As a condition of holding a carrier licence in Australia, telcos are required to provide priority assistance to customers who have a life-threatening medical condition. According to the ACMA, Telstra failed to comply with its obligations to these vulnerable customers.
In a statement, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) detailed that once a telco identifies a vulnerable customer, it must have systems in place to provide them with additional levels of service.
According to the ACMA, Telstra failed to send priority assistance application forms, and/or required additional information from the customer to complete the process on more than 260 occasions. All of those occasions, the ACMA said, were regarding customers who had made enquiries with Telstra about priority assistance.
Further, the ACMA said that Telstra failed to initiate ‘emergency medical request’ procedures on five occasions to two customers when it was required to do so.
“These procedures can include making sure the phone is fixed quickly or an alternative is available,” the statement adds.
Lastly, the ACMA said the telco also failed to follow processes for ‘enhanced service reliability’ on one occasion. Enhanced service reliability, the ACMA explained, requires Telstra to undertake testing of a priority assistance customer’s telephone service if two faults are reported by the customer over a three-month period.
As a result of the ACMA investigation into the telco’s vulnerable customers practice, Telstra has submitted a court-enforceable undertaking, which has been accepted by the regulator.
Under the court-enforceable undertaking, the ACMA said Telstra will implement new systems to “address the deficiencies in its existing procedures to ensure customers requiring priority assistance are provided with the required information and can easily register for the service”.
The ACMA noted that in addition to the above, Telstra reported that there were 740 other instances where it was unable to locate records of whether priority assistance paperwork was sent.
“Some of these customers were having problems with their Telstra fixed line service at the same time as dealing with significant medical issues,” ACMA chair Nerida O’Loughlin said.
“These are some of Telstra’s most vulnerable customers and the telco must have adequate systems in place to make sure these important obligations are always met.”
In response, Telstra customer service executive Kate Cotter told Gizmodo Australia that home phone connection and priority fault repair service the telco provides to customers with life-threatening medical conditions is a top priority.
“We have dedicated teams in place to support more than 150,000 Priority Assistance customers to stay connected. We also have specific processes in place to identify and assist customers who may need the extra care and attention that having a Priority Assistance service provides,” she explained.
“Unfortunately, we identified – and reported to the ACMA – that for a small number of customers, we didn’t follow our processes as carefully as we should and we apologise sincerely for this.”
She said Telstra has work under way to do better.
“In addition to ensuring the gaps in our processes have been closed, we’re improving the way we identify customers who might benefit from a Priority Assistance service, redesigning the registration process to make it easier for customers, and ensuring we can get information about this service to customers sooner,” she added.
This article has been updated since it was first published.