David Penberthy: Optus’ latest debacle has taught us exactly how not to respond in a time of crisis

More than 10 million Australians were affected by the major Optus outage. And the CEO’s handling of it left a lot to be desired, writes David Penberthy.

Corporate Australia owes Kelly Bayer Rosmarin a debt of gratitude.

In a few short hours on Wednesday, the Optus chief executive turned on an absolute clinic in how not to manage a crisis.

Next time the poop hits the fan elsewhere, company chiefs have a handy ready-reckoner at their disposal to inform their crisis management strategy.

It’s a bit like the old Christian maxim for living a good life: what would Jesus do? Except in this case you ask what Kelly Bayer Rosmarin would do, then do the opposite.

For much of this Wednesday there were 10 million individuals and 400,000 businesses with no phone or internet thanks to the Optus outage.

Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin hasn’t covered herself in glory, Penbo says. Picture: John Feder/The Australian.

The scale of the problem was apparent well before dawn.

By the time every breakfast radio show in Australia started at 6am it was the dominant story of the day and was only set to get bigger.

Rather than showing vigour by attacking and owning the problem, the Optus chief operated by what PR executives could term the ‘three R rule’. No response, no responsibility, no refund.

The outage had been underway for a good five hours with Optus saying nothing other than issuing an inanely bland statement saying they were aware of the problem and working on it.

The statement was only posted to social media meaning that none of the 10.4 million affected customers was able to read it.

Argo on the Square cafe in Adelaide and its workers including Emma Urazobsky were caught short by the outage. Picture: Emma Brasier

Seven hours after the outage had occurred, Bayer Rosmarin finally decided to engage with the smallest section of the mainstream media by doing a WhatsApp interview with the low-rating ABC morning show in Sydney.

This wasn’t so much a case of taking her message to the nation but narrowcasting to a few hundred listeners in the inner-western Sydney suburb of Glebe.

The vibe of everything she said was that the problem was complicated, a technical issue too complex to explain, but rest assured we are working on it.

There was no sense of urgency and no compassion or empathy with the people who were losing money in real time while their businesses remained ground to a halt during this.

Alice Chan, owner of La Vie Coffee Shop in Surry Hills, was forced to do IOUs for customers unable to pay due to the nationwide Optus outage. Picture: Max Mason-Hubers

Funniest and stupidest of all was the announcement – again, uselessly enough, via social media – as to how Optus customers needing to make triple-0 calls should deal with the problem.

“We are aware of some mobile phones having issues connecting to 000,” the statement read.

“If Optus customers need to call emergency services, we suggest finding a family member or a neighbour with an alternative device.”

This sounds less like sensible advice and more like a Monty Python sketch.

You can imagine the conversation over the side fence in suburban Australia: “Hi, I know we haven’t met but my name’s Clem, I’m 93 and I’ve just gone into cardiac arrest. You wouldn’t happen to be with Telstra would you?”

NSW Premier Chris Minns rightly identified the less funny side of it all when he quantified the material impact all this chaos was having on small business.

And it’s an important point, because while I know there are some who yawn at it all and regard the impact of a few hours without web access as the ultimate millennial problem, for people trying to make a quid it had genuine financial impact.

“I assume Optus expects its customers to pay on time and is pretty tough on its customers when they don’t pay, the same rule should apply in reverse,” Mr Minns said.

“They can expect, or should be able to expect, better service from Optus.”

On the question of refunds, the Optus boss has been emphatic.

The company’s slogan might be Yes, but if you think you deserve any money back, it’s a No.

Instead, Optus said it would provide 200 gigabytes of extra data to customers on contracts, while prepaid customers would get free data on weekends until the end of the year.

Bayer Rosmarin weirdly asserted that the idea of a refund was pointless anyway as most people would “only get $2”.

It is anyone’s guess how she arrived at that figure. And it seems absurd given that some businesses could say exactly how much money they lost, that they aren’t automatically entitled to receive that same amount from the business whose own ineptitude lost them the dough.

All up then it’s been a heck of a week for Optus. And all this while the entire board of its parent company Singtel – including chairman Lee Theng Kiat – have been in Australia this week to see how everything’s coming along.

Friday night drinks must have been interesting before the big bosses flew home.

You have to wonder how much Bayer Rosmarin and her fellow executives learnt from last year’s major data breach which compromised the personal details of some 10 million customers, the very same people who were stuffed around all day on Wednesday.

Optus was sheepish and evasive as to the nature and scale of last year’s breach, failing to reveal from the outset what type of information may have been accessed by hackers.

The truth will out, as Shakespeare said, and when it did these customers all learned that their names, dates of birth and phone numbers had been stolen, and in some cases, driver’s licence and passport details had been stolen too.

Melbourne cafe owner Jim Marinis, lost $40,000 in a matter of months after his data was compromised in the Optus hack. Picture: NCA NewsWire/David Geraghty

Many customers had to go through the expensive and time-consuming process of having their licences and passports reissued, with Optus initially resisting calls to provide compensation.

Bizarrely, it looks like the Optus management has reflected on the way the company conducted themselves last year and concluded it was such a success that they would take the same approach this Wednesday.

Sometimes in life you get the publicity you deserve. And for Bayer Rosmarin, so much of it was self-generated, the best bit coming from her trainwreck interview with the Australian Financial Review which asked her a simple question as to what time she went to the office on Wednesday after learning of the outage.

“I don’t remember. It’s been a long day,” she said.

Finally something with which her 10.4 million customers can agree.

Originally published as David Penberthy: Optus’ latest debacle has taught us exactly how not to respond in a time of crisis