Digital platforms

How small business can get help

Olivia Pearce — Mon, 02 Sep 2024 22:11:50 +0000

How small business can get help Olivia Pearce Tue, 09/03/2024 - 08:11

02 September 2024

Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bruce Billson interview with Leon Delaney.

Radio 2CC Canberra

Subject: How small business can get help, insolvency concerns, payment times, solving problems with digital platform providers

Leon Delaney

The latest report from the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman has revealed a 50% increase in requests for help from business owners that fear another business which owes the money may have become insolvent or are therefore worried about their own ability to meet their financial commitments. Joining me now the Ombudsman. Bruce Billson, good afternoon.

Bruce Billson

Leon. Great to be with you and your listeners.

Leon Delaney

Well, this is apparently the most significant, most common challenge that small businesses face, getting paid by other businesses.

Bruce Billson

Certainly from our caseload, and there's about 6500 a year, 40% of those are about just trying to be paid. But also they've taken a slightly sharper focus on what's happening with the other party that they're dealing with. We know that many businesses aren't having a particularly profitable streak right now, that cash flow is a big concern for many. And businesses are hoping, whilst they may have taken all proper care in their own financial arrangements, they haven't gone and done some work or supplied things to another business that's running into trouble, and they might end up not being paid and having to carry the cost of the inputs that help them deliver that goods or service. So that risk of a cascading consequence where the difficulty of one business relates to another being caused, that's a real concern. We've seen noticeable uptick in that kind of inquiry.

Leon Delaney

The construction sector in particular is notorious for that kind of thing, isn't it?

Bruce Billson

It is, and that's why it's such a prominent part of our statistics. I think you and I and your listeners have spoken before about the construction sector, particularly when it's fixed price contracts, and there might be a delay in getting some equipment, some material. Maybe it might be harder getting the trained staff, the tradesmen that you're looking for. And the inflation pressures that we understand and talk about as cost of living pressures, are cost of doing business pressures. And you can find yourself part way through a project, and then all of a sudden, the other party - where we've seen quite a spike in insolvencies in construction - is unable to pay its bills, and then that has enormous impacts on your own business, particularly if you've laid out money to help meet that contractual requirement in the first place. So that's that anatomy of that cascading concern where the financial challenges of one business can have a really significant bearing on another business and their ability to pay their bills.

Leon Delaney

And while it is a feature of the construction sector, it's far from being the only sector where this happens. Other businesses also experience a similar thing, don't they, in sectors such as hospitality and similar types of businesses. What can a business do to protect themselves against that?

Bruce Billson

Well, there's a couple of things, and you're right, it's not just a construction industry thing. Hospitality, where margins are pretty tight at the best of times, it can be really significant there with energy costs really making it more difficult. Input costs, you know, even the interest rates are cost of funds for businesses, become more expensive and customers have less to spend. But even in sectors that are doing well, and we've seen recent results for the major supermarket chains, some big businesses are doing quite well, yet we still know one in four of their small business suppliers are having to wait 120 days to be paid.

So that brings into question, well, what can you do about it? It's pleasing that the government's focused on the Payment Times Reporting Register and actually making that more useful, so that a small business can check what the form is of big businesses and take account of that. There's also a range of credit monitoring services. That might not immediately jump to mind, but let's go back to your example. Just say we were doing a subdivision, there's new ones going on throughout Canberra and the region, and we were putting the electricity services in, if we're forking out money for cabling and conduit and substations and the like, you'd want to be pretty confident that the subdivider is actually able to pay the bills when it comes.

You can check these credit reference websites just to see whether they're late on making payments generally, or whether they've got a particular credit risk attached to them. And then you and I could decide, well, we might do that work, but we might want half the money up front before we even start.

The other thing to think about, too is the Tax Office is up and about. And I'm urging the Tax Office to really be using that credit reference notification process more often, and sooner, so that businesses can take that into account when they're dealing with another business. If that other business owes $150,000 to the Tax Office, I'd be wanting to know that if it did become insolvent, I wasn't going to get trumped by the Tax Office and other secured creditors who are going to get looked after way before we get looked after as a small business. They are a couple of steps you can take, along with a little bit of buffer where that's possible.

Right now, one in four small businesses, Leon, are reported to have no cash reserves, so they're really running close to the wire. If you're able to, the recommendation is six to nine months of operating expenditure put to one side so that you can navigate those choppy waters and survive yourself, even if you are faced with the setback like what we've described.

Leon Delaney

Although it can be difficult to accumulate that buffer when trading conditions are as tough as they are at the moment. Now, you've also reported that there's a significant number of small businesses having a lot of trouble dealing with digital platform providers. And of course, these days, digital platforms are pretty much the platform that businesses operate on, aren't they?

Bruce Billson

They are, and it's the fastest growing type of matter we're being asked for assistance with. You and I might be selling miniature goats. They are pure bread. We've trained them well…

Leon Delaney

You come up with such extraordinary examples, Bruce! Miniature goats. I never thought I was going to go into business selling miniature goats with Bruce Billson, but there you go.

Bruce Billson

And there we are at the Murrumbateman market selling them at market day. But when we're not at the market, we might be promoting the personality of our goats on our website, and then people can buy them through Marketplace or other of these digital platforms. And we might think things are pretty good. But then someone might hack into our account. They might take over our account. They might trash talk miniature goats to our disgust.

But more nefariously, they might get in there and start promoting other websites. We might have a credit card linked to that account, and they start spending our money on other things. We reach out to that platform provider, and we go to the frequently asked questions on their website, and it says, if you can't get into your account, get into your account to tell us you can't get into your account. That’s how nonsensical and unhelpful the current arrangements are. So, we try and get involved and speak to a real person. It shouldn't be that hard. These digital platforms need to do better. They need to have internal dispute resolution and assistance mechanisms so that long live the miniature goats.

But I use that in a facetious way to point to a very significant problem. If that's our only channel to our customers, all of a sudden, our business is down, we've got no way of reaching those customers, no way of supporting them and delighting them. And that could potentially have really big implications for our business into the future.

Leon Delaney

I've certainly heard of people having a business presence on social media, and it is their primary platform for selling. And then, for whatever reason, they lose control of the account, they get their account suspended, and all of a sudden they've got no business, and they've got nowhere to turn.

This point you've made about talking to a real person, this harkens back 20, 30, 40, years ago, Bruce, when I was banging on the table and shouting into a radio microphone about the number of big businesses now that when you ring them up, you get an automated recorded message menu system. And I said back then that what we need to do is pass a law that every major government agency, every major public entity and every big business must, by law, employ a real person to answer the phone and direct the call accordingly to preserve the status of proper customer service. It would solve the problem of customer service and unemployment at the same time by creating all those jobs for people to answer telephones. I think I've still got a case, don't you?

Bruce Billson

Oh, visionary stuff. You were before your time then, you are now. What a cunning idea actually having customer service with someone at the other end to give you service. And that's been a central recommendation of ours. We've gone through various digital platform inquiries. The ACCC has done some spectacular work. We know there's things that aren't working right in these sectors and that's what we've been calling for - effective and timely internal dispute resolution and support mechanisms, including scope to escalate to a real person. And if all else fails, they contact us. We get onto them and the deal we've got with some of these platforms is, look, we can recommend to government that they sting you with enormous costs and set up some complicated, expensive system. Or you can work with us to solve these problems. Your call, but we want to do the best by small businesses that rely on these platforms. And boy, can they do better.

Leon Delaney

I think my rule is probably more relevant than ever now that we're facing the age of chatbots and artificial intelligences. Bruce. Thank you so much, and I'll chat to you again soon.

Big tech laziness is hurting small Australian businesses

Olivia Pearce — Sun, 12 May 2024 23:49:09 +0000

Big tech laziness is hurting small Australian businesses Olivia Pearce Mon, 05/13/2024 - 09:49

13 May 2024

Originally published in The Canberra Times.

Digital platforms have fundamentally changed the way small businesses connect and sell to their customers. Yet, when there is a problem - such as having your account shut down after being hacked - solving it can be a nightmare.

Whether it is Facebook, Instagram, Uber, Amazon, eBay, Shopify or any of the many other digital platform providers, across the board there is an urgent need for them to do better by their small and family business customers.

In too many cases, when there is a problem these platforms require a time and resource-poor small business to navigate the most elaborate maze of dead-ends and blockages.

The number of cases we've seen involving a small business having problem with a digital platform has more than doubled since July 2022 (up by 127 per cent) and continues to be one of the top requests for assistance that requires a case manager to get involved.

Two-thirds of our cases relate to Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, and 75 per cent of those disputes last month alone were about getting access to an account after being hacked.

One of the absurdities of the current situation is after being locked out of your account, you need to access your account to make a complaint. It's the ultimate run-around.

Meanwhile, small businesses watch helplessly as the financial and emotional damage occurs in real time with no ability to stop it.

They lose customers and money if a credit card linked to these accounts is being used by the hacker or the hacker uses the account to access and harm other customers.

Big tech must do better by its small and family business customers that depend on them.

What is most important is to have processes in place so businesses relying on these digital platforms to conduct their business and provide a livelihood can get back to business as quickly as possible.

Some of the delays experienced by small businesses have lasted many months and having someone else access and control their account is devastating for their business and their reputation.

We are urgently calling for codified, dependable and easy-to-use internal dispute resolution processes to be adopted by these digital platforms that can get problems resolved quickly.

They need to be backed up by a real person you can speak to when a problem can't be easily fixed.

And this can be supported by a promoted external dispute resolution service, such as the Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, for small businesses that can't gain a satisfactory outcome when working directly with the platforms.

We have also launched a Guide to Using Social Media Securely, which include tips for small and family businesses about how to reduce the risk of being hacked and steps that can be taken with the digital platforms if you are.

When setting up a business on a digital platform:

Create your profile with the level of privacy and settings you are comfortable with, and that you can easily control and manage.
Make sure you can remove other users or profiles connected to the account and can control their level of page access.
Confirm you can turn ads on or off and can remove or update advertising payment information.
Have your account/s set up so the platform can communicate with you either via an app, text message or email to help with account recovery (should you need it).
Create a separate payment method that is only used for your social media account/s and set a limit on spending.
Keep your account details in a safe place. If your account is hacked and/or disabled, you may need to provide the URL for all your pages/accounts; the phone number and email address; and a screenshot of your page/s with the business name.
Consider expanding your business online presence to more than one platform. If your account is disabled, you can use the other platforms to continue to operate and keep your business going.

Treat your online business security like you would a shop, factory or your home. You wouldn't give a person you have just met the keys to your business or your house, so only give access to your business account to trusted individuals. And remember, not all users require full admin access.

And if you are hacked, report your issue immediately to the platform and make sure you are actually communicating with the platform and not the hacker.

The free guide is available on our website at asbfeo.gov.au/sm-securely

We are also concerned about the rising trend of digital platforms routinely giving purchasers their money back without verifying their claim and then clawing back that money from a small business seller.

The practice called "chargebacks" is a routine aspect of card-based transactions and is useful to consumers and small businesses when transactions have been falsely initiated and payment taken for goods or services not actually supplied.

But the system is being gamed by scammers. Platforms tend to favour the consumer in these instances, while banks issue an immediate reversal of the charge and give the small business limited time to contest it.

We have had cases where customers tell the platform the item never arrived despite evidence of the delivery. The platforms tend to simply accept the customer's claim of non-delivery with fewer questions asked and scammers make an untrue claim an item hasn't arrived, seek a recharge and keep the item.

This bias towards purchasers over small businesses sellers makes it extremely difficult to dispute claims - even when there may be very real indicators of fraud.

Online and platform retailers need to ensure they have fulfilment processes that provide delivery evidence to be able to challenge a chargeback against them given the reluctance of banks and platforms to go against what a consumer is claiming.

Some platforms offer chargeback protection but there have been mixed experiences whether this works and, in some circumstances, Australian cases are not actually covered.

What's at stake, though, is a small business' livelihood. A fraudulent chargeback doesn't just represent the loss of profit on the sale. It's the loss of profit on the sale plus the cost of the good and freight borne by the small business.

It is similar to driving off at a petrol station without paying. And, let's be clear, it's stealing.

This current approach by platforms and banks doesn't give small business a fair go.

TRANSCRIPT: Small business problems with digital platforms; being locked out of social media accounts; fake reviews

Emily Carter — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 06:58:14 +0000

TRANSCRIPT: Small business problems with digital platforms; being locked out of social media accounts; fake reviews Emily Carter Tue, 04/23/2024 - 16:58

23 April 2024

TRANSCRIPT

Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bruce Billson interview with Casey Briggs.

ABC TV News Channel

Subjects: Small business problems with digital platforms; being locked out of social media accounts; fake reviews

Casey Briggs

Tech giant Meta is under pressure after a dramatic rise in people having their social media accounts hacked in the United States. The owner of Facebook and Instagram has been heavily criticised for failing to do enough to help hacked customers. It’s a problem also being experienced here, particularly by small businesses which rely on the platform to survive. Bruce Billson is the Small Business Ombudsman and he’s getting a lot of complaints about this exact issue. And he joins me now from Canberra. Thanks so much for joining us. This is a fast-growing problem you’re seeing?

Bruce Billson

This is the fastest growing area of dispute my agency's handling, Casey. We’ve seen more than doubling of of these kinds of concerns over the last couple of years, and trending up. What we’ve know for a while, but what more people are appreciating, is for many small and family businesses their digital presence is their channel to the marketplace.

So, if they're locked out of that channel, that's livelihoods under pressure. There's a risk of hacking. We've seen accounts raided to fund ad spends on these platforms and frankly the platforms need to do better.

Casey Briggs

Yeah, it's worth noting it hurts the business in terms of their reputation with their customers and the people they have relationships with. But it's also financially costing them money because sometimes these scammers are using the victim's credit card to buy ads.

Bruce Billson

That's right. We see examples where not only are the businesses losing their opportunity to secure a livelihood. If they've got credit cards attached to their account, through which ads spends are paid for, that can be hacked into as well. And we've seen examples where that spend has been thousands and thousands of dollars, often promoting crypto currency or even something else that might look like a legitimate offer that turns out to be a front-end Trojan to extract information and financial access information of customers that might otherwise be there for a legitimate reason.

Casey Briggs

From the complaints you've been receiving, do you get the impression that companies like Meta are doing enough to support customers?

Bruce Billson

They're not doing enough on a number of fronts. Imagine the ultimate runaround, Casey. You and I have our marketplace or our online channel to our customers hacked, we're denied access to our account, but to flag any requests for help we actually need to get into the very account we're being denied access to. You can imagine how frustrating that is.

Some of the self-help tools are not that helpful, frankly. And if you want to talk to a real person, my goodness, it's easier to win lotto in some cases. So in in these examples, we treat them as a business-to-business dispute.

We say to these digital platforms, if you set out appropriate support steps, you've got reasonable internal dispute resolution mechanisms, we're prepared to help out, but we want to be able to speak to a real person to get an early resolution and get these small and family businesses reliant on these platforms, back to business as quickly as we can.

Casey Briggs

Everything we hear about the complaint process for businesses to try and resolve these things sounds like a real bureaucratic nightmare. But do you get the impression Meta seems to care much about this issue?

Bruce Billson

Well, we'd like to think they do. We have reasonable conversations about what they can do to help. But in the end of the day, Casey, the back swing might be nice. It's all about the follow through. Some reassuring words that they've improved their processes - the test is what actually happens.

And by the time people get to us, they are frustrated beyond belief and have usually invested considerable amounts of time trying to sort out their issue themselves. When we get involved, if we've got all the relevant information and it's relatively straightforward, we can pass that through to the digital platforms and often get a result within days, in some cases weeks. If it's a little more complicated and it's a cascading problem where access to the account is just the start of it, and there are matters such as payment for ad spends or where other customers on your platform have been accessed via your presence, that can be far more complicated. If it takes one or two efforts to go back to the platform, those weeks quickly can become months, and that's months that a small and family business doesn't have access to their customers and it's really impacting on their livelihoods.

Casey Briggs

Bruce, I feel like that's a common story across many industries. It's very hard to get a real solution to an issue or a complaint until you go to the Ombudsman and then all of a sudden a solution can be found. And in this case, Meta can resolve the issue. But if this is the fastest growing area of complaints for you, is this a drain on your resources?

Bruce Billson

It is Casey, but we’re there to help businesses resolve these disputes and get back to business as fast as they can. In the absence of our assistance, in some cases resolutions are just way out of reach. So, it's an important contribution to energising enterprise in our economy. These platforms are really central to so many business models, particularly for young people who don't want to rent a bricks and mortar premises. They want access to the eyeballs that are aggregated across these platforms. But when things go wrong, it's just too hard to rectify.

And that's where we're calling on the platforms to do better. They can do better. And then if they can't resolve it internally, set up really fast-track early resolution mechanisms involving agencies such as my own.

Casey Briggs

The ACCC has called for the government to introduce an Ombudsman for digital platforms, separate to your own office, Bruce. Would you like to see something like that?

Bruce Billson

That's what we've been calling for as well. Whether our agency is tasked with that role or someone else is. This is a growing area of commerce. It's not just access to the accounts, Casey. You can actually pay somebody to go and trash talk your opposing businesses if you want to open up a new business in a particular neighbourhood. You can have an absolutely feral appraisals on your website, rating systems that might be compromised by people making false and malicious allegations. These are all part of what can happen and can go wrong in the digital space. And that's why the platforms need to do better and we need better safeguard mechanisms for those small and family businesses relying on these platforms to energise our economy and to get a livelihood for themselves.

Casey Briggs

Small Business Ombudsman Bruce Billson, thanks so much.

TRANSCRIPT: Small business problems with digital platforms

Emily Carter — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 02:57:05 +0000

TRANSCRIPT: Small business problems with digital platforms Emily Carter Tue, 04/23/2024 - 12:57

23 April 2024

TRANSCRIPT

Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman Bruce Billson interview with Thomas Oriti.

ABC News Radio

Subject: Small business problems with digital platforms

Thomas Oriti

There's been a spike in Facebook and Instagram users getting their accounts taken over by hackers and being locked out of them. Sometimes for months. And when your account is a vital method of advertising, losing that access can become pretty costly. So, let's get more on this now. We're joined by Bruce Billson. He's Australia's small business Ombudsman. Bruce, good morning. Thank you for your time.

Bruce Billson

Thomas, fab to be with you and your listeners.

Thomas Oriti

How bad is this problem become then?

Bruce Billson

It's increasingly a concern for more and more businesses that rely on these digital channels as the way they relate to their customers and they get their goods and services to market. Obviously, there is frustration that a private citizen would have when they've got account detail problems. For a business, it basically shuts the door, the electronic door to the very people they need to keep a pulse in their business. And then there's this ultimate runaround Thomas. You can be locked out of your account and on some of these platforms, they say, log into your account to tell us you've got a problem of being locked out of your account. You can see how ridiculous that is, but it's increasingly concern. We get involved in terms of it being a business-to-business dispute. But it's tough to resolve these matters in a timely way.

Thomas Oriti

Why are they doing it? Are they asking for a ransom to get back into the account or something or is it just people being pests?

Bruce Billson

It's a range of things. One is that digital platform presence, that account, may be the entry point to a number of other customer relationships where there's valuable data about payment arrangements and the like. It might be that they've taken over the account to substitute in their own advertising and then tap into the advertising spend that that business has got. And then finally it might just simply be a malicious matter where people want to take you down or pimp around crypto currency opportunities and things like that. So, there's a there's a range of reasons and the consequences can be profound.

They may start from simply that business being effectively taken out of business because they have no access to their customers. The expense of them taking over your ad spend, you start seeing thousands of dollars of ad spend coming through your account because it's been taken over. And then there's risks around cyber hacks and access to people that you're doing business with.

Thomas Oriti

Do we know how this is actually happening, how the hackers are getting access to these Facebook and Instagram accounts?

Bruce Billson

Look, it varies. I mean, they're obviously harvesting data from a range of sources. They might be able to identify the connected email address that would give them entry and they just persevere. And it's really a concern that when those events happen, then the business that's relying on these digital platforms as their channel to market has very few options available.

The self-help tips that you might be able to find on these sites can be not terribly useful. And then if you want to escalate the matter, the internal dispute resolution options can be non-existent. And heaven forbid if you wanted to talk to a real human. Boy, that is a tough one.

Thomas Oriti

I get the drift because Meta, by the way, aren’t available for an interview and didn’t respond to our written questions. But in terms of what you just said, there are claims in the US, for example, where there's a huge spike in this happening that Meta has actually sacked a lot of the staff who work in this area and they're outsourcing the issue. Is that the impression that you get?

Bruce Billson

We've seen some of that. We know the Meta staff that we have a relationship with have changed recently. As to the actual number that's available to sort out these matters, it's never been enormous in the first place. Let's just say they've hardly shot the lights out with dispute resolution prior to any staffing changes.

What we find is we say to these platforms we can help, but you've got to help us. Otherwise, the risk is governments will intervene further. They'll come up with some industrial, expensive and clunky way of getting a resolution and no one will be happy. It'll cost the platforms more money. We say to them, work with us and we can turn these things around quickly, but we need a real human to speak to, to try and get these matters resolved in many cases.

Thomas Oriti

In the meantime, while you don't have a human to speak to, what advice can you give to business owners in Australia who find themselves locked out of their social media accounts, given, as you say, these days a lot of businesses rely on Facebook and things not just for advertising, but to take all their bookings and other things as well.

Bruce Billson

There's a couple of things we would recommend. Have a separate email address that's linked to your various separate digital marketplace accounts. So, if one goes down, you can still stay up and about on other ones. Set your privacy levels to where you're comfortable and that you can control what's going on. Turn off functions that are of no immediate use that might represent a risk, like if you're not buying ads, don't set up the functionality for the ad spend and payment links to be readily available. Use dual factor certification. And, another thing too, if I was buying ads on one of these platforms and it was attached to a credit card, I’d have a very low balance on that credit card so if its taken over it’s not going to be catastrophic.

Thomas Oriti

They can't max it out and as you say, don’t leave yourself vulnerable to some of those things if you don't need the service in the first place. Bruce, it is great to hear thoughts. Thanks for joining us.

Bruce Billson

Thanks, Thomas.