It’s no exaggeration to say that Telstra’s customer service has been pretty abysmal over the past year. On numerous occasions it failed to deliver the bare minimum — namely, a working network for its customers. Needless to say, there have been significant repercussions for the telco and the higher ups are now feeling the pinch. Telstra’s senior staff have reportedly lost millions in bonuses and incentive payments linked to customer service performance. Sounds like a fair cop to us.
As reported on Business Insider, Telstra’s senior staff have had their pay docked as a direct result of the infamous network outages that plagued the network since February. Specifically, the customer service part of annual incentives hasn’t been paid to executives and staff.
At an annual general meeting, Telstra CEO Andrew Penn explained that network service interruptions Telstra experienced in the second half of the year was a significant contributing factor.
“No incentive payments were made to senior management in respect of customer service performance,” Penn said. This meant senior executives only received approximately 40.5% of the maximum opportunity under Telstra’s 2016 short term incentive plan. For some, this amounted to hundreds of thousands of unpaid dollars.
Freshly-minted chairman John Mullen attempted to explain to shareholders the challenges faced by the network due to ever-increasing customer expectations.
“To give you a sense for the demand we are seeing, a single 4G wireless broadband modem on the network today can deliver more than the total combined network data throughput of 10 years ago and data traffic on our wireless network continues to double every two years,” Mullen said.
While he claimed there was nothing “inherently wrong” with Telstra’s core networks, Mullen acknowledged that the company needed to keep investing and retire old technology if it hoped to stay ahead of demand.
Despite all the network dramas, Telstra managed to post a 35.9% rise in full year profit to $5.8 billion. It’s good to know that senior executive bonuses aren’t linked exclusively to net profits. Hopefully, the renewed commitment to network technology investments will result in a far more reliable network.
[Via Business Insider]
Comments
3 responses to “Telstra Execs Just Lost Millions In Bonuses (Hurrah!)”
Shareholders unlike CEO’s often look to the future, not just short term.
Really Murdoch should cover their bonuses with his 1 billion dollar tax dodge, since he commanded a go slow on the NBN so he could eek out more gold from Foxtel customers, while building up his lame internet tv movie products.
The problem is that the front-line support staff actually dealing with irate customers will Also have lost their bonuses- through no fault of their own, because people are angry with Telstra’s network failing.
Those bonuses are microscopic compared to the ones the Execs get, but they mean a lot to the people in those jobs.
Think about it next time you fill out a Satisfaction survey- Among other questions, there will always be one asking your opinion of the company as a whole- This is the one that affects the individual staff’s bonus.
Ref. https://www.iinet.net.au/about/customer-service/