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The whole centrepiece around
St George's work is delivering for the customer and the customer centric
focus is very very strong that's the underpinnings of everything, big enough
to do what we have to do as a big business but small enough still to care
a couple of years ago the contact centre decided that they would use the
National Relay Service and have really been able to integrate it into their daily
contact with customers
We have the largest customer base of any bank in Australia. The customer is everything.
Everything we do focuses around the customer in all levels in the bank
so they're always front of mind when we are making decisions.
The role of the Employers' Network is to acknowledge that most businesses
in Australia want to do the right thing about including people
with disability as customers and also welcoming the skills and talents of
people with disability as employees.
One-in-six Australians
have some form of hearing loss. It's projected to be one-in-four in twenty
years. If you translate that through to customers that's quite a huge number. We
should be responding to that not because the government tells us it's a good
thing to do, it's because it's good for the business.
Older customers are very important part of that customer base and many of
those customers
need to use the services of the National Relay Service
in order to do their banking.
It's a great way to be in contact
with hearing and communication impaired customers
for very little effort on business part frankly.
I mean it's a fabulous service for business to utilize at very little
business expense. So our proactive promotion of the National Relay Service helps
us to differentiate ourselves from our competitors
and also allows us to be true our commitment
to the community and particularly people
who are deaf, hearing-impaired or speech impaired.
Businesses sometimes spend so much time in resolving complaints
whereas implementing
the NRS in a friendly and and educative way in the first place
could overcome
some of those complaints and make it easier for everybody.
The basic principle behind it for us is that it's good for our business so if we're
responding to our customers on that basis we're actually delivering a better
busines. The next step forward for us is to take it beyond the customer because
again with the culture it's come from that customer-centric focus and to now really
put that more broadly across the organisation and that will
principally be our human resources staff and of course the customer contact
centre.
Insuring that we provide the same opportunities is incredibly important in fact we
have a legislative obligation
to provide employment to people with disabilities in the way that we do
to other Australians, even as simple as someone needing to call in sick
for the day
speak to a colleague in another department or in another state
using the NRS to do that to get that daily work done
is incredibly important.
Not only is it a good thing to do in terms of maximizing your employee
market but it minimizes your risk.
When businesses develop their disability action plan,
actually highlighting an education program
around the NRS is incredibly important
ensuring that is part of the website
that it's part of induction training etc so that there's
that record across an organisation to build that confidence.
We have an award-winning customer contact centre. All our consultants are trained in
National Relay Service which is fabulous and have really been able to
integrate it into their
daily contact with customers. It's in their intranet so that if they get a call
and they're not familiar with it, you know they haven't used it before they're able to call that up.
What we've done recently is to ensure all customers are directed
to National Relay Service information
via our telephone banking website and they get all the service and all the
functionality and benefits of doing their banking over the phone.
We don't hesitate in calling a person who is deaf or hearing-impaired
because we know that we can use the NRS to do that.
Part of that communication to customers about the National Relay Service
has been issuing
a wallet card
that clearly states on there that they should call the National Relay Service
if they are hearing
or speech impaired.
One of the things i'll need to be looking at is how we get
feedback from our stakeholders more broadly and always happy to have dialogue
with the service as well
And i want to make sure that we continue to improve our services
to those customers
and regularly review how we are servicing those customers and
the National Relay Service can help us through that.
When organisations are familiar with the National Relay Service
they can confidently
communicate with people with disabilities either as applicants or as
customers
in a seamless way that makes it easy
for that business to be considered by others as disability confident.