Communications Alliance (CA) says that for the January to March quarter 2020, the result means that, across the participants, “one service in every 1,389 services in operation during the quarter experienced an issue that resulted in a complaint being made to the TIO”.

CA’s comments are included in its most recent Complaints-in-Context report published on Wednesday, showing results for three quarterly periods since the report was expanded to capture a much larger group of Australia’s telecommunications service providers.

The report details the complaints received by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) per 10,000 Services in Operation (SIO) for participating service providers for each quarter, and allows for comparison of the customer service and complaint handing performance of providers, regardless of their size.

The CA report reveals that for all participating service providers, there were 7.2 complaints per 10,000 SIOs for the July to September 2019 quarter, 6.1 complaints for the three months from October to December 2019 and 7.2 for the January to March 2020 quarter.

Communications Alliance CEO John Stanton said, “Complaints-in-Context is the most comprehensive tool Australian consumers have ever had to directly compare the performance of all the major telcos.

“Although the expansion means we can’t compare these contextualised results to previous years, the TIO’s most recent quarterly report, for example, showed that total complaints to the Ombudsman had dropped nearly 14% in comparison to the Jan-Mar quarter last year.”