Caring for Customers

The Media churn out another lazy rehash of the old familiar story, Mr Good trying to save money whilst Mr Bad wants to stop him firing all his workers, in this case all the London Underground Ticket Sales staff. If like me, you are an infrequent traveller to London, you always use the Underground as it is the only way to get about. As an aside, in fairness the Buses are getting better organised, (fantastic 'London Journey Planner' App)  but still the dilemma of  which Bus, where to get off and electronic display saying next due in 5 minutes whilst you wait for 25 minutes and still no Bus in sight. Back to my theme. A welter of overlapping tiers of travel options and an automatic ticket machine with an interface devised by the Devil himself, evil incarnate. I regard myself as reasonably technically competent, an average commuter, but my lack of routine familiarity with all the London travel options means I am defeated each and every time I attempt to use the automatic ticketing system. I need the human, even if scowling, face of the Ticket Sale Office to translate my simple travel plans into a sensible Ticket to Travel. Unless London has decided to commit suicide and turn its back on all those tourists that flood the Underground every day, what is it thinking.

Our Society is being driven top down by Accountant Rules. Sure, absolutely, the Money In has to exceed the Money Out, no argument. But Accountants do not have any formula to tell when Customers have had an unsatisfactory experience that they choose not to repeat. In the real commercial world out there, struggling to get by in the ongoing recession, they are highly tuned to the customer experience. They go out of their way to ensure the customer's residual recollection is favourable to them. Not that mistakes do not happen, of course they do, but it is someone's job to proactively respond with more than a smiley face and 'Have a Nice Day' to ensure any problem is fixed and they are left satisfied. Not so our quasi-private companies running our essential services. They are only in it for profit, customer, or consumer, satisfaction is of no account. Sure a stone-walling complaints procedure that at most logs the complaint then dead files it away. Their remit is not to provide a good quality service that meets the needs of the users, just to return a profit. Not just London Underground but a plethora of quasi-private service provider have all been hitting the news for failing to address their 'customers' needs. Take the water utility boards, responsible to safe discharge of sewerage, brushing aside one of several householders that have repeated (five times), raw sewerage flooding into their homes; or Environment Agency with responsibility to manage our natural resources, failing in their duty of care by allowing the Somerset Levels to be inundated for weeks on end; or our treasured NHS failing to provided basic care robbing their elderly patients of dignity; or Local Authorities not allocating sufficient Care Hours to enable carers provide a decent quality of assistance and so on, rail failings, postal failings and on and on. Staffed by dedicate people who joined to serve the public but in the end are undermined by administrations that can only see the profit line and have no motive to meet the needs.

As I argue elsewhere, (All Change)(Time to Stand Up) quasi-'competitive' private companies have no place in running essential services. The 'competition model' is an entirely false fabrication, no real viable alternate options exist, the customer is stuck and stuffed. Nothing wrong, in fact overwhelming reasons why, essential services should be State organised. Just a new leaner model of how to go about organising and arranging them and making them accountable. There is hope that we can get back to providing all the customers, that is us, with services that aim to at least meet the needs of its customers. Now that would be a refreshing change.

All Change

Been thinking about my water supply, pressure seems to be low compared to what it was, but then that just maybe an ageing thing with me. If the Supply Company did set about reducing the water pressure there could be significant savings. Low pressure means less leakage, an insufficient pipe network can cope for longer before replacement and lower pressure means slower take up of reservoir water and lower volume to treat. These are big cost considerations. The point is, there is nothing to stop them from deciding to lower the mains pressure. Their objective is not any longer to provide the best possible service. Their primary, if not overriding objective, is to return an increasing profit to their shareholders. User concerns are not on their agenda other than running as minimal a service as they can get away with, just short of referral to any regulatory body or generating a nuisance level of complaint. Providing a good service cost them and brings them no dividends. There are not more customers to win, it is, to all intents and purposes,a fixed quantum. Their consumers have no where else to go to and no one to champion for them. So what, the water pressure is low, what are you going to do about it? There is no statutory requirement. The consumer is left in a hard place.

Not just water of course but all the old public utility industries, electricity, telephones, rail, and good old Royal Mail. Where are the safeguards that keeps electricity at the target voltage and not allowed to settle to the lowest percentile, or what is supposed to stop a next day delivery becoming 'within three days' norm, what checks are there in the time taken to renew a telephone line fault or what ensures there is a seat, on a clean train which is running on time? Nothing tangible that I can see or find. With the need to generate a profit replacing the previous desire to provide a good service, the luckless consumer, without any real alternate choice or options, has to get on with using these declining services. The politicians are in the clear, privatised, nothing to do with them, (except of course the creation of these monsters). The private companies are untouchable, they provide to the standard required when they were setup. Their regulatory bodies, which are supposed to provide a complaints procedure, seem unable to deal with the deluge of ordinary day mishaps and lack of performance. They have no remit to respond to your actual experienced real or imagined complaints. These private companies loyalty is to their boards of shareholders, (predominately pension plans to a tee), you as a consumer have no voice. Those individual share-owners who bought into the bonanza have no meaningful voice against the institutions that ended with the more than lion's share. So, within the prescribed remit, they meet the requirements and you have only to look at the profits and enhanced values returned to 'their' shareholders to see they are successful. Except by that one essential bottom line, service to the consumer.


When there is a more or less fixed market for your 'goods', when that market is stable and will not suddenly disappear, when the regulators have been left toothless, when the glory goals of 'privatisation' far out shines a dimly held desire to give a good service, when there is no tie between making profit and providing that high quality of service, then any incentive to do better evaporates. In this short-sighted flawed application of supposed commercial energisation the consumer has been sold out. Utility services are just that, essential core services to keep the country turning over efficiently, not optional, not marginal, smack dead central. A Nation has to get its utilities working if all other commerce and industry is to thrive. When shareholders around EU and the globe are in control of your utilities, controlling the infrastructure investment and the level of return required, you as a Nation are left powerless. Your citizens, the consumers of these utilities, doomed to declining poor unreliable services putting them disadvantaged against other nations better serviced. We were sold out of our birth right by a shrews fantasy, sold again into servitude for just a few pieces of gold. Long live the revolution.