- Hello, and welcome to Community Chats.
I'm Aley Hammer, and today we're joined with Peter James,
the IT operations director at Amaysim.
Peter, every single year, Amaysim seems to win
industry award after industry award.
And in 2021 alone,
I think you won Whistles Out best mobile provider,
best prepaid provider, and best plan for kids,
all without even having a physical retail store.
This is so cool.
So what I wanna know is how the heck are you able to provide
such great customer service
with just your people and tech alone?
- Our focus has been on our customers, always,
like ever since we started,
even since before we were getting awards.
And we dedicate a lot to their digital
and self-service experience to try and make things as simple
as possible to join and stay with us.
We leverage out the retail stores to do this, but it's true,
we've never actually had a dedicated retail footprint,
aside from a popup store here or there.
We think you should be able to do everything you need
from our website and our mobile app.
But if you can't or you don't want to,
our customer service team are really closely linked
to our business operations
and our operation and technology teams as well,
which helps drive a really a good digital experience.
And we're really looking
for people and technology partners that really
can enhance that experience
and make it much easier for our customers to do things.
Our company values simplicity,
empathy, reliability and agility,
and we look for that whenever we're choosing
a technology partner or a new staff member.
- Pretty incredible, and your dedication to the digital
and self-service experience is clearly working pretty well.
You've got such a loyal customer base and you know
that's definitely testament to all of that.
And Peter, we heard that you guys recently had
your first ever company-wide hackathon,
I think in over six years,
and you decided to partner exclusively with AWS.
So how was that event received, you know
during COVID and did anything actually surprise you?
- Yeah, look, we've tried to do this a couple
of times over the last few years before that one
six years ago, which I was part of and it was a lot of fun,
but something always came up.
We'd gone through a big period of growth.
We've bought companies, we've solar parts of the company.
So this time, the AWS 10 really lent some much-needed focus
and sponsorship, to be quite honest,
thank you for the Echo Dots,
that helped us ensure the event
was really a really big success.
It was also the last event
on the calendar year for a lot of people.
And as everyone knows, the last couple of years
haven't been great for virtual events
or any kind of events in some ways.
So I was actually really worried that we
wouldn't get the take-up that we actually ended up doing,
but we had a really great turnout.
I think we had over half the company
from the main office join, which is amazing,
and some really good representation
from our customer service team as well, because like I said,
they're a big part of our journey
and they know what our customers are experiencing.
We had some amazing ideas.
We had a really tough time as judges.
We actually had to put up a second set of prizes,
a third set of prizes, to actually split second and third,
we couldn't choose.
And I was really happy with the engagement we got
even towards the end of that really tough end of 2021.
So it definitely won't take us six years to do another one.
- Sounds like there's some pretty strong competition,
and how great that so many people got involved,
especially you said towards the end of the year
everyone gets bit lazy and tired
and I guess those Echos definitely helped, so--
- Definitely, yeah.
- So also you recently created a data council
which is something that I was fascinated
about because it's, for anyone who doesn't know,
and I didn't know, it's a diverse group
of senior technology leaders from amaysim.
This is really cool.
Can you explain to our audience a little bit more
about what you're actually trying to achieve
with this data council?
- Yeah, definitely.
So this is really in its infancy,
but it's something that we've actually lent on AWS
as well to help us do this because we realized
we didn't know everything,
which every now and then I have to admit.
But like many companies, we're in an area where
we have far more data collection points and requirements
than ever before.
Everyone talks about drowning in their data lake
or something like that.
And we just can't make it the data teams problem to sort
out, they just don't scale the same way.
So getting a bunch of people across the business
not just from technology, but from technology, data,
marketing and some other areas to meet regularly
and understand the data we're collecting,
how it could be used or how it could be used
and secured better.
'Cause it really is everyone's responsibility to make sure
that our data is secure and being used
in the best possible way for us and our customers.
Like I said, still into early stages
I'm really looking forward
to seeing how we can change the way our business
and our customers get the value out
of this in 2022 and hopefully beyond it as well.
- That's such a great idea, and so true that all teams,
and I actually think not just IT, should be looking at data
and contributing with ideas and how to leverage it.
And Peter, amaysim is well-known
for showing customers big love.
So how will amaysim continue showing customers big love
in the future?
What I wanna know is how do partners
like us at AWS help out with this as well?
- Look, I'll get in trouble if I reveal too much
about roadmap but we love surprising our customers
with extra data or inclusions,
and we don't think we always need a reason.
Being customer-centric has been a natural part
of the way we operate ever since we started
over 10 years ago and the last couple of years
and next few years won't change that at all.
We've invested a lot of time into our mobile app
and technology platforms to help make it even easier
for everyone to join us or manage their service
and initiatives like data banking last year are
a great example of how our teams continue to come up
with great new initiatives with our technology partners to
show our customers big love.
Partners like AWS and others, to be honest,
do allow our team to focus on the outcome
we're trying to achieve around the technology behind it.
We can build on those building blocks and provide really
great experience for our new customers and then
innovate rapidly with a relatively modest team,
given the size of our customer base.
We always think we can do more.
So please watch out some exciting new announcement
that will refine this technology experience
over the next 12 months and beyond at amaysim.
- Well, Peter, I cannot wait
to continue watching your journey.
I love a surprise, so I'll keep my eyes out and you know
it really shows your customer obsession
is so similar to ours and it is amazing
that you've got no physical stores
and that you've got such a loyal customer base.
So I know I've said it before
but congrats on everything you guys have achieved.
And we really love working with you.
- Thanks very much.
It's a really great part of being able to be
a technology company to work with companies
and partners like AWS,
and well done on not using the amaysim pun,
we do it all the time. So well done.
(laughing)
- Took a bit of self control.
All right.
Thank you so much, Peter.
- Thanks very much.
See you later.
- Bye. - Bye.