Optus has again apologised for Wednesday’s large-scale outage, lasering in on impacted business customers and announcing the creation of a specialist hotline for complaints.
Optus teams had “worked into the night” in an attempt to take as many calls from disgruntled customers as possible, a spokesperson for the carrier said on Saturday.
“We understand and are very sorry our customers and businesses were affected by Wednesday’s outage,” they said.
“Our customer front line teams worked into the night to hear as many of our customer issues as possible.”
The telco has set up a specialist team and a separate complaints handling process for small business customers hit by the outage.
“We will look at the customer’s specific circumstances and work with the customer on what options we can take to resolve their concerns,” the spokesperson said.
The 12-hour outage on Wednesday, left 10 million individuals and businesses unable to make or receive calls, or complete transactions.
Optus’ offer of 200GB of data for those impacted was derided as inadequate by government and critics alike.
Federal Labor minister Bill Shorten on Friday said the extra data wouldn’t “touch the sides” of customer frustration and encouraged small businesses to speak with their account managers.
The handling of the outage by senior management at Optus has come under as much scrutiny as the original fault, with teams scrambling to improve communication in the days that followed.
The Optus spokesperson said the company was working with the telecommunications ombudsman “to try and help our customers who have been impacted in different ways to find solutions that best suit their needs”.
The federal government has announced a senate inquiry into the breakdown, while the consumer watchdog says guarantee provisions will cover telecommunications for small businesses in some cases, with those affected in line for a remedy.
“Small businesses that have suffered loss or damage that were reasonably foreseeable due to the failure to provide the service may be entitled to compensation and this will vary based on the specific circumstances,” an Australian Competition and Consumer Commission spokesperson told AAP.
Optus Business Centre or Business Care on 133 343
