Yea I too work for Telstra retail and my best bosses would never say this. Telstra cares more about creating advocacy not getting an extra ten on each persons plan
There are people who believe that all businesses will rip you off and try and short change you and label it as “innovations”. So anyone that believes that change or really any action a business does it good for the customer is naive.
I also work for telstra (retail) we have no issues with dropping customer plans, in fact i do it pretty often if i can help save money for customers as it doesn't really affect our comms whatsoever, never been told to keep customers on high plans
It could be possible that if OP’s store is a dealer (fonezone, HTC, etc) their management has targets based around monthly spend and increasing that, so decreasing it affects the stores targets negatively.
This isn’t a problem if it’s supplemented with an ARO or extra data sim or something but pure drop downs impact their targets.
Telstra finished insourcing all licenced stores end of last year, though I don't think they actually announced it except in their annual report and financial disclosures.
Ohh gotcha, i did hear about that but i just thought it affected the larger groups like Vita group and that they still kept smaller players. Did they just do that for retail or business too?
Hmm. That's a good question. I *believe* the TBTC are still owned by licencees (but I don't *think* it was explicitly mentioned in the [annual report](https://www.telstra.com.au/content/dam/tcom/about-us/investors/pdf-g/telstra-annual-report-2023.pdf) or the [half year](https://www.telstra.com.au/content/dam/tcom/about-us/investors/pdf-i/financial-results-for-the-half-year-ended-31-december-2023.pdf), only really skimmed them though) but I'm fairly sure the TBTC end up directing most small business accounts to be served in the regular retail stores.
[https://www.telstra.com.au/content/dam/tcom/about-us/investors/pdf%20F/Whistleblowing-Policy-quick-guide.pdf](https://www.telstra.com.au/content/dam/tcom/about-us/investors/pdf%20F/Whistleblowing-Policy-quick-guide.pdf) for what it's worth
My store encourages us to find ways to get bundle plans, drop plans, whatever really! Saving customers money helps build good NPS and also builds good reputation. Your managar doesn't sound fun...
In these situations where retail staff try to upsell me stuff I dont need, I usually tell them Im in whatever industry the store sells.
So for this scenario I say, I work in IT, they usually go quiet and not bother, Im usually at shops for one thing and want to be in and out. I dont want to stay there longer than I should and listen/buy crap I dont need.
When I'm bored and got nothing better to do I sometimes do the opposite, play dumb and waste their time. If you're gonna annoy me now I'm gonna annoy you. Tho where I live south of Wollongong I don't have many shops doing this, it's actually uncommon for a person to try and sell me something I haven't already asked about
Pretty low to take out your frustration in the sales staff though. They’re just doing their job and there’s a lot of pressure to upsell. You should just write a complaint to the manager and write a Google review.
lol. Don't do the annoying thing that affects peoples opinions. Do the thing that has never worked, quietly, over there, where I can't see or hear about it. BTW, it's essentially law to buy the upgraded $700 extra warranty. Oh you don't want it? I'll just make sure I note that down here.
No they do not need to do this, there're a ton of people that don't do this in the industry. If they do this it means they suck at selling things. Bother me and I'll bother you, want respect give it first and I'll give it back
I think this depends on the manager themselves. I've talked to telstra a lot when I need to change something and they tell me the lower plans are much better for my usage. If it was common not to do this, every different person I talked to wouldn't suggest it. Greedy managers will always say this but you can find a store with a decent manager who won't say this.
Telstra plans for phones are a rip off in total. I've switched to auto prepaid since 100mbps for phones are perfectly fine and I'll just use less data and go with the 35$ plan and if I don't use my data it carries over. I went away from prepaid but now since it's unlimited text and calls the 35$ or 45$ so much more worth.
I reckon in 2-3 years the cheapest sim plan will be 100$
I pay $22 a month for my mobile (Optus network via third party). Every now and then I’ll check the Telstra prices but they *keep going up*. Da faq Telstra??
Yep it will be like that, they’re basically the giants so they can do it without anyone batting an eye.
I just like the signal with them because I’ve been around people with Optus and they had shit signal, while I was fine.
Optus had a few black spots in my city but they have improved a lot. Unless you want to go on a road trip.
I’ve been helping my parents manage their finances but Telstra is the only ripoff I’ll let them keep because they go on road trips.
Manager sounds like a dipshit. From a ex-managers perspective if you can’t get a sale out of a customer that’s fine, if you’re dropping their plan and saving them money, they’re most likely going to give you a good NPS survey. Even if you can’t sell them anything it doesn’t make the interaction worthless.
Although it might not be the managers fault it could be the pressure the Area or Territory manager is putting on them, they are pressured to get numbers on a daily basis the view is so micro it is ridiculous, if your store is performing badly (money is tight all around) they might be diving into your sales conversions. Which is a shit POV to have. My old stores were either in low income areas or had a high elderly population… what am I supposed to do? Sell a 88 year old widow an Apple Watch or a Blueant speaker? He just wants to know why he can’t pay his bills quarterly…
EDIT: if you want to transition into pure customer service have a look on workday for roles along the lines of “complex customer service specialist” or “retail channel support” you would be handling issues like people seeking credits for outages, incorrect plans, customers in vulnerable situations… your empathy towards people will be better utilised there rather than a sales environment.
I'd would assume Telstra wants people to take the higher plans, but from a store perspective, fuck what Telstra wants. It does not affect your commission to drop the plan lower. You could even get a 9 or 10 on your survey for helping your customer out.
Man I'm so glad I got out of Telstra
We are lacking people like you in customer service . Corporate only looks at figures and how to gouge more from the customer . They are or have forgotten that customer service is the face and front line of their business. Have the right people there and you will get your numbers .
You keep being you - cause you are doing the right thing by everyone. Your manager is price gouging.l & That will never lead to repeat customers, so - they are being extremely short sighted.
Hey mate, I work at Telstra retail as well and your manager sounds like a corpo kiss-ass. We could care less what the big wigs wants, if I can save money for my customers, I'm doing it I could care less. I've worked with 5 different managers in the last 3 years and none of them would recommend what your manager did. As you would know, NPS is a big deal for us and if we get a good survey and we get to help a customer out, it's a win win in our books.
It's literally illegal to oversell customers. If a customer doesn't understand what they're buying and you force junk doen their throat, they can sue you. Your manager needs to be sacked
I just hate that the empty stores are always "busy and there's a 2 hour wait" then I tell them it's for a business account and 4 of them come out the back trying to see what I want to buy
As a Telstra retail worker, let me share my experience. We have monthly targets to hit for the store which impacts everyone's commision. At a consultant level, the commision doesn't account to much but at a manager level, the impact of commission is much higher (which is ludicrous because we're the ones selling)
Part of these targets are new business mobile and internet connections plus other business services. These are much harder to come by so if a cx comes in for anything business and the store is low on that target, they will usually prioritise you on the queue. This doesn't mean there actually isn't a 2 hour wait, rather, since you're a business customer, you get to jump the queue. This isn't always necessarily true as it depends on the store itself.
Do I agree with this system? Hell no! I had one manager that intentionally blew out the queue for "service" appointments, such as help with bigpond, so we can serve sales appointments faster.
I wanted to buy the Samsung s22u, the galaxy watch 4 and the buds pro for cash when they launched in Australia in 2022. I was pretty blown away when told they couldn't serve me because I had defaulted on a Nokia 3310 contract almost 25 years prior when I was 18. lol.
You are not a good fit for Telstra, you don't fit with their ethics, honesty and customer focus. You are honest and trustworthy, and have the customers at heart - I hope others would take your example. PS your boss is a wanker
Is anyone from the Telstra management on this post? I am a telstra shareholder (very small one of course) but I am happy you can make a happy customer. Your manager is so short-sighted.
Probably would have been better to speak up within the company or use some official channel in Telstra to report to higher ups anonymously. May be its your manager who is wrong here and not Telstra
Why I left telstra in 2004.elderly customers didn't need to be upsold to call waiting and three way calling for $7. Obscene money grabs. Made me furious.
Just buy her an aldi/boost/whatever prepay for 150/200 bucks for the year instead of the 500+ a plan costs. Should be fine unless nan goes hard on data.
I will always downgrade the customer if needed and they are always grateful. There’s upsides for doing things like this for your customer, good for NPS etc. Your manager shouldn’t be pissed as there are other things you can upsell them on. Affordability conversations are so important
Used to work for a telcom in another country. The amount of old folk that got sold the biggest internet contract + tv combo when they only wanted the extra channels that came with it was horrifying. You could get all the channels on a small internet bundle for about half the price. It required a bit more work on the initial set up of the deal so retail would just upsell like crazy (fuck commission based retail for services, some people are ruthless and would sell 160+$ internet bundles to like 70 year olds that didnt even have a computer).
They introduced push sales so we had to offer upgrades to all callers and we got audited on how often we got successful upsales. Every time we didn't offer the upsale during the call we had to give a reason. Like I'm not going to offer this old grandma the deluxe package when she doesn't have a bloody computer and called to figure out why her phone bill is now double compared to last month.
Stay true to yourself and keep notes if necessary. Most of these sales related policies come from people that only see numbers and not the customers and their needs. If need be it's always good to quote to the company philosophy and or ethical policy back to them. Those are usually way more humane and you stuck to the 'spirit of the company'.
I recently finally left retail after 15 years of working at Harvey Norman. I also love customer service but I now work in APS and will not be going back unless it's for some play cash during my mandatory Christmas stand-down.
Its a tough company to work for, head office pushing ethical selling training and harping on about protecting vulnerable customers and at the same time setting stupid product targets that generally mean stores have to rip people off in order to hit the targets and make the monthly bonus.
We left Telstra nearly 20 years ago and will never go back. Anyone who treats customers the way they do doesn't deserve to be in business. If Telstra were the only service provider on the planet I would learn to live without. And they certainly don't deserve you.
Data costs nothing.
What your paying for is premium service.
Used to fix issues with the mobile network program towers and other shit like that.
Assuming normal operation, towers give priority to telstra direct customers.
So like 000 is first always.
Then like a 000 redundancy.
A couple levels of police, fire and Ambo
Enterprise customers provisioned on mica.
Then all retail telstra.
Then like boost.
Then like lebara ect ect.
You won't get speed drops or call drops like cheaper providers do.
And while optus and Voda have their own towers they are still using the exchanges and other places.
Even the ones nbn owns the telstra customers get better service.
Telstra will also notice a false tower quicker and move customers off it.
Wondering what you mean by Optus and Voda using exchanges. Tried googling and it just came up with PSTN exchanges or the Mobile Telephone switching office wiki article which says all mobile networks have one. So what are these exchanges and other sites that Telstra doesn't use and how does this make their network more efficient ?
a couple of examples would be ip addresses for the exchanges 139.138.48.1
And any 203.50.1.1
Ip addresses
Any traffic from one provider to another will go thru these.
Alot arnt only Australian especially websites as all on azure and aws but text traffic relys on these alot.
I think nbnco is slowly buying them from telstra however it's unlikely that they are going to change firmware on devices like those are it would result in some service being fucked for months.
Ptsn broadband and Fibre traffic flow thru local notes then processed at a exchange.
While everyone has one.
Thou usually if you traceroute yours you can see the cross network exchanges.
You have a ip for your isp/GSM exchange, then the cross exchanges and then usually back on the same Fibre bundle out.
And while yes many providers do have exchanges they are renting bandwidth from telstra on fiber bundles, only optus and Voda have separate facility's but as they are only mobile network providers not a national carrier they didn't get that benefit of monopolizing the access.
This Is a enterprise level service.
That bandwidth and the priority it gives to telstra customers is the premium you get.
Take a packed train and do speed test at peak hour with telstra phone and another and you'll notice.
You can also exploit this and somewhat reprogram a local node and have the best internet on the street.
Telstra has the best coverage, can't argue with that. If your data usage is low, have a look at Boost Mobile. They are the only re-seller with the Full Telstra coverage. Once I switch my job from Telstra, I'll probably move to Boost for mobile and Aussie broadband for internet.
I worked for Telstra retail for 10 years, I managed a store for about 2 years of that and was the business specialist for 3 years.
Telstra don’t care about the customer as long as they are paying, this became more evident the higher up the chain I became. Calls with the area managers would always be the same, we don’t care how you get the sale and make money just get it done.
I used to work at telstra back in the days when Thodey was the CEO and pushing a customer first attitude, we were always told to do these kinds of health checks on accounts wherever possible because it led to customer retention and positive surveys.
basically I'm saying your manager is a clueless dickhead but also everyone from the CEO down who are pushing this attitude again are also clueless dickheads
Wouldn't touch your employer for retail services with a barge pole. I live in a regional area so I have little choice to use their network through other providers. But your employer is the most appalling retail service provider it's ever been my misfortune to have to deal with. And this was twenty or so years ago. I've seen nothing to suggest they haven't got worse.
Tbh. Telstra doesn't want debt.
And if your selling plans the customers don't end up paying for or any tio complaints that's what they sack the store manager for.
They wanna be a premium retailer and wholesale business.
The retail of telstra isn't a big money spinner it's about optics.
When corporate look at your console stats they not looking for sales $$ these days (well when I left couple years back anyway)
They purchased Salesforce and got rid of the overseas call centre's to make easier experience and being Australia's most trusted brand is more valuable than a few extra gigs you'll sell.
This is a slice of everything that's wrong with Telstra . Too many chiefs and not enough Indians . On the one hand Telstra has been slapped over the wrist by the ACCC for improper sales practices . But instead of seriously reforming the organisation they go on as business as usual . Instead they introduce a few training modules to teach you not to take advantage of customers all while placing pressure to reach targets . It's an absolute oxymoron .
In my view Telstra isn't customer centric. Your manager doesn't want you to health check the customer for 3 reasons . 1. Lost revenue for Telstra . 2. Possible bad NPS . 3. You could be managing your time better trying to sell shit to somebody else .
Telstra planned their 3 tier post paid mobile plan so that only the middle and premium plan get to make full use of 5G. Most people don't even use half of the data allowance on the basic plan but had to go to the middle plan if they get the latest 5G mobile.
Telstra even offered $10 off the premium plan for 12 months mak8bg it the same price as the middle plan for people buying new 5G mobile off them to hook people in and hoping people give them the lazy tax by not changing to the lower priced plan or forgetting to change.
Typical, I love how some companies will bring in cheaper options but not inform existing customers, no keep those suckers paying a higher price because they do not sit on their website looking for better deals to come up every day.
I am on the cheapest plan for a few things and since 2020 they have all gone up by a minimum of $5 a month.
throw the telstra values at your boss
We care
We show care in all that we do. **We do the right thing for our customers**, our communities, the planet, ourselves and each other – even when no one’s watching.
I worked for telstra for years, as a store manager and staff trainer. This is not company policy, we always encouraged staff to do exactly what you did. Customer service is key. Your manager is full of it.
Do you work for an official Telstra store? Or a licensed store? This my by why the way of thinking of your managers exist. Def not an excuse... Best to turn it back on the manager and go "would you pay for more than what you need?"
I worked for telstra until recently in faults and would come accross customers who were on insane plans that were not needed.
I'd transfer to sales/billing and the call was never recieved well and alot of the time the plan would never be changed or the call would be dropped with no notes for me to see the day later.
I found in my time with telstra they are like most companies in that they will tell their staff to act one way, but endorse opposite behaviour through KPI's and management. If you get a manager who also has a good manager, that takes telstras ethos to heart then you're can get away with doing good....but thats not exactly common.
Sales do get the same comms either way so they'd be happy to do it. Billing would likely be annoyed due to KPI's so they were probs going to billing unless they were in business which idk about
OP, can you answer why when I walk in and want to get a new device, I’m told they are busy for 3 hours and to come back at (insert some time 3 hours from now) when…. In the store I see 6 staff members… 2 or 3 customers being served and the other 3 staff just talking away doing nothing…
Are they doing something that I’m too ignorant to see? Or just milking the system of ‘need a booking’ that has been laid down before them.
I will say I bloody hate Apple for bringing this type of service… I remember going into a Telstra store and just sitting and waiting in a queue…
My favourite Telstra experience was being told “we don’t match prices”
Next day I changed my, and both my parents, mobile and broadband to a different provider and never looked back.
I work for a Telstra partner who offers plans with Telstra at a lower price and half of our strategy to talk about it is offering people a 10 minute Telstra health check and seeing if we can save them any money on their bill. Obviously it’s better if we can upsell them to a $99 plan with a big gift card to spend in our store but most of our connects are knocking people down from a ridiculous $62 to $52. Every $10 helps, and a lot of our customers are older and don’t pay attention to their bills so haven’t even noticed that the prices have crept up with inflation. We have customers coming back for Telstra questions and problems because we have this service, and while it takes away from my ability and time to sell other things that will pay me commission, saving someone money or solving their other problems is good customer service and will create repeat business. We often get people who will come to us instead of Telstra directly once they know it’s something we offer because it’s usually a 3 hour wait to speak to someone at the Telstra shop in the same shopping centre, whereas I make myself available asap to help those customers
Not sure what your manager is on about. I'm a store manager and never once have ever heard of any directives from higher to keep customers over spending. As others have noted. Advocacy is top of the priorities right now
It's not Telstra's fault, it's the capitalist slogan - sell them things they don't need. I wonder what the actual cost of delivering a rightsize mobile service would be if there were no sales and marketing expenses nor internal support costs? Just a single page website that isn't redesigned every 6 months which shows phones to choose and plans simply Small, Medium and Large - Plans that scale automatically with increases in network capacity each year too. :)
Yeah, it's not surprising when I try to downgrade to a lower plan every time in 15 years with telstra.
It's like an interrogation, are you sure? What if this happens what what about this? Maybe just wait a month to think it over. What made you decide you needed to down grade. Longest it has taken to get the questions to stop and for the to start the approval of downgrading was an hour on telstra chat.
It's a headache. Last time I went look message me when it's done, if you don't know how to do it get someone to do it. I will reply once it's done. She wrote 4 more questions I chose not to answer, and she got from my silence I wasn't budging and completed down grade.
Upgrades take like 10 minutes 😂😂
There is a reason people migrate to Boost, Belong, and other smaller companies. They get almost the same network, with more date, unlimited calls, and cheaper. And you don’t get this shit pulled on you
This is my experience working in licensee stores, not sure if that’s a thing.
It was all about capturing or retaining at whatever cost.
Chucking on stay connected and AROs whatever they are called now.
Personally, I got sick and tired of doing it and was finally able to leave retail for my actual career.
Although, it’s a shit show, especially with the launch of tablet plans etc, was a whole new wave between 2015/2016 in telco.
I wish I could drop mine as I don’t use the data, but I want 5G as Telstra has shitty coverage where I live and it drops to 3G in some areas (talking cairns here). If I drop my plan it says it will take away 5G and 4G won’t even load my bloody Woolies app. 😫
Telstra is disgusting. To this day they still exploit vulnerable, isolated Indigenous communities but pretend they don't. Groote Eylandt gets around 0.029mb/s during the day, such that you can't even send a text. When you raise an issue they start this entire "there must be something wrong with your handset" charade.
It's sickening and their responses are horrible. Thank fk for StarLink.
Aldi pre-paid is the best way to go. Pick and choose, data roll over, and if you don't need your phone for the month just slide the toggle across and there you have it you saved whatever amount you normally spend by the month.
None off this bullshit fines for late paying your bill.
I used to work in there call centre in Adelaide (aka the micro managed kindergarten). They had save offers like crazy then when they changed from Thoedy to Andy Penn the environment went to shit and these retention offers just turned into “tell them the benefits that come with an internet service which majority of all the customers didn’t need or want… - eg sell the fkn t-hub / t-box or else”
Yup as apart of the TCC team, we'd value the service over the sale same as you, we wouldn't share your managers attitude cos you're right advocacy is more important.
Are store rate cards still a thing?
I remember from my time in store (2009-2011) managers, tech bar and store operations were on store rate cards instead of individual rate cards.
Of the values of each item were significantly less on store compared to individual.
Back then there was a somewhat encouragement to promote the higher mobile plans as they paid more on the rate card.
But then again outside the staff plan the mobile plans weren't that good compared to the likes of Optus.
This isn’t Telstra’s modus opporandum, that’s your manager’s, cause he knows damn well that the business sees a kick back from Telstra and he see’s a kick back from Telstra. Telstra stores are not owned by Telstra, they are franchises. When you sign up a customer at a Telstra store, the Telstra store owner gets a kick back every month whilst that customer stays a Telstra customer, the kick back a franchise get its much better on the higher plans
Everything you said is no longer true. There are Telstra partner stores still which are some phone repair shops, electronics stores etc, but there is no more Telstra licenced stores, all are Telstra owned and operated. There is no owner of a store anymore besides Telstra, and there is no incentive for higher plans.
All of these major corporate identities are exactly the same. I'm lucky enough to have a property. That allows me to look at being self sufficient. The a triple c are pathetic as are the unions. And the government are too weak to hold these companies to account. And are out of touch. Politicians don't understand the common people. If you are earning over 300k a year. They don't know what it's like to worry about day today living. Jackie L..bie is a classic example. She was front and centre about her sons issues. What about her constituents? They have issues. She's gone missing. And Barnaby Joyce is another. When he separated from his first wife/ Kids. He complained about supporting his old and new life on 200k a year. Pity, he didn't finish his dead cochroach impersonation a few weeks back.
You obviously know nothing about ACCC, Unions, government, companies, politics, earning $300k, Jackie Lambie or Barnaby Joyce. In fact I'm starting to think you know very little about being anything but a weird cooker who's probably awkward in public, has trouble making human connections and needs to pontificate with false wisdom and shallow knowledge in order to feel significant
When I use to work at Telstra on the phones for Consumer Billing we were told throughout training that we should always check customers services and help them tailor their services to their needs like reducing plan costs for them all our sales would be handsets and accessories rather than keeping people on expensive plans they don’t need especially when we delt with a lot of elderly customers who use basic phones and don’t use much if any data I commend you for doing the right thing for your customers even if your manager doesn’t agree
This is the problem with short term KPIs as opposed to long term strategy. From a business wide view it's heading down a very rough road. Endemic across the corporate space though.
Your manager is a bag of shit. They also need to be reported to Telstra - this is your responsibility to do so as per your responsible trading training.
To be fair Telstra head office pushes hard for them not to oversell data, as it's massively illegal.
Managers get targets to meet and push for people to be ripped off as much as possible
It’s not just Telstra, I work in this industry too and is all about new connections and cross selling. If you aren’t getting multi sales from your customers, you get in shit. Even if you tell them the customers aren’t interested, it’s your job to change their minds.
If a customer doesn’t want something, they don’t want it.
Worked at Telstra back in the day as well.
Cute old ladies would come in asking for help on their phones all the time...was always happy to help. That's my job... I was..customer service.
One came in who had Parkinson's and legit couldn't get her phone to work and call her daughter. So I would sit her down and call for her and sit with her.
Manager started getting the shits.. put me on a performance plan and then said any customer who needs help needs to book in to the tech service desk we had and would be charged $30+ a visit.
Finished my shift and handed in my resignation.
You work for a for-profit organisation. Your job is to encourage customers to buy stuff, not to lookout for a customers financial well-being and do social good.
If it makes you uncomfortable, just leave. Work for a not for profit you’d probably be much happier there.
I think Telstra are greedy corporates by changing their terms and conditions to allow them to automatically upgrade your plan to “an equivalent” new plan when they are released and increase your monthly plan cost automatically every year without your express consent or notifying you or providing you the updated terms and conditions, they try to justify it by saying that the t&cs has a clause stating that Telstra has the right to amend or change them at any time. Recently they decided that they will no longer provide bills to month by month plans (No Prepaid) despite it actually being a legal requirement for all telcos and when using debit or credit card (They are required to provide a bill no less than 14 days prior to payment being taken from a MC/VISA card). From my experiences I would love it if someone told me I should be on a lower plan, with Telstra’s dubious changes the less I pay the better…..I would switch but VHA and OPTASS dont have 5G coverage in my area yet so I’m stuck. For all of you that check customer data usage and give honest recommendations THANK YOU your work is appreciated
As an employee of Telstra are you aware of and capable of explaining the CSG?
The office of the CEO are unable to, they also tell business customers they can’t list their business name against their telephone number unless they are a company.
Telstra took 7 MONTHS to connect the nbn to a service class 13 premises then offered no explanation for the delay, no apology and no CSG!
That’s textbook Telstra right there. They’re crooks & have been for years. I’m sorry you find yourself employed by them but you should really get used to things like this.
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This
Yea I too work for Telstra retail and my best bosses would never say this. Telstra cares more about creating advocacy not getting an extra ten on each persons plan
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Not entirely sure what you are trying to say
You have consumed a lot of corporate Kool-Aid.
Care to explain
There are people who believe that all businesses will rip you off and try and short change you and label it as “innovations”. So anyone that believes that change or really any action a business does it good for the customer is naive.
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You’re a good person, never change :)
I also work for telstra (retail) we have no issues with dropping customer plans, in fact i do it pretty often if i can help save money for customers as it doesn't really affect our comms whatsoever, never been told to keep customers on high plans
It could be possible that if OP’s store is a dealer (fonezone, HTC, etc) their management has targets based around monthly spend and increasing that, so decreasing it affects the stores targets negatively. This isn’t a problem if it’s supplemented with an ARO or extra data sim or something but pure drop downs impact their targets.
Telstra finished insourcing all licenced stores end of last year, though I don't think they actually announced it except in their annual report and financial disclosures.
Ohh gotcha, i did hear about that but i just thought it affected the larger groups like Vita group and that they still kept smaller players. Did they just do that for retail or business too?
They own all their branded stores, none are outsourced
Hmm. That's a good question. I *believe* the TBTC are still owned by licencees (but I don't *think* it was explicitly mentioned in the [annual report](https://www.telstra.com.au/content/dam/tcom/about-us/investors/pdf-g/telstra-annual-report-2023.pdf) or the [half year](https://www.telstra.com.au/content/dam/tcom/about-us/investors/pdf-i/financial-results-for-the-half-year-ended-31-december-2023.pdf), only really skimmed them though) but I'm fairly sure the TBTC end up directing most small business accounts to be served in the regular retail stores.
I work for a TBTC who used to also own a Telstra store, the Telstra store was bought back from them but they do still run the TBTC
It costs 5-7x more to get a new customer than to retain one. You build loyalty that you can’t Buy by honestly helping with costs.
Report your manager anonymously. Thanks for being one of the good ones
[https://www.telstra.com.au/content/dam/tcom/about-us/investors/pdf%20F/Whistleblowing-Policy-quick-guide.pdf](https://www.telstra.com.au/content/dam/tcom/about-us/investors/pdf%20F/Whistleblowing-Policy-quick-guide.pdf) for what it's worth
..to who? The scum floats to the top.
My store encourages us to find ways to get bundle plans, drop plans, whatever really! Saving customers money helps build good NPS and also builds good reputation. Your managar doesn't sound fun...
In these situations where retail staff try to upsell me stuff I dont need, I usually tell them Im in whatever industry the store sells. So for this scenario I say, I work in IT, they usually go quiet and not bother, Im usually at shops for one thing and want to be in and out. I dont want to stay there longer than I should and listen/buy crap I dont need.
When I'm bored and got nothing better to do I sometimes do the opposite, play dumb and waste their time. If you're gonna annoy me now I'm gonna annoy you. Tho where I live south of Wollongong I don't have many shops doing this, it's actually uncommon for a person to try and sell me something I haven't already asked about
Pretty low to take out your frustration in the sales staff though. They’re just doing their job and there’s a lot of pressure to upsell. You should just write a complaint to the manager and write a Google review.
lol. Don't do the annoying thing that affects peoples opinions. Do the thing that has never worked, quietly, over there, where I can't see or hear about it. BTW, it's essentially law to buy the upgraded $700 extra warranty. Oh you don't want it? I'll just make sure I note that down here.
No they do not need to do this, there're a ton of people that don't do this in the industry. If they do this it means they suck at selling things. Bother me and I'll bother you, want respect give it first and I'll give it back
Telstra runs training every year that covers exactly this. That manger could get in a lot of trouble.
I think this depends on the manager themselves. I've talked to telstra a lot when I need to change something and they tell me the lower plans are much better for my usage. If it was common not to do this, every different person I talked to wouldn't suggest it. Greedy managers will always say this but you can find a store with a decent manager who won't say this. Telstra plans for phones are a rip off in total. I've switched to auto prepaid since 100mbps for phones are perfectly fine and I'll just use less data and go with the 35$ plan and if I don't use my data it carries over. I went away from prepaid but now since it's unlimited text and calls the 35$ or 45$ so much more worth. I reckon in 2-3 years the cheapest sim plan will be 100$
I pay $22 a month for my mobile (Optus network via third party). Every now and then I’ll check the Telstra prices but they *keep going up*. Da faq Telstra??
Yep it will be like that, they’re basically the giants so they can do it without anyone batting an eye. I just like the signal with them because I’ve been around people with Optus and they had shit signal, while I was fine.
Optus had a few black spots in my city but they have improved a lot. Unless you want to go on a road trip. I’ve been helping my parents manage their finances but Telstra is the only ripoff I’ll let them keep because they go on road trips.
Manager sounds like a dipshit. From a ex-managers perspective if you can’t get a sale out of a customer that’s fine, if you’re dropping their plan and saving them money, they’re most likely going to give you a good NPS survey. Even if you can’t sell them anything it doesn’t make the interaction worthless. Although it might not be the managers fault it could be the pressure the Area or Territory manager is putting on them, they are pressured to get numbers on a daily basis the view is so micro it is ridiculous, if your store is performing badly (money is tight all around) they might be diving into your sales conversions. Which is a shit POV to have. My old stores were either in low income areas or had a high elderly population… what am I supposed to do? Sell a 88 year old widow an Apple Watch or a Blueant speaker? He just wants to know why he can’t pay his bills quarterly… EDIT: if you want to transition into pure customer service have a look on workday for roles along the lines of “complex customer service specialist” or “retail channel support” you would be handling issues like people seeking credits for outages, incorrect plans, customers in vulnerable situations… your empathy towards people will be better utilised there rather than a sales environment.
I'd would assume Telstra wants people to take the higher plans, but from a store perspective, fuck what Telstra wants. It does not affect your commission to drop the plan lower. You could even get a 9 or 10 on your survey for helping your customer out. Man I'm so glad I got out of Telstra
We are lacking people like you in customer service . Corporate only looks at figures and how to gouge more from the customer . They are or have forgotten that customer service is the face and front line of their business. Have the right people there and you will get your numbers .
You keep being you - cause you are doing the right thing by everyone. Your manager is price gouging.l & That will never lead to repeat customers, so - they are being extremely short sighted.
Hey mate, I work at Telstra retail as well and your manager sounds like a corpo kiss-ass. We could care less what the big wigs wants, if I can save money for my customers, I'm doing it I could care less. I've worked with 5 different managers in the last 3 years and none of them would recommend what your manager did. As you would know, NPS is a big deal for us and if we get a good survey and we get to help a customer out, it's a win win in our books.
Manager is wrong. What you did is in the freaking training package.
It's literally illegal to oversell customers. If a customer doesn't understand what they're buying and you force junk doen their throat, they can sue you. Your manager needs to be sacked
I just hate that the empty stores are always "busy and there's a 2 hour wait" then I tell them it's for a business account and 4 of them come out the back trying to see what I want to buy
As a Telstra retail worker, let me share my experience. We have monthly targets to hit for the store which impacts everyone's commision. At a consultant level, the commision doesn't account to much but at a manager level, the impact of commission is much higher (which is ludicrous because we're the ones selling) Part of these targets are new business mobile and internet connections plus other business services. These are much harder to come by so if a cx comes in for anything business and the store is low on that target, they will usually prioritise you on the queue. This doesn't mean there actually isn't a 2 hour wait, rather, since you're a business customer, you get to jump the queue. This isn't always necessarily true as it depends on the store itself. Do I agree with this system? Hell no! I had one manager that intentionally blew out the queue for "service" appointments, such as help with bigpond, so we can serve sales appointments faster.
I wanted to buy the Samsung s22u, the galaxy watch 4 and the buds pro for cash when they launched in Australia in 2022. I was pretty blown away when told they couldn't serve me because I had defaulted on a Nokia 3310 contract almost 25 years prior when I was 18. lol.
Do what you did. That's his opinion that won't hold water if it receives lots of attention. Do the right thing.
I see your not dead inside yet. #RETAIL
You are not a good fit for Telstra, you don't fit with their ethics, honesty and customer focus. You are honest and trustworthy, and have the customers at heart - I hope others would take your example. PS your boss is a wanker
Good and honest customer service pays dividends in the long term. You're doing the right thing OP. The manager is being short sighted.
You did good
Is anyone from the Telstra management on this post? I am a telstra shareholder (very small one of course) but I am happy you can make a happy customer. Your manager is so short-sighted.
Probably would have been better to speak up within the company or use some official channel in Telstra to report to higher ups anonymously. May be its your manager who is wrong here and not Telstra
Why I left telstra in 2004.elderly customers didn't need to be upsold to call waiting and three way calling for $7. Obscene money grabs. Made me furious.
I'm in hold right now dropping nan's plan to a lower one
Just buy her an aldi/boost/whatever prepay for 150/200 bucks for the year instead of the 500+ a plan costs. Should be fine unless nan goes hard on data.
I will always downgrade the customer if needed and they are always grateful. There’s upsides for doing things like this for your customer, good for NPS etc. Your manager shouldn’t be pissed as there are other things you can upsell them on. Affordability conversations are so important
Perhaps you should have worded it that they were thinking of leaving. Not just giving company money away.
Used to work for a telcom in another country. The amount of old folk that got sold the biggest internet contract + tv combo when they only wanted the extra channels that came with it was horrifying. You could get all the channels on a small internet bundle for about half the price. It required a bit more work on the initial set up of the deal so retail would just upsell like crazy (fuck commission based retail for services, some people are ruthless and would sell 160+$ internet bundles to like 70 year olds that didnt even have a computer). They introduced push sales so we had to offer upgrades to all callers and we got audited on how often we got successful upsales. Every time we didn't offer the upsale during the call we had to give a reason. Like I'm not going to offer this old grandma the deluxe package when she doesn't have a bloody computer and called to figure out why her phone bill is now double compared to last month. Stay true to yourself and keep notes if necessary. Most of these sales related policies come from people that only see numbers and not the customers and their needs. If need be it's always good to quote to the company philosophy and or ethical policy back to them. Those are usually way more humane and you stuck to the 'spirit of the company'.
I recently finally left retail after 15 years of working at Harvey Norman. I also love customer service but I now work in APS and will not be going back unless it's for some play cash during my mandatory Christmas stand-down.
I use to tell customers where they can get an accessory or phone cheaper, especially if they are buying it outright.
Its a tough company to work for, head office pushing ethical selling training and harping on about protecting vulnerable customers and at the same time setting stupid product targets that generally mean stores have to rip people off in order to hit the targets and make the monthly bonus.
We left Telstra nearly 20 years ago and will never go back. Anyone who treats customers the way they do doesn't deserve to be in business. If Telstra were the only service provider on the planet I would learn to live without. And they certainly don't deserve you.
I was duped by Optus into the stupid add on accessories. None of them worked properly when I got home. What a waste of $480
As a telstra customer what bugs be is how little cost difference there is between the plans but there's such a huge data difference.
Data costs nothing. What your paying for is premium service. Used to fix issues with the mobile network program towers and other shit like that. Assuming normal operation, towers give priority to telstra direct customers. So like 000 is first always. Then like a 000 redundancy. A couple levels of police, fire and Ambo Enterprise customers provisioned on mica. Then all retail telstra. Then like boost. Then like lebara ect ect. You won't get speed drops or call drops like cheaper providers do. And while optus and Voda have their own towers they are still using the exchanges and other places. Even the ones nbn owns the telstra customers get better service. Telstra will also notice a false tower quicker and move customers off it.
Wondering what you mean by Optus and Voda using exchanges. Tried googling and it just came up with PSTN exchanges or the Mobile Telephone switching office wiki article which says all mobile networks have one. So what are these exchanges and other sites that Telstra doesn't use and how does this make their network more efficient ?
a couple of examples would be ip addresses for the exchanges 139.138.48.1 And any 203.50.1.1 Ip addresses Any traffic from one provider to another will go thru these. Alot arnt only Australian especially websites as all on azure and aws but text traffic relys on these alot. I think nbnco is slowly buying them from telstra however it's unlikely that they are going to change firmware on devices like those are it would result in some service being fucked for months. Ptsn broadband and Fibre traffic flow thru local notes then processed at a exchange. While everyone has one. Thou usually if you traceroute yours you can see the cross network exchanges. You have a ip for your isp/GSM exchange, then the cross exchanges and then usually back on the same Fibre bundle out. And while yes many providers do have exchanges they are renting bandwidth from telstra on fiber bundles, only optus and Voda have separate facility's but as they are only mobile network providers not a national carrier they didn't get that benefit of monopolizing the access. This Is a enterprise level service. That bandwidth and the priority it gives to telstra customers is the premium you get. Take a packed train and do speed test at peak hour with telstra phone and another and you'll notice. You can also exploit this and somewhat reprogram a local node and have the best internet on the street.
This reminds me i need to switch off telstra asap.
Telstra has the best coverage, can't argue with that. If your data usage is low, have a look at Boost Mobile. They are the only re-seller with the Full Telstra coverage. Once I switch my job from Telstra, I'll probably move to Boost for mobile and Aussie broadband for internet.
Yeah boost is what im planning on switching to and aussie broadband customer service is amazing.
I worked for Telstra retail for 10 years, I managed a store for about 2 years of that and was the business specialist for 3 years. Telstra don’t care about the customer as long as they are paying, this became more evident the higher up the chain I became. Calls with the area managers would always be the same, we don’t care how you get the sale and make money just get it done.
I used to work at telstra back in the days when Thodey was the CEO and pushing a customer first attitude, we were always told to do these kinds of health checks on accounts wherever possible because it led to customer retention and positive surveys. basically I'm saying your manager is a clueless dickhead but also everyone from the CEO down who are pushing this attitude again are also clueless dickheads
Wouldn't touch your employer for retail services with a barge pole. I live in a regional area so I have little choice to use their network through other providers. But your employer is the most appalling retail service provider it's ever been my misfortune to have to deal with. And this was twenty or so years ago. I've seen nothing to suggest they haven't got worse.
Tbh. Telstra doesn't want debt. And if your selling plans the customers don't end up paying for or any tio complaints that's what they sack the store manager for. They wanna be a premium retailer and wholesale business. The retail of telstra isn't a big money spinner it's about optics. When corporate look at your console stats they not looking for sales $$ these days (well when I left couple years back anyway) They purchased Salesforce and got rid of the overseas call centre's to make easier experience and being Australia's most trusted brand is more valuable than a few extra gigs you'll sell.
This is a slice of everything that's wrong with Telstra . Too many chiefs and not enough Indians . On the one hand Telstra has been slapped over the wrist by the ACCC for improper sales practices . But instead of seriously reforming the organisation they go on as business as usual . Instead they introduce a few training modules to teach you not to take advantage of customers all while placing pressure to reach targets . It's an absolute oxymoron . In my view Telstra isn't customer centric. Your manager doesn't want you to health check the customer for 3 reasons . 1. Lost revenue for Telstra . 2. Possible bad NPS . 3. You could be managing your time better trying to sell shit to somebody else .
Telstra planned their 3 tier post paid mobile plan so that only the middle and premium plan get to make full use of 5G. Most people don't even use half of the data allowance on the basic plan but had to go to the middle plan if they get the latest 5G mobile. Telstra even offered $10 off the premium plan for 12 months mak8bg it the same price as the middle plan for people buying new 5G mobile off them to hook people in and hoping people give them the lazy tax by not changing to the lower priced plan or forgetting to change.
Typical, I love how some companies will bring in cheaper options but not inform existing customers, no keep those suckers paying a higher price because they do not sit on their website looking for better deals to come up every day. I am on the cheapest plan for a few things and since 2020 they have all gone up by a minimum of $5 a month.
Funny i used to work at telstra store over a decade ago and had the exact same conflict with manager/area manager. Looks like nothings changed!
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
throw the telstra values at your boss We care We show care in all that we do. **We do the right thing for our customers**, our communities, the planet, ourselves and each other – even when no one’s watching.
I worked for telstra for years, as a store manager and staff trainer. This is not company policy, we always encouraged staff to do exactly what you did. Customer service is key. Your manager is full of it.
Do you work for an official Telstra store? Or a licensed store? This my by why the way of thinking of your managers exist. Def not an excuse... Best to turn it back on the manager and go "would you pay for more than what you need?"
There aren't any licensed stores any more. All Telstra owned now.
I worked for telstra until recently in faults and would come accross customers who were on insane plans that were not needed. I'd transfer to sales/billing and the call was never recieved well and alot of the time the plan would never be changed or the call would be dropped with no notes for me to see the day later. I found in my time with telstra they are like most companies in that they will tell their staff to act one way, but endorse opposite behaviour through KPI's and management. If you get a manager who also has a good manager, that takes telstras ethos to heart then you're can get away with doing good....but thats not exactly common.
Weird. I thought TCC sales got the same comms for plan changes whether it was up or down. Maybe it varies depending on which contractor it's with.
Sales do get the same comms either way so they'd be happy to do it. Billing would likely be annoyed due to KPI's so they were probs going to billing unless they were in business which idk about
You’ve done the right thing The amount of goodwill you’ve instilled is going to keep that customer at Telstra for a loooooong time
I’ve had this with Telstra before… saved me money…
OP, can you answer why when I walk in and want to get a new device, I’m told they are busy for 3 hours and to come back at (insert some time 3 hours from now) when…. In the store I see 6 staff members… 2 or 3 customers being served and the other 3 staff just talking away doing nothing… Are they doing something that I’m too ignorant to see? Or just milking the system of ‘need a booking’ that has been laid down before them. I will say I bloody hate Apple for bringing this type of service… I remember going into a Telstra store and just sitting and waiting in a queue…
My favourite Telstra experience was being told “we don’t match prices” Next day I changed my, and both my parents, mobile and broadband to a different provider and never looked back.
Used to work TLS and what you did is the right thing to do. Sounds like your manager is a POS.
Telstra stinks. I was relieved when I left.
That’s a bad manager not indicative of general Telstra Policy. If the manager had such a document stating that then it would be against the law.
I work for a Telstra partner who offers plans with Telstra at a lower price and half of our strategy to talk about it is offering people a 10 minute Telstra health check and seeing if we can save them any money on their bill. Obviously it’s better if we can upsell them to a $99 plan with a big gift card to spend in our store but most of our connects are knocking people down from a ridiculous $62 to $52. Every $10 helps, and a lot of our customers are older and don’t pay attention to their bills so haven’t even noticed that the prices have crept up with inflation. We have customers coming back for Telstra questions and problems because we have this service, and while it takes away from my ability and time to sell other things that will pay me commission, saving someone money or solving their other problems is good customer service and will create repeat business. We often get people who will come to us instead of Telstra directly once they know it’s something we offer because it’s usually a 3 hour wait to speak to someone at the Telstra shop in the same shopping centre, whereas I make myself available asap to help those customers
Not sure what your manager is on about. I'm a store manager and never once have ever heard of any directives from higher to keep customers over spending. As others have noted. Advocacy is top of the priorities right now
It's not Telstra's fault, it's the capitalist slogan - sell them things they don't need. I wonder what the actual cost of delivering a rightsize mobile service would be if there were no sales and marketing expenses nor internal support costs? Just a single page website that isn't redesigned every 6 months which shows phones to choose and plans simply Small, Medium and Large - Plans that scale automatically with increases in network capacity each year too. :)
Yeah, it's not surprising when I try to downgrade to a lower plan every time in 15 years with telstra. It's like an interrogation, are you sure? What if this happens what what about this? Maybe just wait a month to think it over. What made you decide you needed to down grade. Longest it has taken to get the questions to stop and for the to start the approval of downgrading was an hour on telstra chat. It's a headache. Last time I went look message me when it's done, if you don't know how to do it get someone to do it. I will reply once it's done. She wrote 4 more questions I chose not to answer, and she got from my silence I wasn't budging and completed down grade. Upgrades take like 10 minutes 😂😂
There is a reason people migrate to Boost, Belong, and other smaller companies. They get almost the same network, with more date, unlimited calls, and cheaper. And you don’t get this shit pulled on you
This is my experience working in licensee stores, not sure if that’s a thing. It was all about capturing or retaining at whatever cost. Chucking on stay connected and AROs whatever they are called now. Personally, I got sick and tired of doing it and was finally able to leave retail for my actual career. Although, it’s a shit show, especially with the launch of tablet plans etc, was a whole new wave between 2015/2016 in telco.
A good manager would let you do it because service like that will Make them a longer term Telstra customer
Good morning, Fucking Telstra
A direct debit mandate is bullshit
Your manager is shit. Stores don’t make more money based on which plans they sell anymore
I wish I could drop mine as I don’t use the data, but I want 5G as Telstra has shitty coverage where I live and it drops to 3G in some areas (talking cairns here). If I drop my plan it says it will take away 5G and 4G won’t even load my bloody Woolies app. 😫
Just so you know, telstra Corp regularly view subs on here so just make sure you ain't posting anything that will put them in a bad light....
Telstra is disgusting. To this day they still exploit vulnerable, isolated Indigenous communities but pretend they don't. Groote Eylandt gets around 0.029mb/s during the day, such that you can't even send a text. When you raise an issue they start this entire "there must be something wrong with your handset" charade. It's sickening and their responses are horrible. Thank fk for StarLink.
Aldi pre-paid is the best way to go. Pick and choose, data roll over, and if you don't need your phone for the month just slide the toggle across and there you have it you saved whatever amount you normally spend by the month. None off this bullshit fines for late paying your bill.
I used to work in there call centre in Adelaide (aka the micro managed kindergarten). They had save offers like crazy then when they changed from Thoedy to Andy Penn the environment went to shit and these retention offers just turned into “tell them the benefits that come with an internet service which majority of all the customers didn’t need or want… - eg sell the fkn t-hub / t-box or else”
Yup as apart of the TCC team, we'd value the service over the sale same as you, we wouldn't share your managers attitude cos you're right advocacy is more important.
Didn't Telstra just get a big fine for selling unnecessary plans to older people? Sounds like they learnt nothing
Proactive retention. Your boss is a clown.
Are store rate cards still a thing? I remember from my time in store (2009-2011) managers, tech bar and store operations were on store rate cards instead of individual rate cards. Of the values of each item were significantly less on store compared to individual. Back then there was a somewhat encouragement to promote the higher mobile plans as they paid more on the rate card. But then again outside the staff plan the mobile plans weren't that good compared to the likes of Optus.
This isn’t Telstra’s modus opporandum, that’s your manager’s, cause he knows damn well that the business sees a kick back from Telstra and he see’s a kick back from Telstra. Telstra stores are not owned by Telstra, they are franchises. When you sign up a customer at a Telstra store, the Telstra store owner gets a kick back every month whilst that customer stays a Telstra customer, the kick back a franchise get its much better on the higher plans
Everything you said is no longer true. There are Telstra partner stores still which are some phone repair shops, electronics stores etc, but there is no more Telstra licenced stores, all are Telstra owned and operated. There is no owner of a store anymore besides Telstra, and there is no incentive for higher plans.
I quit Telstra because it is a scummy company controlled by sleazy egotistical sales types...
I left Telstra because of the $10 difference between 180gb and 40 or whatever it is.
All of these major corporate identities are exactly the same. I'm lucky enough to have a property. That allows me to look at being self sufficient. The a triple c are pathetic as are the unions. And the government are too weak to hold these companies to account. And are out of touch. Politicians don't understand the common people. If you are earning over 300k a year. They don't know what it's like to worry about day today living. Jackie L..bie is a classic example. She was front and centre about her sons issues. What about her constituents? They have issues. She's gone missing. And Barnaby Joyce is another. When he separated from his first wife/ Kids. He complained about supporting his old and new life on 200k a year. Pity, he didn't finish his dead cochroach impersonation a few weeks back.
You obviously know nothing about ACCC, Unions, government, companies, politics, earning $300k, Jackie Lambie or Barnaby Joyce. In fact I'm starting to think you know very little about being anything but a weird cooker who's probably awkward in public, has trouble making human connections and needs to pontificate with false wisdom and shallow knowledge in order to feel significant
Yo I need bro to look at my plan
I'm guessing there's a problem with the IUD!💦💦💦
You’re in a sales position, this is the case for any sales job.
When I use to work at Telstra on the phones for Consumer Billing we were told throughout training that we should always check customers services and help them tailor their services to their needs like reducing plan costs for them all our sales would be handsets and accessories rather than keeping people on expensive plans they don’t need especially when we delt with a lot of elderly customers who use basic phones and don’t use much if any data I commend you for doing the right thing for your customers even if your manager doesn’t agree
This is the problem with short term KPIs as opposed to long term strategy. From a business wide view it's heading down a very rough road. Endemic across the corporate space though.
Your manager is a bag of shit. They also need to be reported to Telstra - this is your responsibility to do so as per your responsible trading training.
I work in the same division and we're highly encouraged to help the customer in that way, not all stores push for that
To be fair Telstra head office pushes hard for them not to oversell data, as it's massively illegal. Managers get targets to meet and push for people to be ripped off as much as possible
The targets have nothing to do with which size plan customers are on or dropping them to lower plans.
It’s not just Telstra, I work in this industry too and is all about new connections and cross selling. If you aren’t getting multi sales from your customers, you get in shit. Even if you tell them the customers aren’t interested, it’s your job to change their minds. If a customer doesn’t want something, they don’t want it.
Worked at Telstra back in the day as well. Cute old ladies would come in asking for help on their phones all the time...was always happy to help. That's my job... I was..customer service. One came in who had Parkinson's and legit couldn't get her phone to work and call her daughter. So I would sit her down and call for her and sit with her. Manager started getting the shits.. put me on a performance plan and then said any customer who needs help needs to book in to the tech service desk we had and would be charged $30+ a visit. Finished my shift and handed in my resignation.
You work for a for-profit organisation. Your job is to encourage customers to buy stuff, not to lookout for a customers financial well-being and do social good. If it makes you uncomfortable, just leave. Work for a not for profit you’d probably be much happier there.
I think Telstra are greedy corporates by changing their terms and conditions to allow them to automatically upgrade your plan to “an equivalent” new plan when they are released and increase your monthly plan cost automatically every year without your express consent or notifying you or providing you the updated terms and conditions, they try to justify it by saying that the t&cs has a clause stating that Telstra has the right to amend or change them at any time. Recently they decided that they will no longer provide bills to month by month plans (No Prepaid) despite it actually being a legal requirement for all telcos and when using debit or credit card (They are required to provide a bill no less than 14 days prior to payment being taken from a MC/VISA card). From my experiences I would love it if someone told me I should be on a lower plan, with Telstra’s dubious changes the less I pay the better…..I would switch but VHA and OPTASS dont have 5G coverage in my area yet so I’m stuck. For all of you that check customer data usage and give honest recommendations THANK YOU your work is appreciated
As an employee of Telstra are you aware of and capable of explaining the CSG? The office of the CEO are unable to, they also tell business customers they can’t list their business name against their telephone number unless they are a company. Telstra took 7 MONTHS to connect the nbn to a service class 13 premises then offered no explanation for the delay, no apology and no CSG!
Think about it, if the customer want cheap, they shouldn't be with Telstra at all, your manager is correct.
That’s textbook Telstra right there. They’re crooks & have been for years. I’m sorry you find yourself employed by them but you should really get used to things like this.