The Systems Get More Complex And The Service Gets Worse.

I had occasion to phonr two major national organisations yesterday about financial matters and was once again annoyed by the service provided by both. I could not get through an automated line on the number supplied on a letter I received because the system refused to recognise a customer number I had been given and it proved impossible to speak to a human being because of this. I eventually had to phone another number entirely to find that the debt referred to in the letter I had originally received and which had been the reson for the phone call in the first place, had in fact, been written off nearly a year ago but no one had found it necessary to inform me.

The second phone call was to the Pensions Service regarding information regarding a change of circumstances that I had supplied to one of their officers, based in Tiverton, on feb 9th. It appears that the information did not arrive at the offices of the Pensions Service in Swansea until March 2nd and that a determination on a change of circumstances can take up to twenty eight days.

We are continually told that organisations are constantly being updated with the latest technology and staff seem to undergo neverending programmes of training and yet the service provided seems to get worse. If you had an issue with organisations such as the DWP or similar it used to be easy just to walk into your local office or contact them by phone and answers could be obtained. Now it seems that often you will be told that your case is being dealt with by some sub department on the other side of the country, or that the person you are talking to doesnt have access to your case. Then there are the endless, if necessary, security checks that you have to go through if you talk to anyone on the phone, which in the case of the banks, usually involve trying to remember some password that you set up years ago and rarely, if ever use, You cannot of course, find the password because when you set it up you were told not to write it down. Gone are the days when you could phone up your local bank branch and talk to someone who you probably have had face to face contact with at some stage. Now you copuld well be talking to some unfortunate computer operator in some foriegn land who understands your version of english about as much as you understand theirs and whose general knowledge of Britain comes from being forced to watch old editions of 'Coronation Street' or 'East Enders' as part of their training programme.

So we have now reached the stage where, if you have to contact a large national organisation by phone, you approach the task with dread. Crap systems, bored and overworked staff and disgruntled customers are the order of the day.

And you can bet your boots that somewhere in the background there is some smirking management or technology consultant who set the systems up, pocketing a big fat wad before transferring it on to his bank.

In Switzerland probably, where you can be sure that good old fasioned types of service are still the order of the day.