 So, good morning everyone, thanks very much for joining us today. My name is Mark Fiddler and I'm the host for your webinar today, The Importance of Being Accurate and a behind-the-scenes look at our contact centre. To give you some background, I've been with the RTA for 15 years. The majority of that time has been spent across a range of roles within our contact centre. In my current role, I'm a support officer to the contact centre, so today's webinar topic is close to my heart. I am hosting this webinar today from our office in Brisbane and before we get underway, I would like to respectfully acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which this event is taking place and elders past, present and emerging. I also recognise those whose ongoing effort to protect and promote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures will leave a lasting legacy for future elders and leaders. So in today's session, we will cover a number of points as outlined on the slide. We hope to provide some background around why we do what we do and how we use questions to ensure privacy and provide a consistent response to callers. We'll also explain why it's important for all parties and the RTA to have accurate information. We'll also stop a few times during the session to answer questions. Please note that the RTA cannot provide legal advice and you are encouraged to seek your own independent advice to make informed decisions. So today our webinar will include a few polls and we'll start the first one shortly. As we mentioned, we will stop for some questions during the webinar. We'd love to receive any that you have. Please click on the chat function or speech bubble in your zoom bar or if you can't see it, click on the more and look for chat there. My colleague from the RTA, McKaylee will join us for the questions sessions. We'd also like to hear from you on how it went as well as any future topics you might like to hear about. Please look out for our satisfaction survey at the end of the webinar and email us, sorry, and an email for tomorrow. Your feedback will help us continue to improve our webinars and other education. Now we'd love to get an idea of which part of the sector you're in and your location. Could you complete a short poll so we can get a better look? So while we're waiting for some results of that poll to pop up, if you can pop your details in, that'd be fantastic. Okay, so thanks very much for responding there. So the majority of our listeners today are in the Greater Brisbane and South Queensland area with a few from North Queensland and Central Queensland. And it looks like most of the, or a fair majority of those along with us today are property managers or agents or property owners or landlords. So moving on, and thanks for that. So before we get into the topics that we put up on the slide earlier, let's have a look at some interesting statistics around the volume and length of calls that we receive in our contact centre. Now over the last 20 years, our volumes have increased and our call lengths have also increased. Back in 2000, we answered around about 241,000 calls at an average talk time of just over three minutes or three minutes and 20. Counter that to our last financial year, where our preliminary figures indicate that we answered around 423,000 calls at an average talk time of about seven minutes. So you're looking now at an increase of about 185,000 calls per year and a little more than double the talk time. Now some of the reasons why those numbers have increased and why our call lengths have increased, we are placing more emphasis on understanding the situation and helping with options, especially when we consider, and most recently, the impact of COVID on people from a tendency perspective and also situations with the market as they are. There's more traffic through our website, so we're assuming that people are getting straightforward information from that source. So that requires or means that more complex questions are coming through the contact centre, taking a little bit longer and a little bit more need for questioning and that sort of thing. The other thing is that more bonds have been lodged, so there's a natural increase in bond inquiries. And to give you an idea, we're currently holding over 630,000 bonds compared to around 300,000 back in 2000. So on average, the RTA adds about 1700 calls a day. Those calls can be a mix of tenancy and bonding inquiries, customers ringing to update details or customers seeking assistance with our web services. As mentioned before, tenancy inquiries are becoming more complex as our customers are able to find a lot of information from our website. And our increasing list of podcasts and webinars provide them with a lot of answers they're seeking. Obviously, the current rental market trends have also caused an increase in inquiries regarding rent increases and ending of tenancies, and these calls can be complex and sometimes lengthy. So before we move on, I'd like to run another poll and get an idea of how regularly you ring our contact centre. You should see that poll pop up now. Please choose an option and submit a response. Give us an idea of how regularly you need us or like to ring us. So looking at the results of that, and thanks very much for your submissions there. So about half are contacting us about once a month, and the rest on a little bit less regular basis. So hopefully some of the information that we're providing today will give us an opportunity to know what you need to do or what to look for when you contact us. So from that, we can see that most of you have contacted us at some point. You probably had your inquiry rather answered, but you may not really have thought about the process that takes place for you to get the information that we provide. One of the most important things at the start of the call is knowing what your inquiry is about and selecting the right option. Before you ring, please ensure that you have any details that you might need throughout the call easily accessible. This might include copies of tenancy agreements, breach notices, entry notices, the bottom number or bottom details or any other information that you might be ringing about. We'll ask questions to ensure that we understand the situation and can provide you with a suitable response. Please be proactive with the information that you give and provide all details when asked. The answer to how much notice do I need to give or to be given can be vastly different depending on what type of a tenancy agreement it is. Is it fixed? Is it periodic? Have notices been issued? Those sorts of things. So having this information at your fingertips can be important. So before you get through to an operator, you need to choose an option. The four options listed there are what is shown on or what you'll hear on our IVR. So our IVR or integrated voice response will provide you with a list of options as well as some other information around the call and calling for. As we mentioned, one of the topics we're going to discuss today is how you can quickly get the help that you need. Selecting the correct option at the start of the call will go a long way to ensuring that a relevant staff member answers your call. For example, if you have an inquiry regarding when you can submit a bond refund, that would be a general question on renting in Queensland as it relates to the legislation around when you can submit a refund. If you were looking to lodge a refund request but were unsure who the contributors were, then selecting the bond inquiries would be correct. So now you've selected your IVR option for the inquiry that you're ringing about and you get through to a customer support officer. So who are we and who will you be speaking to? Our contact centre staff are initially trained to answer inquiries from our Bond Inquiries Q. They are then supported as they build their knowledge and confidence before being trained for other areas. Once that training is complete, they have access to standard responses to common topics to help ensure consistency of information provided. However, a response is always tailored to the information that you're providing. The RTA provides training to staff to enhance their questioning skills and improve their ability to increase their understanding of a scenario prior to providing a response. And we undertake quality reviews to ensure that skills and responses are of an acceptable standard. Generally, one of the first things we do once we've introduced ourselves and got an understanding of the inquiry is ask some identifying questions. These are important as they ensure that we're providing information to those that are entitled to it. Privacy is important to us, so we will always ask a series of questions before we provide any details about a Bond Record. The RTA has a privacy plan and staff members have been made aware of their responsibilities to uphold privacy requirements and to comply with the Information Privacy Act of 2009. This is done during their initial training and through follow-up training sessions and through changes to our documented policies and our procedures. If we cannot reasonably identify you and determine that you have a right to access the information we're seeking, we cannot provide specific bond information, but we can provide general information. For example, if a husband and wife run a tenancy agreement, but only the wife is named as the Bond Contributor, we would not be able to provide specific bond details to the husband, but we would be able to provide general information regarding how the refund process works, time frames and notices, and those sorts of things. In a tenancy inquiry, understanding the situation is important for us to provide a correct response. We will ask questions like, is a Bond Lodge? Is it a periodic agreement? Has notice been issued? Any answers to those questions can change the information that we provide back. If you're ringing with a tenancy inquiry, we will still identify you and bring up either your bond or client record. We like to make a note of the call on your client record, including the topic of the call and a brief record of the information discussed. It also gives us an opportunity to check that your contact details are correct and update them if needed. The data that we record assists us to understand what topics we might need to run webinars and podcasts about such as what we're doing today. It also provides a reference point for you as a customer because our calls are recorded and having the service session on the call, should there be any issue or you need feedback, we can find and go back and listen to those calls. So at the end of this slide, I will take a moment to answer any questions. So please use the chat function to submit anything that you might be inquiring about at this point. And speaking of questions, our contact center will ask them. When we ask questions, please remember that small details or omitted information can change our response. Answers to questions such as, has a breach been issued and was it remedied or is it a fixed tenancy or a periodic tenancy can change the response that you may get. We can only provide responses based on the information we are given. So that's why we suggest that you be proactive in providing the details and have all the information regarding the tenancy on hand when you start the call. Contact center staff do have access to an information database that assists them to provide a response. But there are some things in the legislation that are not specifically referred to, such as who is responsible for cleaning gutters or who is responsible for cleaning mold. The circumstances around how these things occurred will drive a response. So if we're getting different stories from different parties, it can impact the response that we're providing. Our contact center are supported by a support team. And the support team are there to take any escalations or provide assistance to the staff during a call. Contact center staff also have calls assessed for training purposes by our quality and training team who provide feedback and coaching sessions on a regular basis. And as I mentioned earlier, our calls are recorded, unless of course the customer requests that it does not be. So it is an idea to keep the name of who you spoke to along with the date and time of the call. We do encourage feedback and the contact us page on our website has a form available for you to provide any feedback that you may have. So just having a look in regards to any questions that we might have in at the moment. No questions there at the moment, Mark. All right then, we might keep moving then. As I said, if you do have anything or anything that pops up during what we're discussing today, please feel free to pop your questions in and we'll address them there a couple more opportunities as we go along today. So as we've touched on, our questioning is to ensure that our privacy is maintained. And obviously your answers to our questions are based on the information we have in our system. With that in mind, let's look at our data and why it is important what you provide to us is accurate. The information provided with the bond lodge form is how we start building our client records. If you're submitting a paper bond lodge form, then having accurate email and mobile numbers are critical and fundamental to our entire tenant correspondence design. Without correct information, we're receiving increasing numbers of calls and dissatisfaction of customers as they're not getting the information that they need. Inaccurate information can also mean longer processing times. If you have multiple tenants, we require unique email addresses. We cannot have tenants with the same email address as the privacy reasons. And if you are getting tenants to sign your bond lodge form, please get them to check the details on the form for accuracy before submitting it to us. The other important information aside from the tenant's details is that the details regarding the tenancy, the type of tenancy, the number of bedrooms, whether the property is a house or a unit, all those little questions at the top of the form, these are important for us as well that enables us to compile data around median rent information, which is available on our website and is extensively used. If you are using web services for lodging your bonds, then you'll notice that the web service lodgment doesn't require the agent to provide as much personal information for the tenant as a paper form. But a unique email address is mandatory and must be accurate. And if you have a contact number for the tenant, it should be provided. If you don't have an email address for the tenant or individual email addresses for each tenant, then you must use a paper form. We'll touch on the implications of providing accurate details in a moment. But if you do have any questions regarding this process, you can contact the RTA and select web services from the IVR and one of our staff members will be able to provide some assistance. And once the bond has been lodged and processed, there may be need for details to be updated or parties involved with the bond to be changed. Organisations and individuals can update their details, things like contact information and bank details via the update your details option through web services or they can fill out and update your details form and submit it to us. Individuals can ring the RTA, the contact centre and select update your details option through the IVR and provide any new information. If parties to a bond change, then again we provide a couple of options. A change of contributors form can be done via web services or by paper form. The paper form can be emailed to the RTA as can any change of managing party form or change of premises address detail form. If there has been a change, please ensure that the change form is submitted to the RTA in a timely manner. If customers, sorry, if we have a valid email address, notifications regarding those changes will be emailed to the required parties. If customers wish to receive legislative notices such as on acknowledgements, notices of claim, they wish to get them by email and they do need to provide authorization to do so. This can be done via the update your details process or for individuals over the phone. If the RTA doesn't have specific authorization for us to email notices, then they will be posted and the time frames for notices will need to take postage times into account so it can slow down the process. Now the easiest way for all parties to receive bond monies at the end of a tenancy is to reach agreement on how the bond will be distributed. If you need to submit a paper form, then please ensure that all details are accurate and clearly written. If we can't read bank details, we will not be able to use them and this will slow down payment to the party that is looking to receive it. Also ensure that the required signatures are on the form. Missing signatures will require a notice of claim to be issued to those parties that we don't have signatures for and check the ear allocation data up to the bond amount, the total bond amount. Also no cross-outs on the form or white-out. You can get further details from a recent webinar that we did on bond basics if you're looking for more information around those processes. Now if agreement has been reached between all parties, then web services can be the quickest way to finalize your refund process. However, again, if there's no unique email address for each tenant, the paper form must be submitted. If the agent is lodging the request, then accurate email addresses are vital so the tenant can receive fast-track requests. They can then access web services to complete the request. Generally, a refund completed with all parties accessing web services can be done within sort of 24 to 48 hours. If the agent is making a claim, then claim reasons are mandatory and also through web services, the tenant is the one that has a responsibility of providing their own bank details. All right, so again, an opportunity for questions. How are we going, McKaylee? We've got a very quiet group out there today, yeah. So no questions, but we do stop again at the end, I think, don't we? Yes, we certainly do, we certainly do. All right, now I mentioned a little bit earlier and we've looked at and discussed the issues around correct email addresses and the implications. Now, to give you an idea of the impact of the RTA receiving incorrect email address, we have put together this table. Now, there is a lot of information on there and I appreciate that, but just to touch on a couple of points. If an error is made and the email address is submitted incorrectly, now using my own name as example, my mark with a C. So mark fiddler with a C at Yahoo, might be my email address, I won't give too much away. If we receive that email address as marked, but with a K and it's not uncommon for that to occur, then the tenants will not receive the notifications they should. Now, as we mentioned earlier, this does create more calls and unhappy customers. This can also have the potential of exposing the RTA to potential privacy breaches. If the incorrectly provided address is not an invalid address completely, then someone who should not be receiving emails from us will receive them. Now, I know that there are a few mark fiddlers in the world, spelled with both mark with a C and mark with a K and my name's not particularly common. We have received reply to emails that we've sent from people all over the world due to simple spelling errors in email addresses. Incorrect information can also slow down other processes throughout the tenancy. So if there's a change of one contributor or even a refund process at the end, if the parties aren't getting the emails that they should because the email address is incorrect. Now, making an error in an email address is one thing, but providing a bogus address for the purposes of not having to lodge a pay-per-form is another thing altogether. The addresses that you see on this slide have been presented to the RTA by users of web services and they've been provided at both the lodgement and the refund stage. Now, the web services terms and conditions state that you agree not to use the site for any dishonest, fraudulent, false, misleading or malicious purposes and that you agree to provide true and correct information to us and that you declare that all information you provide is true and correct. Now, the provision of false or misleading information, including incorrect or bogus email addresses on any form or via web service is an offence provision under the act and penalties can apply. Now, I appreciate some of this information is a little hard-hitting, but it is important for both the RTA and our customers to be dealing with correct information. Again, we would encourage you to contact us if you have any concerns about not being able to use web services because of tenants not having an email address and we can discuss options with you. As we've discussed, bodily funds and lodgements can now be submitted at any time of the day and night and we certainly see them coming through at all times of the day and night. Similarly, information should be obtained outside of ours, outside of our contact center hours. We've recently updated our website to make it more user-friendly and provide a better flow of information. So for example, if you're looking for information about entry, you'll now find a linked podcast on the entry page. Similarly, the Who is Responsible for Repairs page contains a webinar related to repairs and maintenance. So information contained on these pages, including the podcasts and webinars may answer questions that you have and avoid the need to call our contact center. Our website also contains links to other organizations and referrals to other resources. So even though you may not be able to call us, there's plenty of information at hand that may assist you outside of ours. Now as we've discussed today, our contact center staff are available to take inquiries regarding the rights and responsibilities of the parties within a tenancy. Matters regarding bond and also inquiries about web services. Accessibility is important to the RTA and that's why we work with both interpreter services and also the national relay services to ensure that customers have access to us. We can also accept letters of authority from customers allowing us to talk to support workers, family members or friends to ensure that they have access to our services. You can contact us for more information about this process. At times we've received calls from interstate tenants or from commercial tenants. We also received calls from road traffic authorities and yes, there were RTAs in other states up until recently and it wasn't unusual to get inquiries about car registrations and traffic infringement notices. Obviously we're unable to assist other than providing those calls with appropriate contact numbers. Similarly, we may not be able to assist with inquiries that appear to be more within our scope. Things like management agreements between agents and owners and some tenants to tenants scenarios, have a go at that guys, we cannot assist with. Again, we should receive those inquiries, we would do our best to provide appropriate referrals to organisations that can assist. One last note in regards to when you should contact us. Changes were made with the introduction of COVID regulations last year to assist tenants who are fined themselves to remove the tenancy due to domestic or family violence. Adjacent landlords need to be aware that privacy provisions apply around this. Devulging information can result in offences being committed. We suggest parties who are in this situation to review the information available on our website and if you require further assistance with the process to call our contact centre. So that brings us to the end of the presentation part of today's webinar. We hope that you've gained some insight into how we can work together to get the most out of the next contact that we have, that you have with us. So in summary, we have a lot of resources on our website that you can access 24-7. When you do need to call the contact centre, be prepared with your information. Whether you're using web services or submitting paper forms, please provide complete and accurate information. This will help us process lodgements, refunds and any changes quickly and it also provides all parties with a better experience. Before we go to the final question, I'll just remind you to complete the short survey at the end of the webinar. So, where are we at? Mikaela, have we... Yes, Michelle was... Any questions? We do. Michelle was asking about tenants who had trouble lodging bond refunds, international students, sorry, who had trouble and asking about that easy process. And William also said that they had this experience up until last year, obviously, with the border close. That's impacted on numbers. But Mark, we at QGov's documents have changed with the addition of a couple of things that might be suitable. But what's your advice on international students? Yeah, it is a question that we get on a reasonably regular basis in the contact centre. The... As you did mention, we are aware that QGov is expanding their identification options. So, we'd hope that that opens the ability to use web services up to more customers. Outside of that, I guess it... Depending on the circumstances that I know, some international students move from one property to another in Brisbane a lot, pack up and move back home once their studies are finished. The importance really is around having contact details for them. There is a lot that we can do certainly in regards to the provision of bank account details and that sort of thing via email. But the refund process can start if the agent is initiating it, as long as they've got an email address for the client. We will then provide, as a part of the refund process, we send the fast-track notification and alert them to the process. But it is something that we are working on with QGov around expansion of those identifying documents and being able to provide access to more parties through that. An Australian bank account is still a requirement. It is still a requirement? Yes, yeah. So that we find that that's not so much of an issue in regards to finalising the tenancy or finalising the bonds, rather. We don't get too many inquiries or requests for other payment methods. So generally, most students tend to leave that account open at least until they know that they've finalised the bonds. So, yeah. Alrighty, thanks, Mark. And that is the only questions that have come through. Right, very quiet group today. All right, well, if that's the last question, then look, I will say thank you very much for your attendance today. Hopefully, you've got a little bit out of it and have a better understanding of how we operate and why we do what we do. So again, keep an eye out for the survey and the email, the follow-up email tomorrow. But for now, thank you for attending and I will close the webinar.