Time for TIO Complaint Rankings
I’d like to make a complaint. It’s about the way the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsmen (TIO) reports its complaint statistics.
Around October each year, the TIO publishes it’s annual report that almost invariably reports a rise in complaints. For instance in the latest reporting year (2009) we’re informed “the highest increase in complaints was among mobile phone users (79% rise), followed by internet (57%), landline (40%) and mobile premium services (13%).” (TIO 23/10/2009).
The report also provides a detailed breakdown of complaint data by service provider. This tends to be popular with the IT media, who use it produce headlines such as “Telstra records highest telco complaints“.
My concern is that by using complaint volumes as it’s key metric, the TIO may be creating inaccurate perceptions about the performance of particular product categories or service providers. This in turn impacts public policy and regulatory behaviour(1), as well consumer choice.
Tags: complaints, customer satisfaction, Dodo, telco, Telstra, TIO
