Met an ex-colleague yesterday. An unexpected pleasure, and a quick catch-up. She has been working for the same company for the last twelve years. It would be fair to say the company has been successful in this time. The company has decided to shut its UK operation, and she is being made redundant along with all other staff.
The redundancy package is exactly the legal minimum, which is a fixed, and relatively small, amount of money for each year of employment, and in her case is equivalent to little more than one month’s salary.
Then, just before the notice period was due to begin, head office asked her to take on a new project, as there was noone else available with the appropriate skills or experience.
Aside from the rights and wrongs, there will be a lot of people – like me – whose picture of this well-known and hitherto well-respected company, will be completely altered by the story we hear from people we know and trust. The company’s reputation in this country is toast, and it really would _not_ have cost a lot of money to have prevented that happening.
picture: net_efekt
You probably guessed most of this from the title. Except it’s about a UK insurance company with a fantastic reputation in a competitive and profitable niche …
I call to change the starting date on an insurance policy. I talk to the Customer Services team (I’m skipping the part about how it took seven minutes for my call to be answered). I am told I will need to cancel the policy and start a new one – OK, not ideal, but no problem, until I learn that Customer Services can only do the cancellation part; “No, we can’t set up a new policy for you, you have to talk to Sales for that”.
Where to begin with this … well:
1. You could at least have offered to put me through to the other department
2. You could have recognised that this was possibly a bit of a pain for me, and therefore it was a distinct possibility that I just might not do it
3. This is a competitive marketplace – why don’t you behave as if you know that?
4. How come we are still dealing with companies organised around the needs of the operation, rather than the needs of the customer?
It’s amazing, and pretty sad to witness a corporate mentality that seems not to recognise the link between service and sales