Aussies have endured countless system outages at banks and other essential services, and new data has revealed it’s cost around 73 million hours. (Source: Getty)
The true cost of system outages that have plagued Australian telecommunication providers, banks, retailers, airlines and other institutions has been revealed. New data from PagerDuty showed that in the last 12 months alone, $5.3 billion worth of pain has been inflicted on everyday Aussies during these failures.
That equates to around 73 million hours of time wasted or lost. Callum Eade, vice president of PagerDuty’s Asia Pacific region, told Yahoo Finance he was “shocked” by how many people had been affected, especially edge towards a more digital society.
“We’re seeing impacted consumers go from ‘that was a bit annoying’ in the past, to ‘I’m not tolerating it anymore’ now,” he said.
PagerDuty, an AI-powered platform that discovers and mitigates system outages, found telcos and financial services topped the list for the number of Aussies affected by this issue, at 41 and 38 per cent, respectively.
But, 71 per cent said they would abandon a company if it suffered just one more outage.
Banks have repeatedly attracted headlines after their digital operations went dark, even just for a few minutes.
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Customers belonging to Commonwealth Bank (CBA), Westpac, NAB, ANZ, ING, Bendigo Bank and others have recently experienced moments where they couldn’t access their money or had been locked out of their accounts.
This comes at a time when Aussies are increasingly dependent on digital financial systems to run smoothly, as there has been a gradual decline in the use of cash in the last decade.
More reliance on cashless systems means a far bigger impact on society when those networks fail, crash, or go offline.
The Australian Banking Association (ABA) said 99.3 per cent of customer-bank interactions now occur via digital channels.
However, these channels aren’t foolproof.
Eric was trekking through Nepal last year when his bank, ING, suffered a days-long outage.
He was out of money and wanted to transfer some funds around, but couldn’t get into his account while the system was out of whack.
“There’s been no communication to me,” he told Yahoo Finance at the time.
“I’ve had to search the web to locate an explanation… I can’t even access their website. This is becoming a regular event at ING. What a lousy communication system they’ve got – it totally disregards the customer.”
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ING customers like Eric were left ‘high and dry’ when the bank suffered a major outage recently. (Source: Supplied/Getty)
This sentiment has permeated across the country and it’s having a massive impact on how customers view their financial institutions.
PagerDuty found 25 per cent of people affected by a system outage lost trust in their bank due to the way it was handled and how it impacted them.
Lives can be thrown into disarray during these outages, which can last up to a few days at a time.
Some people have been in the middle of paying for petrol or their groceries when these outages hit, and it can leave them faced with either waiting until the problem is fixed or walking away empty-handed.
As a result, 61 per cent revealed they had started carrying cash more often as a backup in case they couldn’t use their card or access their accounts.
Research found this worry of being left stranded financially is now carried by 77 per cent of Australians.
Aussies aren’t confident the situation is going to get any better as we rely more heavily on digital banking and other services.
PagerDuty found 34 per cent of people believe outages will happen more often in telco services, along with 30 per cent in the banking sector.
Eade told Yahoo Finance that while these institutions have been trying to be more proactive in preventing these issues, they need to up their game as we become more reliant on their systems.
“That complexity, which we are all embracing, brings with itself a headache,” he said.
“That isn’t going to change. What needs to change, and where we’re seeing a number of those institutions spending time and energy, is ensuring that they’ve got a plan for that.”
Research showed that 97 per cent of consumers “expect action” when a failure occurs, with nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) expecting regular updates.
A further 63 per cent want a “clear explanation” from the institution of what went wrong.
Eade said this gives banks, telcos and other essential services a good idea of what to do in the future when outages hit to prevent more backlash.
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