Rising Telco Complaints and Their Hidden Cost: How to Reclaim Your Time and Productivity

When was the last time your team had to chase a telco just to get a service order fulfilled? For many Australian businesses, that scenario plays out far too often — and it’s only getting worse.

According to the ACMA and the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, complaint volumes are rising year over year.

All of these complaints can be traced back to service lags. What starts as a simple support request often snowballs into lost hours, mounting frustration, and hidden costs your team shouldn’t be absorbing.

The Numbers Are In: Telco Complaints Are Climbing

According to the latest reports from the ACMA and Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, business customers are increasingly dissatisfied with their telecom experience. In fact, in 2024 alone, there were over 56,718 service complaints.

The TIO’s report shows frustration with the following:

• Long wait times for activations and porting
• Opaque billing and recurring invoice errors
• Sluggish or non-existent post-sales support
• Network performance issues without clear updates
• Escalations that go nowhere and no resolutions (in 30% of complaints)

Telecom Issues Are Hurting Your Teams More Than You Realise

You might not see it in your P&L, but the time lost managing telco problems is costlier than you think.

Your IT teams may spend hours logging support tickets or following up with carriers, while your procurement departments track down service contracts just to resolve basic disputes.

There’s more. Your finance teams may have to comb through invoices. This is especially the case if there are mischarges that should never have occurred.

In short, business telco inefficiencies aren’t something your teams should prioritise — yet it’s where most of their energy goes.

A Smarter Approach: MMS and TEM

Many organisations are turning to managed mobility services (MMS) and telecom expense management (TEM) to take back control.

MMS lets you proactively manage telecom providers, ensure accountability, and reduce issue resolution time. Meanwhile, with TEM, you’ll be able to gain full visibility into spend, billing anomalies, and opportunities for cost recovery.

Together, these solutions enable you to:

• Shift the burden of issue resolution away from your internal teams
• Prevent poor visibility over mobile device management
• Eliminate the fog around billing and service costs
• Refocus your staff on strategic initiatives
  
  

How Atrium Helps You Keep Business Telco Complaints Low

Business telco complaints occur mainly because there’s no clear line of sight, but with Atrium, our centralised managed mobile and computer service platform, you’ll be able to track every fault, activation, billing dispute, and support ticket in real time.

This way, your teams can stay ahead of issues because complaints are escalated through the right channels — before they impact your operations.

The results are:

• Lesser referrals
• Fewer unresolved complaints
• More time for your team to focus on the goals that matter.
  
  

It’s High Time to Reclaim Time, Focus, and Control

Telco problems aren’t going away on their own. If support delays and billing errors are eating into your day, it’s time to reassess your telecom strategy. Don’t let complaints get in the way of your productivity. Get on top of issues with a trusted MMS and TEM service that lets your team focus on what matters most.

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