Optus has began issuing apology text messages to millions of customers affected by this week’s mass outage.
A nationwide blackout left 10 million Australians without phone or internet access for more than 12 hours on Wednesday.
Hundreds of thousands of businesses were left unable to accept payments due to the blackout and transport and health services were thrown into chaos after the country’s second biggest telco went dark at about 4am.
Text messages from Optus have begun to pop up on customers phones with an olive branch in an attempt to repair its trust with customers.
“Hi there, we’re deeply sorry for the outage,” the text begins.
“To thank you for your patience, we’re giving you unlimited data on the weekend for the rest of the year, so you can connect to more of what you love.”
While those who choose to remain with the company can receive the offer from November 18, droves of customers have vowed to leave the telco and never return after dual scandals in little over 12 months.
The company has shattered its reputation according to Australian National University marketing expert Andrew Hughes, with the reputational damage “far worse than the actual failure itself”.
The marketing expert predicts Optus will have to prove to its customers through “transparent work” that the company is serious about turning its branding around.
But he thinks customers will struggle to believe it after Optus’ lack of communication on Wednesday.
“They’re billion-dollar mistakes, they really are,” Dr Hughes said.
“It is a huge loss … and it is a competitive market so they probably will struggle to get all of it back.”
Optus had previously said it would give customers on eligible plans 200GB of internet data in exchange for their “patience”, a move that was immediately slammed.
“Utterly ridiculous. I’ll make sure that’s not all that I get. I’m no push over,” Leanne Helle-Broe said.
Gabrielle Higgs added: “Pay my bill or I’m switching.”