Our commitment to complaint resolution - Corporate Responsibility

Our commitment to complaint resolution

Progress in 2008

In 2008, the number of customer complaints to our Customer Response Centre (CRC) increased to 41,490 from 36,889 last year*.

This increase was partly due to the current market volatility and an increase in the number of customers requesting financial hardship assistance.

This year we continued to focus on the complaints resolution process, investing in both the CRC team capabilities and also in problem avoidance projects (e.g. reviewing and streamlining our processes for assisting customers who are experiencing payment difficulties).

We have increased the number of staff available to resolve complaints, developed a new training and monitoring process to further improve our customer service levels, and enhanced team processes to enable swifter resolution of complaints. We have also undertaken market research and mystery shopping programs to provide ongoing feedback by which to identify any development opportunities to further improve our complaints resolution service.

We continue to meet our targets for resolving complaints in a timely manner. We resolved 83 per cent of complaints in 48 hours (against a target of 80 per cent) and 91 per cent within five days (against a target of 90 per cent).

The future

Our 2009 Corporate Responsibility Goals include a commitment to resolving 90 per cent of retail customer complaints within five working days and improving customer satisfaction with our complaint resolution processes. Progress against this commitment will be reported in our interim and full year Corporate Responsibility Reports.

* 2007 statistics have been restated based on the adoption of a new reporting database and a revised qualifying criterion.