Advisers sympathise with super members subject to poor service

Super Consumers Australia has reignited calls for mandatory customer service standards after an undercover study of 20 major super fund call centres gave the industry a failing grade.

The consumer advocacy group released the Superannuation Call Centre Experience Report on Tuesday which found the country’s largest super fund, AustralianSuper, failed to answer 90 per cent of calls.

A spokesperson for AustralianSuper said the survey was taken a year ago when it was transitioning to a new call centre provider and the average answer time is now two minutes.

“Our customer satisfactions scores right now are the highest they’ve ever been,” the fund in a statement.

The report comes a year and a half after the government launched a consultation on lifting member standards.

SCA found no super fund performed strongly: the average customer experience score was just 49.9 out of 100 and no fund scored above 55.

Some 23 per cent of callers were told to “go online” as a solution to not having their calls responded and in 58 per cent of calls where someone rang on behalf of a customer with limited English, funds shifted responsibility back to the caller instead of offering direct support to the customer.

The report found around 70 per cent of calls from customers experiencing vulnerability scored five out of 10 or lower for empathy with funds often failing to acknowledge hardship.

The report also found instances of call centre workers laughing at distressed callers.

The findings would sound familiar to financial advisers who have long had issues trying to act on their clients’ behalf with industry funds.

Independent Wealth Advice director Andy Darroch said he had a lot of respect for the work done by SCA and is “ecstatic” that they’re identifying room for improvement, but that super funds are under pressure to deliver a high level of standards while being expected to deliver the lowest fees possible.

“My fear is that everyone will just jump on the bandwagon and say look how rubbish all these super funds,” Darroch told Professional Planner.

AustralianSuper was already in trouble with the corporate regulator for failing to manage duplicate member accounts and death benefit claim delays. Cbus had also received regulatory and parliamentary scrutiny for death benefit failings.

But Darroch said that for-profit Mercer was an example of a non-industry fund that had similar issues. Mercer was ordered to pay a further $10.3 million in penalties for systemic failures to report investigations into significant member services issues to ASIC.

“If you compare the amount of column inches, it’s a joke,” Darroch said.

“People just bash industry funds. Don’t get me wrong, I deal with them five days a week, it drives me nuts. It’s the same with any large organisation.”

Marisa Broome, Wealthadvice principal and former chair for the Financial Planning Association, said super funds are expected to “be all things” with the smallest possible fee being charged.

“It’s impossible to find great staff if you’re not able to pay at the market values commensurate to the rest of financial services,” Broome said.

Broome said industry funds are “fantastic”, but dealing with them from an adviser perspective is incredibly difficult.

“A lot of them think they’ve set up adviser services hotlines, but they have no idea how to service them,” Broome said.

“We are quite spoilt as advisers because if you deal with a big retail fund or platform, they’re only dealing with advisers and they’re completely in tune with it.”

Darroch said while retail funds often have better services for advisers, they don’t have any avenues for clients to go direct.

“If you’re with a wrap provider, it depends on the provider, but typically they typically can’t do anything without the adviser.

SCA partnered with Customer Service Benchmarking Australia to independently assess call centre customer service across 1000 mystery shopper calls and the full report includes fund-by-fund rankings.

SCA chief executive Xavier O’Halloran called for mandatory customer service standards across the super system, backed by public reporting, independent benchmarking and better staff training.

“People don’t just need a healthy super balance to have a dignified retirement,” O’Halloran said in a media release accompanying the report.

“They need to know their fund will pick up the phone when they’re grieving, need to access their money or ask a simple question, and actually help them.”

Recent research conduced by CoreData with Professional Planner publisher Conexus Financial found how retirees were souring on super fund services.

Eureka Whittaker Macnaught CEO and adviser Greg Cook said he can sympathise with the super funds, but acknowledged they do have more work to do with their systems with member service.

“As we know, historically the retail funds have had to make that part of their value proposition, with both members and advisers alike,” Cook said.

“Ultimately good funds will win out as members and advisers will switch to the service and systems that work best. I am a fan of rating rather than mandating.”

TruWealth director and principal financial adviser Natallia Smith said the findings of the report are disappointing, but unfortunately not surprising.

“When clients can’t get through to their fund, are told to ‘go online’, or don’t receive the empathy they need during difficult times, it reflects poorly on the entire retirement system, not just the fund itself,” Smith said.

“For many Australians, particularly older clients, speaking to a knowledgeable person over the phone isn’t a luxury, it’s an essential part of accessing their own money and making informed decisions. Advisers have no control over the day-to-day service delivered by super funds, yet we often find ourselves managing the frustration and rebuilding our clients’ confidence when those experiences fall short.”