Growing Up in the Contact Centre: Mel's Story


Sportsbet

Our Melbourne and Darwin-based Contact Centres are at the heart of our business, working with millions of our customers to bring Excitement to Life. We got the team together to find out why they love working here... here's what they told us:

  • Culture: The environment is fast-paced, high pressure – but there’s a real family-feel. There’s always support to be bold and try something out- if you don’t quite get it right, there’s always someone to put you back on the right path. Darwin, especially, is young and we’re all mates.
  • We’re a “talent incubator”: there are plenty of examples of our agents joining the CS team, developing their skills and then moving onto another role and team at Sportsbet.
  • Perks!: Between the benefits, gifts, bonuses and care packages – Sportsbet is always seeing our hard work and rewarding us for it.

As part of the "Growing Up in the Contact Centre", we sat down with Melanie Steenbuck who heads up the team to hear more about her career journey:

Tell us about your career journey before joining Sportsbet...

"If I go back all that way, I started off in hospitality working at Crown Casino for 5 years as a Food and Beverage Manager. I made a career shift joining Foxtel where I started off as a Customer Service consultant on the phones and stayed at Foxtel for 16 years. I always new that leadership was my passion so it didn’t take long for me to progress into a leadership role.

Throughout my 16 years at Foxtel I worked in Customer Service, Technical support, Workforce Management, Learning and Development, Sales Operations, Sales, Change Management and Project Management. I was also fortunate enough to be involved in Business mergers and Capability builds in South Africa. I left Foxtel and took up a role with Energy Australia to build out a Outbound Sales capability in the contact centre and moved into running the Contact Centres once that was completed. After 4 years there I took a role managing an Outsourced Contact Centre in the Philippines for Vocus (dodo and iPrimus) where building structure and efficiencies was a key. All of the above takes me to where I am today, Sportsbet."

What attracted you to join Sportsbet?

"I am someone who loves Sport and have been a punter for a long time so the opportunity to join Sportsbet was a no brainer. I am a huge believer that you are better at your job if you connect to the brand you work for and working in a channel that you have experience in and bringing people on a learning journey to build that capability was an opportunity I didn’t want to miss."

Why would someone want to join your team?

"Contact Centres are the heart and soul of a business in my view. It is an opportunity to learn the business and either grow within into leadership positions or to branch out into other parts of the business. I see it a huge opportunity for anyone to launch their career. We talk about culture in a lot of organisations but it is something I install into everyone that is in my space. We all own it and it is definitely a game changer here and something I think we pride ourself on. We breed empowerment and challenging the status quo to improve, which align to our product as a whole."

How would someone go about growing their career once joining the Contact Centre?

"Our leaders have regular catch ups with our employees where they build out a development plan for all. We run regular sessions with other parts of the business to allow out agents to get a taste for something they might like that aligns to their one on one conversations. We have also launched a Future Leaders Academy which gives agents the opportunity to attend a formal run program to help with the skills needed to lead in all aspects. At the moment we are the number one feeder of talent to the rest of the business and we pride ourselves on that fact. The opportunities are endless at Sportsbet, more than any other place that I have worked."

Interested in joining Sportsbet? Learn more about Sportsbet and check out our open roles here!