OPTUS CREATES MORE JOBS FOR MELBOURNE

The Victorian Minister for Information & Communication Technology, Marsha Thompson, today unveiled a new Optus call centre in Melbourne.

The new 250-seat state-of-the-art call centre in Flinders Street is a further demonstration of Optus' commitment to Victoria and providing outstanding customer service.

The call centre has the latest technology installed, including Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), to service customers of Optus' Consumer Division.

Paul O'Sullivan, Optus' Chief Operating Officer, said the new call centre demonstrated Optus' commitment to superior customer service using the latest technology.

"Customer service is Optus' big competitive advantage. We outperform all our competitors. So we are not going to do anything that throws that advantage away or puts it at risk. That is why Victoria was chosen as the site for our new call centre," Mr O'Sullivan said.

"Optus gets about 30 million calls a year from customers and that is growing at a rapid rate. The Company is also growing rapidly and we expect over the next five to 10 years we will double the size of the company and the number of our employees.

"We work in a highly competitive industry, and face rele ntless pressures to improve our services while reducing our costs. Initiatives such as this ultra- modern, highly efficient call centre help us respond to that pressure.

"We will continue to look for greater efficiencies and improved services in our call centres.

While that may involve us looking at automation and possibly taking some call centre tasks offshore, there will always be a large onshore call centre base for Optus," he said.

Optus has approximately 3,500 call center staff throughout Australia and today's $8 million investment will create an additional 250 jobs.

The new call centre, to be fully operational by mid-February 2004, will conduct general and billing enquiries for telephony products in the consumer market.

Media contact:
Luisa Ford
Optus Corporate Affairs
Tel: (02) 9342 5045