It’s a big responsibility, managing and growing retirement savings on behalf of Australians. It’s something we take seriously and is a process of continuous improvement.  

While we are not perfect and can always do better, we are proud of the work we have done to get to where we are, and we’ve done it by listening to your feedback.  

What we've been doing

Because our purpose to invest for a better world, and our vision where money is a force for good has been resonating with more Australians, we have been growing. In the last few years, Australian Ethical has more than doubled the amount of money we manage, with 134,000 Australians now trusting us with their savings. 

While we have been growing, we have also been building a unique customer service proposition designed for where we are heading, not just for where we are today.  

In 2021 we began setting up an in-house customer service centre at Australian Ethical, based in Sydney and Melbourne to manage all phone and email and enquiries. Since then, we have been gradually bringing all our phone and email customer services inhouse. Between July and September this year, we completed the process of bringing all claims and complaints handling in-house. Having dedicated teams of people we have selected to work with customers means we are better able to support members during the moments that matter.  

You will also know that we have been transitioning our administration services from Mercer to Grow Inc over the last few months. The transition hasn’t been easy and has been disruptive for some customers, and we apologise for that. The decision to transition to Grow and to provide our customer service centre and claims management in-house reflects our ongoing commitment to continuously improving our customer service. While it’s been bumpy, we’re certain it will lead to better customer experiences over time, and we’ll continue to listen to our customers as we seek to realise our vision.  

Fulfilling our purpose to invest for a better world at a fundamental level means helping to support every one of our customers build a better financial future with accessible and affordable investment and financial solutions.

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‎While we have been growing, we have also been building unique customer services designed for where we are heading, not just where we are today.

How are we doing?

Listening has been our most important tool during this journey of internalising and centralising our customer experience – you may have noticed survey requests and forms, and you may have even been interviewed by one of our team gathering information to improve our customer experience. We want to hear from you about your experience and how we might be able to improve.

We also measure member experience through customer satisfaction surveys and net promoter scores, which give us confidence we are heading in the right direction and shows us where we need to focus.  

Despite continually hitting new record levels of interactions with our members, our post-call customer satisfaction scores are consistently in the 90% range, with verbatim comments reflecting these results. In any given month our contact centre will handle in the vicinity of 5,000 inbound calls, between 8,000 and 9,000 emails. 

Our statistical record on member complaints is better than industry average¹, but that doesn’t mean we are satisfied. Every claim or complaint is important, and every member has a story. Fulfilling our purpose to invest for a better world at a fundamental level means helping to support every one of our customers build a better financial future with accessible and affordable investment and financial solutions. We have received some accolades and recognition along the way for the progress we have made, so we think we’re on the right track. 

We were the Retail Superannuation Fund of the Year in the Roy Morgan 2023 Customer Satisfaction Awards and in the Top 3 Most Trusted Super Brands according to Roy Morgan, we won the Best Inclusive Customer Experience at the CX Awards and were finalists in three categories of the Customer Service Institute of Australia Awards. Australian Ethical is also ranked in the top 5 superannuation funds by the Customer Experience Experts in its most recent Superannuation Sector Benchmark Report. 

Recognition, feedback and scoring is important as a barometer for our progress, but it’s the stories of the individual members we encounter every day that propel us to want to do better as a team and as a business.   

While we are not perfect and can always do better, we are proud of the work we have done to get to where we are today.

What's next?

We have made a lot of progress, but there’s still more to do, particularly when it comes to our digital services. 

We carefully selected Grow Inc as our new administrator and partner because of their modern and flexible technology stack, which basically means we can further improve our tech enabled support and service capabilities.  

We’ve been able to deliver a refreshed member portal which we will continue to improve.  

We’ve also heard your feedback for a mobile app, and we’re grateful to hear our members’ passion to engage with us even further. This is something we have been scoping and will let our members know as soon as we have something to announce.       

We believe the decisions we have been making to move from a predominantly outsourced servicing for our customers to an insourced servicing model where our team directly support our members through the most important moments in their lives is an evolution and sets up to be a customer service leader in the future.