What's your job about?
nbn’s purpose is to lift the digital capability of Australia. In my current rotation in Customer Experience and Product Strategy, our team aims to understand and improve the experience of customers and provide strategic analysis for current and future products. I support my team across several initiatives and projects, such as a deep dive into the fixed-line network upgrade program, where customers upgrade their nbn services to fibre to the premises. My work in this project involved looking at customer feedback and pulling out themes, trends and subjects that were shared sentiments. I looked to understand customer pain points, experience with the technicians and speeds to identify opportunities for improvement or change to drive up customer satisfaction and uptake of fibre to the premises.
What's your background?
I was born in South Africa and moved to Australia when I was about seven years old. From there, I completed my primary and high school years. Something unique about my high school is that in Year 9, we all spent six months in Kangaroo Valley – five days a week would be normal school, and the weekends would be full of hiking, camping, canoeing, carrying 10kg backpacks on your back for a 15km hike, you name it. One of my biggest highlights from university was being part of a volunteering program called Yellow Shirts, where we organised and ran the biggest orientation week in the southern hemisphere. We ran social events, campus tours, help desks, and night events for five days straight. I also got to sing and perform with a band, something completely outside of my comfort zone but so much fun. Some of my jobs included tutoring, Web Application Development at UNSW, where I built dashboards to visualise student course feedback and Marketing Analyst at WooliesX, where I had ownership of creating and executing promotional offers on the Everyday Rewards program and analysed its performance. After graduating and having some work experience under my belt, I applied and got into the graduate program at nbn, and I’ve been working here for the past 1.5 years.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Yes, someone with a different background could do my job. The thing about the graduate program at nbn is that they are open to looking for a variety of different backgrounds, education and experience. Being able to bring a different, unbiased perspective is something my current team values a lot, as well as curiosity, questioning why things are done the way they are and what could be alternative approaches. My current role values critical thinking, problem-solving and stakeholder management as well as understanding and articulating a problem skilfully.
What's the coolest thing about your job?
The thing I love the most about my job is seeing the impact my work can have, whether big or small. For example, my most recent work on understanding customer experience was awesome because I’m also a customer of nbn’s technology, so identifying those pain points and delivering support towards initiatives to improve customer experience is super rewarding.
What are the limitations of your job?
The graduate program does have its limits in terms of the choices you have for rotations. In my case, I did not get a choice for my first rotation, and my second rotation’s choices were also limited due to the needs of the business for resources. This could pose a challenge for those looking for a specific area, team or expertise to gain the experience that they desire.
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