Unlocking Success: Driving Customer Excellence with Delivery, Speed, and Quality

At Optus Wholesale, we take pride in our talented team members who work tirelessly to ensure our customers receive excellent service and delivery. Today, we shine the spotlight on one of our Operations team members, Ken Malaxos, who began his journey with us as an Associate Director of Fixed Enterprise Delivery around 9 months ago. With over 25 years of experience in the telecommunications industry and a passion for operations, Ken focuses on delivering exceptional services to our customers daily.

A Journey with Optus

Ken's journey with Optus began in 1996, and he worked with us for 11 years in various operations, support, and customer relations roles. After exploring other opportunities, he returned to the Optus Wholesale family, eager to utilise his wealth of knowledge and experience for the benefit of our wholesale customers.

With a deep understanding of customer needs and passion for ‘Kaizen’, Ken is always looking at service delivery through the continuous improvement lens and understands the benefit of gradual and continuous improvements in operations. As customer needs change, he looks to understand how these align with business needs always keeping our customer needs top of mind and priority

Driving Customer Experience

Focused on delivery, Ken leads a team with four key functions, each aimed at delivering exceptional customer experience:

• Delivery Support
  The Delivery Support Managers ensure that customer orders are accurately qualified in our customer portal, enabling our technical fulfillment teams to deliver services as designed. They also oversee local number porting, a critical aspect of service delivery. We have invested heavily in automation in this team, reducing processing time and data entry errors making for an improved customer experience.
  
  
• Delivery Management
  The team adds value to our customers by ensuring the service delivery process runs smoothly and is managed efficiently in terms of time. Regular communication and personalised support is so important and are the backbones of this function, ensuring our wholesale customers always have the latest information on their order progress and feel supported throughout their journey with us.
  
  
• Project Management
  With larger telecommunications networks, project management becomes paramount. The team provides tailored support to ensure a smooth rollout and keeps customers informed at every step of the project delivery process.
  
  
• Continuous Improvement Projects
  How do we know where to focus our improvement efforts? We listen and learn. The team frequently consults with our customers and stakeholders to identify opportunities for process improvement and works with internal teams to implement these processes, systems, and performance improvement initiatives. This proactive approach ensures that we constantly strive for excellence and raise the bar for customer experience.
    

The result?
Over the years, we have continuously improved our customer satisfaction index (CSI) score exceeding industry benchmarks. This only motivates us to do better as we also understand there is more work to do to ensure our customers are always receiving the best service and delivery experience.

Optimism and Leadership

"I draw inspiration from various sources, including educators, business leaders, sporting coaches, and community elders. I also believe in studying broadly, listening with intent, and applying learnings to my work. You could say my style can be characterised by optimism, as each day is a fresh start and an opportunity to delight our customers."

This ties into our own Optus values which we are actively guided by, with the goal of providing an outstanding customer experience.

Along with optimism, these core values sit behind the team’s enthusiasm and commitment to delivering the best possible service to our customers.

What are the key drivers for exceptional customer experience? The drivers are a combination of speed of delivery and quality. By reducing cycle times and ensuring that services work as ordered from day one, Ken's team adds value to our customers and builds strong relationships based on trust and reliability. I am pleased to say we have reduced our overall cycle time considerably last year and we will put initiatives in place to do the same this year. 

Beyond the Office

When Ken is not busy leading his team and delighting our customers, he indulges in his passion for skiing and enjoys spending his holidays on frozen mountainsides, seeking exhilaration, exercise, and family fun. In fact, he even met his wife at an airport on the way to a ski trip in Colorado USA; skiing has played a significant role in shaping his life.

As a strategic and impactful leader in the Operations team in Optus Wholesale, both our customers and team members benefit from his wealth of experience, commitment to customer experience, and passion for continuous improvement. It all starts with highly engaged and capable people. Ken and the delivery team embody the core Optus values, seeking to continuously strive for excellence in customer service and delivery.