It was just under a year ago that Optus had an outage that lasted about 12 hours – a problem that not only affected major banks, transport operators, healthcare providers, and small businesses but also prevented almost 3,000 triple-0 calls from being connected. When all was said and done, about 10 million Optus customers and 400,000 businesses spent the day without mobile or internet service.
Former CEO of Optus Kelly Bayer Rosmarin resigned two weeks later.
Beyond the failure to provide more than 10 million people with the ability to communicate, Optus’ communication proved a shocking failure. As a result, a Senate Inquiry was set up to investigate its response – or lack thereof. The report has now been released and includes seven recommendations focusing on the telco’s “manifestly inadequate” public communications.
One of the rules of crisis management is to communicate quickly, and often: even if you don’t have new information, causes, solutions, or estimated timeframes. Silence is not an option.
For hours, Optus ghosted the nation – not even communicating with the Minister for Communications. Their only message was a tweet or two that lacked sufficient information and had the comments turned off. Keep in mind that affected customers did not have internet access, making this method of communication all the more questionable.
The report stated: “In the committee’s view, it stretches credulity that Optus did not think to update the Australian public sooner and in a more accessible way given the severity of the circumstances.”
The void created by their silence was filled with speculation and countless negative impact stories from customers and businesses. The silence was so loud that it eventually fell to the Minister for Communication to conduct interviews and provide the media with updates and information.
The report goes on to conclude that, “Optus’s public communications during the outage were manifestly inadequate.”
Almost equal to the frustration of not having phone and/or internet access, was the frustration of a lack of information and no indication of when information will be provided. If Optus had proactively promised to give updates on its website and social media channels every 15 minutes, it would have gained more control of the story and reduced customer frustration.
It seems that Optus fell victim to a common misconception about crisis communication; that you should only provide updates when you have something positive to report. But this simply isn’t true.
Optus should have been providing consistent updates, even if it was just to say that they are still working on the issue and that they don’t know when it will be resolved. The telco’s silence did nothing but frustrate its customers further by making them search for updates themselves, only to realise that their provider had ghosted them.
Optus should also have held a brief press conference. Even though the information could have been delivered in written talking points – which they ended up doing via WhatsApp to ABC Radio hours into the outage – a press conference brings reassurance that can only come when a leader delivers the information directly to camera and is willing to answer (some) questions.
This gives the perception of some accountability, and the opportunity to deliver hard news with compassion that cannot otherwise be conveyed. And really, these are the elements of any good issues management communication.
Instead, that job fell to the Minister for Communication, Michelle Rowland, who held a press conference herself. The first public interview made by then-CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin didn’t occur until six hours after the outage began, and even that was a result of the Minister for Communications calling on the telco to provide an update.
Among the Senate Inquiry’s recommendations is a call for a mandatory communications plan for telcos, “that obliges them to communicate to government, emergency services and the public during national outages”.
The inquiry also slammed Optus for not having learned from a 2022 data breach, caused by a cyber attack.
“The failure of Optus to provide credible, honest and forthright information during the outage also reflects on Optus’s own inability to improve on its past communication lapse regarding the public disclosure of a malicious breach of its customers data in 2022,” the report said.
In short, the communications provider desperately needs to work on their communications strategy.
But why is this noteworthy for you? So often the way something is communicated matters more than the event or issue itself. For instance, if Optus had communicated quickly and often, the outage outrage would have been reduced and its relationship with customers and government would not have needed as much repair.
Despite this occurring almost one year ago, Optus is still trying to gain back the trust they lost during the outage. And that doesn’t include the commercial hit they endured from lost business. The telco will be trying to recover for a long time to come.
Whether you’re one of Australia’s biggest telcos or a small family-owned business, the investment in getting your communications right is far less than the cost of damage control later. I know this because I see this every week with our clients who have issues with management preparation work done before something goes wrong, compared to those who come to us needing crisis communications and reputation repair during or after a crisis.
And this isn’t limited to things going wrong – communicating in the way that makes most sense to your audience (such as your customers and ideal potential customers), and doing it with a consistent frequency, builds trust, creates connections, and ultimately can create preference for your business or organisation.
It’s easier said than done though. To create an impactful communications plan, businesses need to pause and assess where they’re at or bring someone in to do it for them. Either way, investing the time and resources into your communications will pay in dividends if – or when – your business finds itself in a tricky situation.
Interested in building a robust crisis communications plan that will see your business through tough times? Get in touch with Pure Public Relations today for your free 30-minute consultation.
