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  • 2 years ago
10 million people went without phone and internet services this week, when the Optus network went down. Wednesday's outage left customers fuming, disrupting business payments systems, the Melbourne train network and phone lines at hospitals nationwide. Optus now faces a government and senate review, and an uphill battle to restore its reputation. 'Corporate Reputation Practice' Managing Director, Peter Roberts, explains what went wrong in the telco's communications strategy.

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00:00 Well, certainly it was a lively week for the organization.
00:08 The organization didn't take control of that narrative.
00:12 The communications were a bit thin and a bit slow.
00:16 There could be mitigating circumstances there.
00:18 The owner, Singtel, not based in Australia, but we'll come back to that.
00:23 So the communications were led primarily by Michelle Rolands, who is looking to build
00:30 a meaningful picture.
00:33 So let's start with Wednesday, where I felt they fell down.
00:36 And this is hard.
00:38 Look, I've been involved in far too many crises, and the facts aren't around.
00:43 Whether it's outages, whether it's cyber breaches, whether it's aviation, you lose a plane offshore,
00:49 you haven't got the facts.
00:51 You don't have that black box for months, but you still have to fill that vacuum.
00:55 So it begs the question, what do you do?
00:57 And what I didn't hear on Wednesday was more of those values from Optus.
01:03 What I'm talking about there, specific Optus values, they talk about customer focus, they
01:08 talk about integrity, and they talk about teamwork.
01:11 So you can say something, and it gives customers an idea of being, well, special.
01:17 We're social animals.
01:18 If you reach out to us and feel engaged, we feel a little better.
01:22 So there should have been far more of those values playing out, and you communicate relentlessly
01:29 until you're blue in the face.
01:31 The broader, I guess the more macro picture is what happens now, and still there's that
01:36 need to control the narrative.
01:38 Again, what I mean by that is, look, there's a few storytellers now, influential storytellers,
01:43 including communications minister.
01:44 There was a Senate inquiry, and states will have their own inquiries.
01:50 So it's vital that Optus doesn't just wait for those.
01:53 They've said they'll cooperate.
01:55 Of course they'll cooperate, but it's vital that they kick off their own process and start
02:00 to look at the organization and ask some tough questions.
02:06 It's going to be hard, but collectively, the instinct is to rush through that week.
02:12 Let's get to next week, and let's get to business as usual.
02:15 Don't do that.
02:16 Dwell on it, and explore that culture.
02:19 Ask yourself some tough questions.
02:21 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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