012, Sony Australia will be delivering service and support to consumer AV/IT customers via a nationally centralised service partner, InfoTeam Oceania," a Sony Australia spokesperson told reporters.

"This company will leverage its extensive Sony knowledge and experience to provide new levels of service for our consumer AV/IT products," he said. "By managing our customers from a central base, Sony believes it will be able to provide customers with the most direct and effective service."

Outsourcer Unity4 has been announced as an initial partner in National Telework Week by Minister for Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy.

National Telework Week will convene in November by the Australian government in partnership with a range of organisations to encourage employers and employees to trail teleworking. "We are proud to be supporting the Australian government in this teleworking initiative," said Unity4 CEO Daniel Turner. "Over the last twelve years Unity4 has become a leader in contact centre teleworking through our two operating divisions; Contact Centre Outsourcing and Contact Centre Technology."

Turner said that as well as employing several hundred Australian teleworkers, Unity4 has developed RapportCMS, a contact centre technology designed to enable telework in the contact centre industry. "For the last 12 years we have been promoting teleworking as a better way to deliver contact centre services," he said. "We are delighted to see that the Australian Government and the broader business community is embracing telework and the significant advantages it offers. Productivity gains, workplace flexibility, reduced environmental impact and an increase pool of skilled labour are only some of the benefits."

Vodafone New Zealand has launched a free customer service initiative that sends an automated reply to any SMS received, letting the sender know that the recipient is driving and unable to respond.

Vodafone's DriveSafe service is activated by sending a text message to a central number. Anyone SMSing the driver during this time will receive the message "I'm driving right now. I'll read your TXT as soon as it is safe to do so. Vodafone DriveSafe."

Although illegal for more than two years, texting while driving is still a major issue, topping the New Zealand AA's list of top 10 driver distractions released last week. Vodafone's Director of Sales Grant Hopkins says that all Vodafone sales staff who are regularly on the road are now using Vodafone DriveSafe.

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank has installed two IBM XIV Gen3 storage systems to support its growing suite of customer service applications.

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank storage team leader Greg Smith said in a statement that as new customer applications were deployed, the bank noticed a steady increase in bandwidth transfer and storage server utilisation. The systems will support file applications, Exchange, SQL databases and recovery applications. The upgrades also include IBM storage area network (SAN) volumes controller nodes for the Bank’s customer service operations.

"Our objective is to be the number one customer-connected bank in Australia," Smith said. "The main thrust of application development has been around knowing and understanding customers better."

The vast majority of hearing impaired New Zealanders feel the level of service in the local tourism industry needs to be improved.

Recent research by Auckland University of Technology found 90% of New Zealand respondents felt that service in the New Zealand tourism industry for people with hearing loss needs to be improved. "It's important for customer service staff to be patient and understanding, with some training about how to serve guests who are deaf and hearing impaired," said National Foundation for the Deaf CEO Louise Carroll.

"From a safety perspective, it's imperative that emergency alarms are visual as well as audible, and that all guests have access to public announcements. Staff also need to be knowledgeable about how to communicate with hearing impaired guests in an emergency." Most of the people surveyed would return to a business that had good services for people with hearing loss and recommend it to others.

Gobal CRM company StayinFront has helped Australasian supplement and sports nutrition manufacturer Vitaco to upgrade its customer service.

Dedicated to health and wellness, Vitaco recently formed a new national sales team to sell directly into Australian pharmacies. To support the new strategy, Vitaco is equipping the field with StayinFront EdgeCG on Windows 7 tablets to drive efficiencies and foster relationships with pharmacies.

Key to its decision to deploy StayinFront EdgeCG were the integrated analytics, KPIs and in-field dashboards that will provide Vitaco reps with everything they need to sell more and manage better. The availability of StayinFront's on-demand solution means that organisations like Vitaco can rapidly implement sophisticated CRM tools.

Australian and New Zealand organisations have attracted some of the highest levels of customer satisfaction in the world, according to a new survey.

Help desk IT company Zendesk has released its new global Customer Satisfaction Index, which indicated New Zealand is leading the world when it comes to service. Of the countries with high Gross Domestic Product, there is an interesting spread of customer satisfaction with New Zealand (95%), Australia (93%) and Canada (93%). India and France ranked the lowest with 70% and 57% respectively.

"More and more organisations in Australia and New Zealand are recognising just how important providing a good customer service can be in not only attracting new customers but retaining existing ones," said Zendesk's Michael Hansen. "Together our customers in Australia and New Zealand process around 6000 queries every day through Zendesk, so we are very pleased see them ranked at the top of the table for customer satisfaction and look forward to helping them continue to provide an excellent service to their customers."

IT giant Oracle has expanded its customer service portfolio after completing the acquisition of CRM company RightNow.

"The combination of Oracle's leading marketing, sales, ecommerce, search and business intelligence software with RightNow's leading service capabilities, helps companies power great customer experiences in a seamless, personalised way across all channels and customer touchpoints: including on the web, in a store, over the phone or via mobile devices," Oracle said in a statement. Oracle said the acquisition has been widely supported by its customers, with RightNow completing the largest subscription booking quarter in its history since the merger was announced.

Oracle will provide more details on the product strategy for the combined Oracle and RightNow offering next week.

Financial services company Suncorp says customer service will not be compromised by its decision to cut 71 jobs at its insurance arm to improve efficiency.

The back office roles will be handled by Indian firm World Network Services," Suncorp spokesman Chris Newlan told reporters. "We've identified a partner who we believe can conduct these back-office roles more efficiently than we currently can without compromising customer service."

Newlan said the positions being made redundant include roles in finance management and information support, but added that the company aims to redeploy those whose jobs were cut.

Australian businesses need to prepare for eight major customer service "megatrends" this decade to remain competitive, according to new research.

The eight trends were identified in the global Service "2020: Megatrends for the decade ahead" report from BDO. BDO Australia chairman Tony Schiffman said businesses are set to wage an ongoing battle to beat customer expectations, to adopt a range of new technologies and use customer service as a global competitive differentiator.

Schiffman said customer service has never been more important to business than it is now, as globalisation creates significant new consumer markets and aggressive new global markets. The eight "megatrends" are:

1. Global competition will drive up service standards
2. Companies must maintain service standards in the face of 'the need for speed'
3. Firms must learn to use the increased transparency brought by social media to their advantage
4. Companies must use new sources and types of data to rethink the way they track and personalise their service
5. Good employees will remain fundamental to good service but with technology as an enabler
6. More firms will outsource aspects of customer service to new kinds of specialists
7. The rise of the mass affluent and other customer segments will force companies to find new product or service niches
8. Customer expectations, including the purpose of the store, are evolving with new technology

ANZ Bank has pledged that its frontline customer service staff will be unaffected by the job cuts it announced last week.

It is believed hundreds of jobs are likely to disappear at ANZ in the next six months, but frontline staff including tellers and branch workers will not be affected. About 130 positions will be made redundant in ANZ's commercial and retail businesses in the first round of cuts.

In a statement, a bank spokesman said affected staff would be able to apply for other roles at ANZ, as well as have access to training to help them find jobs elsewhere. "These changes reflect continued belt-tightening in the business given the more subdued economic environment and the continued pressure funding costs are placing on margins," the spokesman said.

Optus is the latest telco to launch its own dedicated online customer support forum, supported by members of its social media team.

Rivals Telstra and Vodafone have launched similar forums in the past year to address customer issues and foster discussion amongst users of their products and services. The forums attracted tens of thousands of posts from interested customers.

The Optus site, My Optus Community, has been divided into a number of different sections focusing on the mobile, fixed-line telecommunications and network areas, with a separate section for business customers. “One of the best ways to measure the satisfaction of our customers is through feedback," Optus director of digital media Austin R. Bryan said. "With the introduction of a community forum we hope to build rapport with our customers and provide them with more choice and control in how they interact with us."

Global IT company Oracle has announced that several leading Australian public sector, financial institutions and public entities have implemented Oracle CRM On Demand to improve customer service.

Wagering and gaming company Tabcorp is adding new customer service technology from Salmat.

Air New Zealand has introduced a new customer service initiative that asks passengers to name their price for a class upgrade on international flights.

The OneUp offer will give Economy or Premium Economy class passengers the chance to bid for an upgrade, if the seats are available. Air New Zealand has been trialling the system with passengers who purchased tickets in North America, the United Kingdom and Australia, but that will now be extended to include passengers ticketed from New Zealand to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Shanghai or Beijing, as well as passengers travelling between Los Angeles and London, and Hong Kong and London.

Where opportunities for upgrades exist, Economy and Premium Economy ticket holders who have booked directly with Air New Zealand either online, through the contact centre or at an Air New Zealand Holidays store may receive an email inviting them to make an offer to upgrade to the next cabin class. Passengers whose offers are accepted would receive email confirmation several days prior to travel.

Auckland Council is looking to consolidate its city-wide contact centre operation, a year on from amalgamation.

Auckland Council has issued a Request for Expression of Interest (REOI) seeking a consistent and stable contact centre solution across the city. The proposed solution must not have a single point of failure and it will need to integrate with Cisco CallManager. According to the REOI, the existing contact centre capability was established by the Auckland Transition Agency in October 2010. "Auckland Council inherited a call centre service delivery model which was designed to minimise service failure, whilst providing access via a single telephone number," the REOI says.

"This inherited model, which continues to operate, has call centres located in each of the legacy councils, multiple call centre systems supporting these locations and a single call routing solution." This has resulted in the 'complications' such as service capability being different in each contact centre. The REOI, which closes on January 20, 2012, is for a contact centre application that will include workforce management and quality monitoring, telephony and infrastructure changes or upgrades, professional services for the design, build and implementation of the contact centre solution, and ongoing operational support.

Broadband provider iiNet has warned against customer service complacency as complaints to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) are maintained at record levels.

iiNet CEO Maryna Fewster called on Mobile Service Providers to match the performance of Australia's leading service providers and focus on customers. "Good service is good business," Fewster said. "We've halved the number of matters escalated to the TIO this year by listening to our customers and resolving problems before they become full-blown complaints."

Less than 1.5% of new complaints to the TIO were about the iiNet group of companies, which include trusted brands Westnet and Netspace, as well as the former residential customers of AAPT. "iiNet has grown to become Australia's second largest DSL broadband provider because of its unique service culture and we believe this will become increasingly important as we move into mobile and television," Fewster said.

Melbourne Airport is upping its customer service with the launch of a new iPhone app for the technically savvy traveller and the recruitment of volunteers to help travellers.

"Our new iPhone app will help keep our passengers updated on flight information as they journey through our airport as well as provide valuable information to those welcoming or saying goodbye to family and friends," Melbourne Airport's executive general manager Simon Gandy said. He said the Melbourne Airport app provides users with real time flight information and maps of the terminal with walking times from different points.

Melbourne Airport is also trialling a new customer service volunteer program in the international terminal. "We know that travelling over the busy summer period can be difficult, so in conjunction with the Salvation Army, we've hand-picked a group of volunteers to be part of our Customer Care team," Gandy said. "The team's focus is to provide passengers with a "helping hand" by answering queries, giving directions and supporting our passengers at one of our busiest times".

Vodafone Australia faces $250,000 of fines from the Australian Communications and Media Authority if it fails to improve its customer care, network performance and privacy issues.

The ACMA has issued directions to Vodafone and its Vodafone Networks subsidiary requiring them to comply with the Telecommunications Consumer Protections Code (TCP Code). An ACMA investigation found that both companies had failed to classify and analyse complaints as required by the TCP Code; failed to provide timely customer information about network performance issues in late 2010 and had poor systems in place for protecting the privacy of customers' personal details prior to January 2011.

"These directions are intended to make sure Vodafone remains focussed on improving outcomes for its consumers by increasing the regulatory consequences of any further breach," said ACMA chairman Chris Chapman. Chapman said that Vodafone has made positive changes over the course of this year, but warned that "from this point on, if either Vodafone company fails to comply with the TCP Code, the ACMA can approach the Federal Court seeking civil penalties of up to $250,000."

In early December 2011, Avaya and Salmat announced a strategic partnership with Avaya beating Interactive Intelligence in the tender process to become the leading supplier of technology solutions to Salmat, one of Australia’s largest contact centre outsource providers.

Avaya's success has come off the back of a long term engagement process lasting 18 months.

When asked about why Avaya had been successful, Avaya CEO Rob Wells immediately raised the topic of multi-channel. Wells stated, "Salmat are evolving their business. They see the need to be faster on their feet, more responsive to customers and more differentiated in the market by making sure that whatever media the customer feels is an appropriate media to use, can be deployed very quickly."

Wells also highlighted that one of the key success factors for Avaya was demonstrating the way they could build a close partnership with Salmat. Wells said, "This is an exciting deal because this partnership will allow Salmat to offer unique solutions in the market place, but it also allows Avaya to think about going to market in different ways."

Director Solutions Sales, Rod Maxwell also pointed to Avaya's strength of product offering, particularly Avaya’s Aura and SIP solutions as a factor that influenced their success. He stated, "Salmat see a lot of benefit in reducing infrastructure, the mobility of agents, the consolidation of contact centres and the unification of UC (unified communicaitons) functions into contact centres."

Wells also discussed the role of innovation as an important factor in the decision process. He stated, "Salmat recognises the leadership of Avaya globally in the contact centre market. This means we can demonstrate that we are focussed on significant R&D and product evolution". Wells continued, "Salmat liked that Avaya's R&D investment aligned very well with Salmat's, particularly around multi-channel and the underlying SIP architecture."

When asked about how Avaya's other outsourcing customers had reacted to the announcement Wells said, "All of our customers have access to the same capability, technology and R&D spend." Wells continued, "Nobody has picked up the phone and raised any concern. Our customers all work to their own business plans targeting different aspects of the marketplace."

It is clear that both Salmat and Avaya are aligned to the vision of delivering effective multi-channel contact centres through simplified and single platform solutions such as Aura. Wells concluded, "The partnership will evolve and evolve. Part of the excitement of this roadmap is Avaya being an integral part of Salmat’s future offerings." He continued, "The opportunity for Avaya is very significant. We have created an environment that is much simpler to deploy, meaning our clients can respond a lot faster to market needs."

From an Analyst perspective Fifth Quadrant will monitor this partnership with keen interest to assess if the combination of Avaya and Salmat can produce more innovative models of contact centre technology and outsourcing.

New research suggest Australia's retail customer service is suffering after less than half of the industry's employees say their organisation is working to retains its best staff.

Mercer's What's Working survey found just 41.9% of respondents from the retail sector believe their organisation does a good job of retaining its most talented people. Of the 70.9% of respondents who hold a non-management position, less than half feel their manager plays an active role in their personal career development.

Mercer's Rob Bebbington, said struggling retailers are failing to appreciate their key selling point, customer service. "Happy staff means happy customers," Bebbington said. "Without properly engaging with current workers and providing employees with adequate career opportunities, any hope for growth will be thwarted by disengagement and apathy."

Marketing and technology agency LBi has extended its CRM business into Sydney in response to fast-growing client demand.

LBi says the new branch will offer a combination of services to the Australian market including platform innovation, service design, branded content, mobile, CRM, social media, usability and analytics. The agency already has a strong presence in the Asia Pacific region with offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Mumbai.

"Opening up LBi in Australia is a hugely important move for us given the increasing demand for digital excellence from existing and potential clients," said LBi's Laurent Ezekiel. "As well as allowing LBi to tap into a booming domestic market, the move underlines our commitment to our existing customers who require our blended services on a global scale."

Counselling phone service Lifeline has gone live with a contact centre upgrade that enables it increase its call capacity by 250,000 per year.

Lifeline CIO Chris Hardy told reporters the project has been two years in the making. "We've upgraded and overhauled our entire infrastructure so that our system has better reliability, robustness and we've moved to a new provider," Hardy said. "By removing Lifeline's legacy systems and installing Microsoft Dynamics CRM and platform standardisation, the not-Dor-profit organisation is able to provide better information to its telephone crisis staff members. "We've upgraded our legacy environment to provide us with better call quality and better reliability around that," Hardy said.

"We've implemented a major DR (disaster recovery) environment which is off network, so is totally divorced from our production environment which is based on virtual contact centre technology," he said.

Outsourcer NRG Global Solutions has won the Rising Star category at the 2011 Queensland Top 400 Business Awards.

NRG Global Solutions' President Laurence Barlow said winning the award would not have been possible without a great team both in Australia and the Philippines. "The Australian business community is developing a better understanding and acceptance of Business Process Outsourcing," Barlow said. "I think the Global Financial Crises has pushed businesses to look for more innovative ways to manage customer service delivery channels, and this is where we come in."

Barlow said NRG's globally compliant contact centre facilities in Australia and the Philippines handle customer service end-to-end, from welcome calls' to debt collection' for many of Australia's largest banks, telecommunications and utility companies. "While it is true that most of the customer service work we take on is 'voice based', we are building out our service offerings using online chat support, text reminders, convenient payment gateways via iPhone, and an array of cloud computing applications that enhance and expedite the customer service experience."

New Zealand Telecom's retail division will deploy new Siebel CRM software in its contact centres around New Zealand and the Philippines.

Telecom will use Siebel Contact Centre to provide its customer service agents with a unified platform to view and handle calls from, and to manage customer information and product assets. The system also allows customers to track the progress of their issue online, in the form of a ticket.

Telecom's Trish Keith told reporters she hopes the $40 million project will improve customer relations. "We want to make sure our customers are getting the most out of their Telecom phone and internet services and to do this we need to use the best possible tools to help frontline staff understand customer needs and participate in genuinely helpful conversations," Keith said.

Telstra has reopened its customer self-service site after it was shut down following a major leakage of sensitive customer data.

The potentially massive breach allowed an Internet user to bypass the front-page security of the BigPond self-help site and access details of other users. The exposed site offered customer service-level access to customers of Telstra bundled products.

The information at risk included bundle information, telephone numbers, users' names and addresses, and reportedly users' login and password information. Telstra said it was made aware of a privacy breach about 4 pm Friday and disabled its site an hour later. As a precaution, Telstra also reset the passwords of around 60,000 customers.

Utilities CRM specialist Gentrack says it has won a deal to upgrade the systems at New Zealand energy retailer TrustPower.

TrustPower has renewed its long-standing contract with Gentrack, initiating a project to upgrade its core billing and customer information system to the new Gentrack Velocity platform. "New Zealand has a competitive and dynamic electricity market with many players and complex market transactions," said Gentrack CEO James Docking.

"It requires a strong level of expertise in order to deliver software to support these market processes and interactions - expertise that is hard to replicate for many of our competitors." TrustPower is also owner of one of Australia's largest wind farms at Snowtown, South Australia. The Gentrack Velocity upgrade project follows the completion of a similar project at Meridian Energy in Christchurch.

New Zealand's Grand Mercure Nelson Monaco has won the Franchise Customer Service Award at the Accor Pacific Franchise Awards in Sydney.

The property won the award for its "outstanding achievements in overall guest satisfaction". "Throughout 2011 Accor has welcomed 14 hotels, resorts and apartment style accommodation to its growing portfolio in key business and leisure destinations, with a further three due to open by the end of the year," said Accor's general manager of franchise hotels Dino Mezzatesta.

"It has been a busy and prosperous year for us and our franchise partners and we are thrilled to congratulate the winners of our very first Accor Asia Pacific Franchise Awards," Mezzatesta said. The group said each award category aimed to showcase the improvements, enhancements and developments of a Franchise property under the Accor umbrella, whilst at the same time recognising individual property performances and successes across Australia and New Zealand.

Regional banking group BankWest has scooped the pool in the Australian Financial Review's SMILES survey.

The Western Australian provider, now owned by the Commonwealth Bank, has preserved its own identity and apparently delivered on a three-year campaign to improve customer service. It was judged highest as a home lender and in day-to-day banking categories, replacing fellow small banker Bendigo Bank after four years as Australia's favourite provider with a 72% satisfaction.

Respondents said "old-fashioned" good manners, fast resolutions, competitive interest rates, conveniences such as 'express' stores that are open longer hours and mobile banking iPhone and Android apps made the difference for BankWest. The company is also Smart Investor's reigning Blue Ribbon Awards' Bank of the Year.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has turned to its customers to provide ideas on how to improve its service.

As part of the initiative the bank will run the IdeaBank as a competition designed to encourage innovative thoughts from those that use its services. A reward of $10,000 will be offered to whomever has the suggestion that receives the most votes from both customers and the leadership team within the company.

"Technology has played a critical role in our past 100 years of banking, helping us grow and continually improve, therefore it's only natural that we continue to invest in this channel to both differentiate our brand and offer stand out customer service, experience and now contribution," CBA's Andy Lark said. The platform will begin accepting ideas from its launch on December 8, with the theme for ideas said to be based around the "Future of Banking". In the meantime, customers can now sign up to be notified when the IdeaBank begins to accept ideas.

New Zealand's newly-formed Customer Experience Management Businesses Association (cemNZ) warns that firms that want to survive the economic downturn can no longer ignore dissatisfied customers.

cemNZ co-founder Paul Linnell said the downturn in the world economy has highlighted that businesses have had the luxury to either ignore or assign to a low priority unhappy customers. "I think the first problem is that businesses have been aware of problem but haven't realised how bad it is," Linnell said.

He said periods of sustained growth and relative abundance have allowed businesses to grow complacent about their customers. "The sort of research that cemNZ has done in New Zealand shows that 50% of customers have problems with the service they receive from their suppliers throughout the year." He said another issue is that in the past if a customer was unhappy with the service they received the message would be spread by word-of-mouth, but today people go straight to social networking sites to voice their concern.

Outsourcer Quantum Multimedia Communications has entered into administration, according to accounting firm Deloitte.

Quantum was placed into administration last month after a receiver was appointed. Although Deloite has not disclosed any of its clients, the business claims it services one of the largest telcos in the country, along with state local government agencies, and a major food manufacturer.

Quantum, or QMC, operates a number of contact centres in Australia and southeast Asia, operating the Link:Q business. The business also provides a number of virtual services, including message taking, registration, appointment bookings and virtual reception services, as well as telemarketing and market research work.

Poor customer service is biggest complaint from Australian shoppers, according to new research.

Synovate Retail Performance survey found that 24% of those polled said bad-mannered staff put them off shopping and a further 22% complained about staff who just "couldn't be bothered". Another 20% said that pushy staff were the most annoying and could make a trip to the shops "absolute hell".

When consumers were asked what they would change about the shopping experience, 13% asked for lower prices and 11% wanted more online choice. There were also calls for separate shopping times for children and teenagers and, in some cases, calls for all children and teenagers not to be allowed into the shops at weekends or in the afternoons. Comments also included a wish for more flexible and later opening hours.

More than half of Australian consumers believe their insurance and banking providers do not understand them or their communication preferences, according to new research.

The Thunderhead Australia study found that 56% of respondents felt that their provider communicated more on its terms rather than theirs, while 53% felt that communications were ill-targeted and designed to appeal to a broad audience rather than them personally. Most preferred email or phone to mail correspondence.

Some 39% said they are considering switching providers and almost a third of consumers are unlikely to recommend their provider to others. "Banking and insurance providers...need to understand not only the role of technology in their communications, but listen to how customers would like to be communicated with," said Thunderhead's Nick Smith." At the moment it's all one way traffic from provider to customer with little consideration for customer preferences."

Qantas customer service suffered a minor setback this week when its check-in system experienced a fault that left it unable to print boarding passes for almost three hours.

"Qantas airport kiosks have experienced some difficulties this morning. Minor delays as a result. Online check-in not affected," the airline posted on its Twitter page. A Qantas spokesperson told reporters the outage began at about 6.40am Wednesday when the Amadeus check-in system used by the airline experienced a fault hindering the printing of the boarding passes.

"We facilitated the boarding pass printing through our services areas which are just to the side of our kiosk where we've got a set of customer service managers that sit and they wrote them out on pre-printed cards and then sent passengers on their way," the spokesperson said. The system came back online at about 9am.

Outsourcer Salmat, has signed a five-year deal with Avaya to implement a communications platform across its Australian and New Zealand operations designed to improve customer call resolution.

The platform will include web self-service, call recording and integration with Salmat's internal communication systems. Salmat CEO Grant Harrod, said its customers will be able to connect with contact centre agents via phone, email or the Web and receive a consistent level of service.

Under the deal, Avaya will provide managed services to Salmat such as service level targets, network performance and support services. The rollout will commence in February 2012. Avaya's 2011 Asia Pacific Contact Centre Consumer Index found that more than a third of Australian consumers prefer to use methods such as web chat, rather than traditional phone conversations, to contact a customer service centre.

Consumer group CHOICE says airlines must not become too reliant on social networking and the web for their customer service.

Qantas customers stranded during the airline's lockout last month complained of jammed contact centre lines and inadequate communication from the company. CHOICE says that Qantas passengers in transit and those who were yet to travel were left "hanging on for hours" on call centre lines "with too many bereft of information or a helping hand".

"Qantas, and surely for that matter all airlines, need to ensure that call centres are properly staffed to cope with on-going inquiries from those requiring more than Twitter or Facebook information", CHOICE said. CHOICE says that the Qantas lock-out highlights the need for the creation of a travel industry ombudsman to investigate the complaints of the flying public.

Office products supplier Corporate Express Australia has moved to an integrated customer service with Splunk.

Corporate Express technology specialist Shaun Butler said the project has enabled the business to streamline its customer support systems. "Splunk was originally put in as a log aggregation enabler and there wasn't really anything else on the market at the time (that could do the same thing)," Butler told reporters.

Butler said the company has also reduced its IT department running costs thanks to the rollout. "It ingests the data and stores it in files - there are no databases or tables, and what it actually does is assigns structure... and the thing it cares about is time - it attributes everything with time"

News Limited's incoming CEO Kim Williams will apply his customer service experience from a decade running pay-TV company Foxtel, to the company's newspaper business.

News is pursuing a strategy of asking readers to pay for online content, putting Williams' knowledge of subscription television to good use. "I understand the acuity of the need to listen closely to the customer," he told reporters.

The Australian newspaper launched its paid content system this month, and other titles are expected to follow next year. News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch said as Foxtel boss, Williams made "strong representations and I am very strongly of the view that we must have media policy built from consumer needs".

IVR systems are increasingly featuring voice recognition of keywords and biometric identification as core features, delegates at the Voice Leadership Forum in Wellington this month were told.

The forum was told of the user experiences of automated voice at New Zealand's Inland Revenue (IRD) and Ministry of Social Development (MSD) as well as the Bank of New Zealand and Westpac banks. IRD moved from offering "virtual hold" for call backs to its current offering of recognising key words to route calls. If possible the customer is routed to a self-service option through voice-response or online.

MSD launched its voice biometrics service in June this year with the aim of reducing the time taken to become sure of a customer's identity. Enrolment is not forced, but a customer service agent will ask the customer if they would like to opt into the system. Identification by voice is successful 80 percent of the time.

Almost half of Australia's mobile phone users are planning to switch providers next year, with poor customer service one of the main factors.

A report by Macquarie University and SIM-card provider amaysim found that while half of the survey respondents said they found it hard to switch providers, 46% were planning to switch in 2012 with poor coverage and bad customer service among the most common gripes.

Only one in four consumers liked their mobile phone provider, but one-third of respondents were still planning to stay with the same company despite being unhappy with the service. Macquarie University senior marketing lecturer Dr David Gray said Australian mobile phone users were less satisfied than their European counterparts.

Sydney-based IT company MyCyberTwin has won the Rising Star Award at the 2011 Australian Technology Showcase Patrons' Awards in NSW for its online customer service application.

MyCyberTwin was launched in April 2007 after two years of planning and is beginning to achieve export success with its virtual online assistants. The assistants act as customer service agents on business websites and have the ability to converse with customers.

MyCyberTwin co-founders Liesl Capper and John Zakos found most chat robots were too hard to build and maintain, inaccurate, and unable to handle complex queries. "Having realised that the limitation was technology, not market appetite, we set out to build not only the most advanced chat robots but also to make a platform that anyone could use," Zakos said.

Australian consumers are less satisfied with all retailers and service providers than they were 12 months ago, according to new research.

The annual Smart Investor League of Exceptional Service (SMILES) survey, conducted by Financial Review Smart Investor magazine, found the most significant declines in service rating were among superannuation funds, down 8% in a year, and fund managers, down 7%.

The big four banks - Westpac, Commonwealth, ANZ and NAB - rated poorly, despite increasing their branch staff and structures. Mobile phone providers and life insurers also performed worse, with their rating dropping 5%, yet despite controversy following the Queensland floods in January, satisfaction with general insurers fell by only 3%.

US contact centre IT company LiveOps has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the assets of New Zealand-based Datasquirt.

Datasquirt technology allows customers to communicate with businesses in real time across all major channels, including social, mobile, SMS, email, and web chat. Clients such as Royal Mail Group and Wokingham Borough Council in the United Kingdom are using the company's CONTACT solution to manage Twitter-based service delivery in their contact centres.

LiveOps CEO Marty Beard said the acquisition will allow LiveOps to expand its sales and engineering teams with world-class cloud contact centre expertise. "We are now well-positioned to lead the contact centre migration to the cloud with a social, mobile, and voice offering that will transform customer service," he said in a statement.

Wellington software firm Xero plans to expand its customer service numbers as part of its plans to become a world force in the accounting industry.

Founder Rod Drury said he would love to hire extra customer service staff. As well as 50 to 100 more people for its software development and testing team over the next year to 18 months.

Xero will move into new offices in March that can accommodate 180 employees. "As we look at supporting a million customers - and we think that is very achievable- we would be over at least 500 people."

Telstra says its customer service transformation project announced last year is about 50% complete.

Dubbed Project New, the plan is designed to simplify the company and improve customer service. Telstra's Robert Nason told a briefing. The slowest area was cultural change within Telstra which was only 30% complete.

Productivity, simpler prices and improvements to the Telstra operating model were more advanced, he said. Chief customer officer Gordon Ballantyne said Telstra was working with its customers to increase the number of bundles it has sold from 1 million currently to 2 million. This was because customers on bundled services were 52 per cent less likely to leave, he said.

A purpose-built customer service building has been completed in the regional NSW city of Batemans Bay.

The new Smart Centre will house offices from the Department of Human Services, with dozens of new jobs to be advertised within weeks. A government spokesman told reporters that staff from Centrelink, Medicare, CRS Australia and Australian Hearing would relocate to the building before the March 2012 opening.

"In addition staff from other Australian Government, NSW state government and non-government agencies will also relocate," the spokesman said. On-the-job training will be provided for all new positions, which will include customer service advisers and involve the handling of telephone inquiries or processing in relation to government benefits and entitlements.

Wine merchants, Laithwaites Wine People, has improved its customer service capability by rolling out a public Cloud offering across its new 35 seat Sydney contact centre.

Laithwaites, which sells premium wine to some 65,000 Australian customers, decided to deploy IPscape across its business as part of a technology-driven strategy to interact with its customer base. Customer service manager, John Matthews told reporters the rollout of IPscape was about cost efficiency and creating a positive relationship with customers across the business.

"When we first came to Australia, we used the services of an outsourced call centre, and it was a cost efficient thing for us to do at the time," Matthews said. "As the years went on, as we grew and as we had a greater requirement for more advisers, we decided that we wanted to bring our call centres in-house and make it at the heart of what we do."

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) will look to deploy a new contact centre solution to boost its customer service ahead of an expected increase in calls prompted in part by the launch of the carbon tax next year.

The ACCC said the contact volumes at its Infocentre had risen 75% from 89,000 to 155,000 per year during the last three years, and is expected to rise by 30% to 40% within the next 12 months with the introduction of carbon tax and the launch of the Australian Energy Regulator's Retailer of Last Resort scheme. "The ACCC's Infocentre receives information requests, complaints and inquiries from consumers and businesses. This may occur via telephone, email, fax, letter, or through lodgement of online forms on ACCC websites," the ACCC said.

ACCC said the new system would be approached in two stages. The first would include sourcing a commercial off-the-shelf solution to enable the registration, recording, classification, management and reporting of inquiries, and a customer service operator's workbench to allow staff to quickly find relevant policy and procedures documents. Stage two could include building at the contact centre system to be used by other business units, and potentially integrate the contacts management capability with the wider management of cases.

The customer service of New Zealand's Palmerston North City and Horizons Regional Councils led them to be named joint recipients of the Initiative of the Year award at the Manawatu Contact Centre Awards.

The award recognised the efforts of the two councils in establishing a 120 seat customer service centre to receive and process Red Cross missing person enquiries in the wake of the February 2011 Canterbury earthquake. Horizons accepted a request to provide the service and teamed up with Palmerston North City Council and established a 90 seat contact centre, across three sites within three hours of receiving the call for assistance. As call volumes grew, the centre was expanded to 120 seats.

"We're thrilled to receive this award which recognises the efforts of the many volunteers who helped on the phones, the staff from both Councils who juggled their workload to help out wherever possible, and shows the rest of New Zealand what we can do here in Palmerston North," Palmerston North City Council's Mike Manson.

Suncorp insurance says it is recruiting an extra 100 customer service workers in Australia to offset a decision to offshore at least 50 processing positions.

"We've made a decision to partner with an external provider regarding a small number of back-office roles in different parts of Australia that we believe can be more efficiently performed by an external provider," a Suncorp spokesman told reporters. "We'll be making every effort possible to ensure those people are deployed into other areas of the company."

The spokesman refused to speculate on whether further jobs would be sent offshore in the future. "If and when we do make further decisions about further plans our employees will be the first to know."

Cloud software company Abiquo has opened a regional sales and support centre in Melbourne to service a growing customer and partner base throughout the Asia Pacific region.

The Australian centre adds to Abiquo's existing office network across the United States and Europe. Abiquo’s Alun Carp said that, as well as providing local time zone support for customers in China, Japan and Australia, the centre in will join centres in the US and Europe to providing 24-hour, follow the sun customer support.

"The opening of the new centre clearly demonstrates Abiquo's commitment to the region," said Josh Rubens, managing director of Cloud Solutions Group, a local Abiquo consulting partner. "Given the volume of demand for cloud solutions in the region, we are pleased to be working with a vendor that can support its partners and customers locally."

The Australian Direct Marketing Association (ADMA) and the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association (AIMIA) have jointly released the Australian Group Buying Code of Conduct to ensure better service for customers.

As group buying (which includes online coupon sites) grows into an established channel, ADMA and AIMIA and the industry have recognised the importance of developing a code of conduct specific to the group buying experience. The voluntary code aims to; ensure that consumers have access to products and service information they need to make informed choices; promote compliance within the industry with relevant laws including the National Privacy Principles and the Spam Act 2003; promote fair, honest, ethical best practice within the group buying industry; and increase consumer confidence in dealing with group buying platforms.

The Australian Group Buying Code of Conduct includes an independent, transparent and open complaint-handling process when consumers have been unable to resolve an issue with a group buying company in the first instance. The complaint process has been designed to encourage the group buying industry to resolve established consumer complaints. The complaint handling process will be managed by the ADMA Code Authority.

Australian integrator 3D Networks has won the Avaya Aura Contact Centre APAC Partner of the Year award.

3D Networks received the award for enabling Nortel customers to smoothly migrate to the new Avaya Aura Contact Centre offering. "It's been an exciting year of growth for us," said 3D Networks' Mark Whitfield. "The Australian contact centre market is looking for sophisticated solutions that not only address today's needs but set them up for future technological developments. Our partnership with Avaya helps us to fulfil those needs."

Avaya found the 3D Networks team showed an integrated approach to implement the solution as per customer priorities, ensuring business continuity during transition, and rapid return on investment. "Avaya values 3D Networks' ongoing commitment both as a Platinum partner and as a leading specialist in the Contact Centre space. We are delighted to be able to more formally recognise 3D Networks with this very deserving award" said Avaya Australia & New Zealand MD Rob Wells.

Australian businesses are cooling their attitude to offshoring customer service for the present time, according to new research.

A survey of Australian and North American and European senior executives by Ovum found that just 2% said they would look to offshore their customer service centres in the next 12 to 24 months, while only 10% said they would do so within 25 to 36 months. Meanwhile, a massive 80% said they had no plans to offshore their contact centres.

Ovum's Peter Ryan said four key issues concern enterprises when it comes to offshoring their customer service; quality of the interaction with end users, stability of the offshore destination, pressure from consumers to keep work in the domestic country, and fears over safety of data. "The issue over the quality of the interaction with customer service agents and end users is a key one," Ryan said. "Customers can quickly become frustrated if they feel their enquiry is not being dealt with quickly and effectively and take their business elsewhere."

Consumer group Choice claims Qantas's customer service was unprepared to cope with the needs of passengers stranded by the carrier’s decision to ground its fleet over the weekend.

Stranded Qantas customers complained the airline's phone services were not prepared to handle the volume of calls, with some customers on hold for more than two hours. "It would perhaps be impossible given the sheer scale of the disruption and distress that the call centre could come up to speed so quickly, but we say that's what Qantas should have borne in mind before they pulled the plug," Choice spokesman Christopher Zinn told reporters.

Zinn said it was not just the phone systems that failed. "People who get tweets or SMSs perhaps 24 hours after they should have done in terms of the customer charter telling them that their flight would be cancelled," he said.

Face-to-face contact in sales still delivers better service than online or contact centres, according to new research.

The study by consultants INSIDE STORY Knowledge Management asked consumers about the channels they use to find information, to source quotes and to buy products and services. The report found that consumers especially preferred face to face service on products that require explanation or which represent a more significant investment.

"Whilst many businesses will continue to look at migrating customers to 100% self serve solutions to reduce their service costs, the emphasis needs to be on getting the balance just right for your business and your market position," said INSIDE STORY MD Liane Ringham. "The dispositions and economics are clearly category dependent."

Aged care provider IRT says four years of development is behind its naming as winner of a Customer Service Institute of Australia's (CSIA) 2011 Australian Service Excellence Award.

IRT received the award as a national winner in the not-for-profit category last week. "We have been driving consistently exceptional customer service experience throughout IRT," CEO Nieves Murray said in a statement. "Our staff embraced this initiative."

Murray said quality customer service was vital to IRT's success. IRT's next step will be to gain accreditation under the International Customer Service Standard by 2013.

New Zealand mobile company 2degrees and founding shareholder, the Hautaki Trust, have launched a new program to help Maoris into customer service in the telecommunications industry.

The Hei Rere Mai (So You Can Fly) program involves career advice, paid scholarships and careers for Maoris. Maori students will be offered career advice to best guide them into the industry, while a scholarship will be made available to Maori studying towards ICT qualifications at Auckland University.

2degrees will recruit high school leavers into its customer care team, providing a structured career program whereby they study towards ICT qualifications and can progress into roles in other divisions in the company. 2degrees CEO Eric Hertz said once employees have shown a strong customer ethos they will have opportunities to study towards ICT qualifications on-the-job.

Unified Communications company Zeacom has announced the latest version of Zeacom Communications Center (ZCC), designed with customer service agent retention in mind.

Version 6.0 increases the number of global contacts in the desktop phone book to 10,000 and significantly improves their search ability with new customisable search categories and more meaningful search tags. "For example, operators can now create a category called 'back up' to identify assistants or alternative contacts for team members," said Zeacom. The result is faster call processing for customers while improving the whole user experience for the operator.

"Contact centres are turning to Zeacom to leverage advice and support to drive a higher return on their software investment," said country manager Stephen Sarjeant. "Working together means that a business' strategy to transform customer communications and the underlying business processes can be implemented faster."

Townsville City Council (TCC) in regional Queensland has implemented a SaaS knowledge management product from livepro for faster responses to its constituents' enquiries.

TCC executive manager of customer services, Megan Leavy said the council headed up the search for a system to help the large team to provide accurate and quick responses to questions ranging from "what night is garbage night?" through to survival information in natural disasters. "We had moved from a word based document system to a free shareware product and then to SharePoint, but the searching still remained chunky," Leavy said.

"The time it takes to get our staff 'job ready' when new or after leave will also be dramatically reduced," she added. Leavy said the product, integrated by IMC Communications could also help TCC interact with local councils in the region.

Unified contact centre IT company Noble Systems has announced the acquisition of Melbourne-based workforce management (WFM) specialist Open Wave.

The transaction includes all assets and intellectual property including Open Wave's award-winning, functionally-rich ShiftTrack WFM solution. "Acquiring Open Wave's talent and technologies will enable us to offer the most dynamic and responsive WFM product in the global marketplace," said James K. Noble, Jr, President of Noble Systems.

"We welcome Open Wave clients and partners from Australia and around the world and look forward to continued growth and success under the Noble Systems brand."

Perisher snow resort is reporting excellent results after taking its customer service IT to the slopes.

The resort equipped its lift crews and IT department with Motion Computing F5v Tablet PCs to process lift passes, immediately changing the way the resort services its guests. Perisher's management team wanted to implement a paperless ticketing system and mobile computing solution to provide the more than 700,000 yearly skiers with even more efficient service and enhance the overall resort experience.

The lift crews rely on the tablet PCs as a portable interface to the radio frequency ID-enabled gates, showing real-time information on guest identity and ticket usage. "We've significantly upgraded our service at lift gates and the snow-sport areas. If there are any pass or gate issues, skiers and boarders don't have to go back to the ticket window; the lift crews promptly deal with it right there, improving efficiency and customer service," said Perisher's Michael Fanning.

CEO of telecommunications company and internet provider Dodo says one of his most important discoveries since the company was launched 10 years ago is that telecommunications is about customer service.

Speaking at a lunch celebrating the 10th anniversary Dodo's launch as a dial-up internet provider in 2001, Larry Kestelman said running Dodo is "not about the blinking lights and how many servers you have". "For a consumer, that doesn't matter. It's all about service, systems, processes and their experiences with dealing with you," he said.

Kestelman referring to a time in 2007 when Dodo topped the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman list of telco complaints from consumers, saying "it's something you have to learn yourself on your own mistakes." "We had 400 people in Melbourne, we tried to recruit more staff unsuccessfully, and that's where we made the decision that if we are going to be here for the long term and we realised what a telecommunications business is all about.

Hardware retailer Bunnings Warehouse has been voted best customer service provider in Australia at the International Customer Service Professionals (ICSP) People's Choice Awards.

While Bunnings won overall, category winners included Telstra, Commonwealth Bank, Qantas, Woolworths, Origin Energy, RACV, AAMI, Medibank, Subway, Toyota and Australia Post.

ICSP CEO Tricia Olsen said the awards showed that companies that take customer service seriously were noticed, and viewed positively by their customers. "In an increasingly competitive business environment, Australian consumers expect high levels of customer service, and for their providers to be price competitive."

Blitz Credit Management has opened a new customer service centre in Perth.

The new office coincides with Blitz Credit Management's recent deployment of technologies including cloud computing and VOIP contact centre systems. "Our company is committed to exploring new technologies to assist in collections," Blitz MD Natalie Walker said.

"The new systems allow us to effectively service our client's high-volume debt collection requirements," she added. Blitz Credit Management specialises in commercial and consumer debt collection, credit information and receivables management services. "Our new premises have been purpose-built to support our growing business" said Walker.

New Zealand Post is re-introducing stamp vending machines as part of a pilot program designed to improve customer service.

Stamp machines have been installed in PostShop stores and within major shopping malls around Auckland. The machines will offer a variety of different stamps covering requirements for domestic and international mail.

"It's all about convenience, and anyone who's tried these new machines can attest to how convenient and easy to use they are," New Zealand Post's Mark Stewart told reporters. "If all you want is to buy some stamps, then, with these new machines, you can do that in a flash and be on your way."

Motoring group and general insurer NRMA says customers are prepared to more for better customer service.

According a recent survey of NRMA members, 70% of people would pay more if service was better. Of the 1200 members surveyed, 51% said they believed society has lost the notion of good-old-fashioned service.

"There's nothing wrong with the type of service we got back in the 50s," NRMA spokesman Peter Khoury said. "If you want the upper hand on your competitor, maybe it's not so much about how snazzy your marketing campaign is or how low the price of your product is, maybe it's about the type of service you provide."

Travel website's lastminute.com.au's customer service has been recognised by winning the online travel flights category at the Third Annual AMBER Awards.

The AMBER Awards celebrate and recognise excellence in eServices, customer service and eCommerce in Australian and New Zealand. lastminute.com.au brand GM Kirsty Harrison said her company is proud of its flights offering and the award is a great reward for the hard work of its team.

"We travellers today are incredibly savvy and not only appreciate, but expect, a user-friendly online service that we're only too happy to provide," she said. Lastminute.com.au beat major companies including Webjet, Qantas, and Virgin Australia to the award.

New Zealand and Australian small and medium businesses owners (SMBs) feel disregarded in the IT sector in favour of enterprise customers, according to new research.

The survey over 1000 SMBs, conducted by cloud computing specialist EMC, found 65% of respondents were not satisfied with the level of customer service offered to them. Some 62% said they found it difficult to find suitable solutions for their business needs, and 72% said enterprises receive more favourable pricing arrangements when purchasing solutions.

EMC's Mark Oakey said the findings come at a difficult time for SMBs. "The findings are particularly worrying as SMBs face similar technology challenges to large businesses but have fewer resources to cope," he said. "We need to address this before it creates a digital divide between large, mid-sized and small businesses."

American cloud-based help desk software provider Zendesk has announced the opening of its new Asia Pacific headquarters in Melbourne.

Asia Pacific is the latest location in which Zendesk is enjoying significant growth and currently has 1,200 customers in the region. The new office in Melbourne signifies the company's belief that the region will continue its upward growth trend.

Zendesk vice president and Asia Pacific MD Michael Folmer Hansen said the APac region is an early adopter market for cloud-based customer services. "The rapid rise of social media channels has meant customer service has changed forever," he said. "Gone are the days of relying purely on a telephone help desk where queuing was the norm. Today, customers expect to have a choice of multiple touch points, whether that's via the web, social media or mobile devices. They want to have immediate and direct conversations with their service providers and demand a fast, satisfactory response."

No. 1 telco Telstra has unveiled a major rebranding in a bid to connect with customers on a more "emotional level".

Under the change, Telstra's brand will now be represented by six colours, orange, green, turquoise, blue, purple and magenta, to symbolise the diversity of its customers and services. The changes will be applied across the company in the next 18 months, including uniforms, service vehicles and customer communications. Telstra chief executive David Thodey said the changes are designed to create a stronger and more emotional connection with its customers.

"The time is right for a new look and feel for Telstra. We've been busy changing behind the scenes to better connect with our customers, and our new brand identity reflects this fresh approach," Thodey said. "Our changes are more than skin deep and come after the introduction of new customer service initiatives such as 24 hour sales and support and on Twitter, weekend appointments with technicians, free calls to Telstra help lines and the launch of simple pricing summaries so customers have the key information they need in plain English. Telstra has also introduced a customer service facility on Facebook, an online community called CrowdSupport and will roll out improvements to its billing.

Australia's tourism industry is hoping a proposed guest worker scheme could be the answer to its customer service woes.

Under the planned scheme, foreign workers would be allowed to enter Australia for a period of time for a specific job or employment in a designated industry. The tourism industry said it was finding it hard to fill positions, particularly in regional areas where it competes with mining employers.

"Customer service is a big issue in Australian tourism. In research and surveys it comes up as something that Australians perceive is done better in other places." a Tourism and Transport Forum spokesman told reporters. "You can't provide any sort of service if you can't get staff, and finding good staff is more of a challenge."

The Pacific island of Vanuatu has upped its visitor customer service with a new tourism contact centre.

The service, funded by the New Zealand government, with contributions by the Australian government, Telecom Vanuatu and the Vanuatu Tourism Office (VTO) is aimed at providing communications and booking support to outer island tourism businesses in Vanuatu.

"We hope the new call centre will help visitors discover what matters in Vanuatu," New Zealand High Commissioner Bill Dobbie said of the pilot program. The Malampa Travel Call Centre, the first of its kind in the country, has been designed to enhance the overall visitor experience to the islands of "cannibalism and custom", Malekula.

Budget airline Jetstar says the development of a smartphone app will be key to Jetstar coping with customer inquiries in the event of a disaster.

Jetstar head of distribution Alex Knigge told the G-Force 2011 Conference in Melbourne that the carrier has lived through seven natural disasters in the last 12 months. When the volcanic ash cloud disrupted flights across the globe earlier this year, Jetstar saw an increase in the number of calls to its contact centre by 2000%. While the airline would normally take around 300,000 calls from customers per month, this increased at the peak of the cloud's effect to 732,514 in one week.

"If you get above certain thresholds, a call centre will never be able to handle 2000 per cent increases," said Knigge, who added the only other way to deal with spikes would be to shift customers to mobile apps or online. "There's huge opportunities for airlines in the smartphone space, and nobody has really nailed that," he said.

Global yacht charter company TUI Marine says it plans to relocate its customer service centre to North Sydney next month as part of a bid to double its profits in Australia over the next five years.

TUI Marine currently servicing Australia from its sales centre on Hamilton Island and the new Sydney office is a "proactive move" to target growth. COO Cheryl Powell told reporters that the company's business in Australia was not directly hit by the recession, the company is aiming to increase revenue growth to its high 2008 levels.

"In 2008 everyone had a fantastic year and then once the recession hit business became quite hard in 2009 and 2010," Powell said. "This year everyone in the industry is seeing interest return, but it is not quite where it was in 2008."

Telstra's New Zealand subsidiary TelstraClear has reported a loss thanks largely due to the Canterbury earthquakes and the cost of setting up a contact centre in the Philippines.

The Auckland-based unit made a loss of $5 million in the 12 months ended June 30 after operating expenses rose 6% to $568 million. The company said the increased costs came from the restoration and recovery activity incurred by the Canterbury quakes, and the one-off costs from shifting about 120 contact centre jobs from Christchurch and Paraparaumu to Manila.

"Labour, travel and training costs were also increased, year on year, due to one-off project costs associated with the transition of some call centre activities to Manila," said Chief executive Allan Freeth, who reaffirmed the company's commitment to quake-hit Christchurch. "Christchurch is important to TelstraClear. We have a customer care centre there, operate an ultra-fast hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) system, and base some network operations in the city".

Toowoomba's Regional Council's customer service and contact centre refurbishment has been recognised as a "leading example of functionality and clever design principles".

Building contractors Hutchinson Builders have received an award for best refurbishment/renovation up to $4 million for the project at the Darling Downs and Western Queensland Master Builders' regional awards ceremony. The project, which was delivered on time and under budget, will vie for the best in its category across Queensland at the state awards function in Brisbane in October.

"Getting this facility up and running was a major achievement. It allows council to offer a single and more accessible customer contact point in Toowoomba," Councillor Anne Glasheen said of the centre's March opening. "The opening signalled a major change in the way council serves the public and does business. We wanted a modern and well organised layout to offer a more comprehensive service to the public in one location."

Electronics company Samsung Communications Centre NSW has received the No 1 National Dealership Award for its sales, customer service and technical support.

The award comes after the company had been awarded the Tasmanian Government contract for providing IP telephony infrastructure for it websites, spreading across different locations. The main solutions offered by the centre include messaging solutions, unified communications solutions, solutions for mobile and remote users, fixed line and mobiles and also the VoIP phone system solutions.

Another major function of the centre is to support its service request online service. This feature involves an expert technician from the company providing a service solution online, doing away with the need to make a personal visit in most of the cases.

When Indigo Wallace-Knight, aged 9, read in an unfaltering voice her prepared speech for a group of Sydney's leading women donors this week, it was a significant achievement. Two years before it would have been something well beyond her reading skills. When she was five and in kindergarten, Indigo was diagnosed with dyslexia, a not uncommon condition in which part of the brain responsible for processing symbols into words and numbers misfires.

In her own words, the nine-year-old told the women how she had been ostracised and bullied by a group of girls who demanded she spell words to earn her right to play. She couldn't, and Indigo would return home from school, collapsing in tears and then waking during the night distraught.

"I wondered why I was like this and not like other girls."

Dr Catriona Wallace, the academic and self-made call centre industry entrepreneur, watched as her once outgoing child's self confidence disintegrated. "I was in floods of tears myself and I don't cry, I'm a corporate businesswoman. There was nothing in the public school system catching her."

Then, a year ago Indigo, by now enrolled in an expensive intensive literacy program and making steady progress, asked her mother what could be done to help other girls in her position: "I want to help people get that money to help their children learn to read," she told her. "I want them to be happy like me."

That was the beginning of The Indigo Express Fund, the first philanthropic fund to be established by the Sydney Women's Fund, established three years ago as part of the Sydney Community Foundation to convince the city's corporate leaders to invest in charitable projects targeting women and girls.

As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, Linda Morris, June 11, 2011

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