Well, my journey started a short while back in 2013 when I made the move up to the Gold Coast from Coffs Harbour. It was a good move trust me, there wasn’t much happening down at Coffs. It wasn’t long after settling into my new home, that I managed to land a job with HTG as a casual employee in their Surfers Paradise Telstra Store. Little did I know things would go 0 to 100 in just two years.
Although my time at Surfers would be short, it was definitely well spent as I learned a lot on how the company operates and the great benefits they provide their staff to better themselves, personally and for the business. HTG does this by giving you access to the many training seminars they hold throughout the year, which can range from Business Acumen training through to Aspire courses affiliated with Lead CI and Gold Coast Tafe.
Relocating from Surfers, I moved to our Telstra Store in Burleigh Heads (one location next to the beach to another, how could I say no?) I spent the next eighteen months of my career there. During this time I was offered a chance to be part of the leadership team, and with all the support HTG provided me, I was able to excel at being the assistant manager and help implement much needed changes. One change being the focus we needed on our customer service relations, it was difficult at first to help develop a whole team but we managed and it was rewarding to see the team grow in such a way that our customer service score started to soar in the right direction.
August 2015 was a very memorable time for me, I was offered the incredible opportunity to manage what we affectionately dubbed the “Little Green Machine” (due to the overwhelming amount of green in the store), or the Telstra Store Harbour Town as it’s actually known. I couldn’t believe it, one and a half years into my HTG career and I was already managing a store. I walked into a new team who had open minds for change, making the implementation of a stronger presence of the HTG values a much easier process.
Since then, my team and I have had many huge wins. We have finished in the top spot in the country for customer service and held it for the whole year (a massive achievement)! We did this by implementing everything I learned working at the previous stores, the training that HTG provided myself and my team and growing HTG’s core values amongst the team.
Going from strength-to-strength, we outgrew our little store and had to relocate to a bigger and better location, still at Harbour Town just, bigger! Today we’re no longer known as the “Little Green Machine”, we’re the “Big Green Machine”. If you’re in the area we would love for you to have a look around at our new store, or better yet if I have convinced you to want to join HTG, have a look at the very rewarding jobs we have to offer.
Michael Auld
Telstra Store Harbour Town Manager