Systemic issues

In detail

Causes of systemic issues

Many factors can cause a systemic issue, including human error, failed systems and lack of policies or procedures.

Identifying and measuring systemic issues

We identify potential systemic issues in several ways:

• we monitor complaints and identify potential systemic issues through our case management system
• we stay informed about current and emerging systemic issues through advice from the Advisory Council and our relationships with regulators, government organisations and our peer networks with other ombudsmen offices
• scheme participants may tell us about a systemic issue.

Resolving systemic issues

When we identify a systemic issue, we let the scheme participant know and advise how the issue could be resolved to prevent it from re-occurring. We also tell the relevant regulator if a systemic issue could breach or violate a legislative code or licence.

In 2020-21, 80 systemic issue notices were issued to scheme participants. Depending on the concern, our identification of systemic issues may lead a scheme participant to:

• redesign products and services
• change organisational practices and procedures
• retrain staff on product and service delivery
• reassess consumer information (e.g. labelling)
• reassess the performance of after-sales service
• receive an early warning about potential product and service defects.

Systemic issue outcomes

Out of the 128 potential systemic issue cases, 48 were monitored and did not result in a systemic issues notice
being issued.

From the 80 systemic issues cases where notices were issued, the following outcomes were identified by the scheme participant (SP) to address:

• 27 issues were addressed by training
• 7 issues led to process improvements
• 6 issues led to system changes
• 1 issue resulted in improved customer communications
• 2 issues are still awaiting an outcome from SPs
• 37 issues resulted in no action taken by the SPs.

How systemic issue notices helped customers

Issue: Billing delay for customer

Outcome: The SP identified a technical exception had been created and this resulted in a billing delay. To avoid this happening in future, a standard operating procedure was created for this exception to minimise the customer impact from a delayed bill.

Issue: Accounts not issued to customer

Outcome: The SP identified an issue in their billing system related to a particular network tariff not being configured correctly in their system. This resulted in some customers not receiving their bill. From their investigation, the SP found that the issue impacted 235 customers overall and they have now successfully remediated all impacted accounts.

Issue: Duplicated direct debit and delays in refund of money to customer

Outcome: The SP found that the cause of this issue was an error with the daily supply charge in the customer’s welcome pack. This error had a flow-on effect and resulted in bills being placed on hold and reissued, which then delayed the refunds to the customer. The SP identified other impacted customers and corrected this by checking all affected accounts and re-issued the correct accounts.

Issue: Marketing conduct, approach in shopping centre

Outcome: The SP reviewed two complaints about the same team member and identified this was a one-off incident. However, they proactively worked with their sales partner to run refresher training for all sales agents in South East Queensland to ensure that all sales agents and staff understand the expectations and regulations that they need to abide by.

See the official copy of the 2020-21 annual report, as tabled in the Legislative Assembly of Queensland, on the Queensland Parliament's tabled papers website.