The new phenomenon: the absent corporation

Why is everyone so angry these days, I was asked recently, by an employee of a major high street chemist.  I have a  theory about this.

If a sense of reciprocity is central to our lives as human beings, as the evidence suggests, then the promises made to us by so many of the organisations that serve us – public and private – are constantly being betrayed. No wonder people spend so much time cross.

It is so especially with the signs of ersatz efficiency rising everywhere – that the corporation’s understanding of efficiency is entirely inward looking. In fact they really don’t what trouble they put you to, as long as their own efficiency is not undermined.

Take Barclay’s, for example: the higher their share price goes, the longer they take to answer their phones.  Welcome to the phenomenon of the absent corporation, which I hope will be a major focus of our work at New Weather.

The classic absent corporation is TalkTalk.  Now I have sorted out all my multiple differences with TalkTalk. They have now prevented them from sending me ‘final invoices’ which I came to believe were being sent out automatically to all their recent former customers. I managed to get these stopped, though they carried on for three months, only by contacting the managing director personally.

I use TalkTalk as an example, partly because they seem to have allowed their customer’s personal data to be stolen by a 15-year-old hacker, and partly because they are also victims of ersatz efficiency. If something goes wrong with their modem, or some other aspect of their service, as it it invariably does – nobody is home.

Yes, these empty corporations have call centres – usually in India – but if you ask anything complicated, they are likely to put the phone down on you.

I believe the phenomenon is an important one. It is also for a relatively simple reason: the idea that IT systems can automate everything.  What this means, in practice, is that anyone with a non-standard query – which is quite a lot of us – can’t be helped. There is no space in their software. The different departments are unable to communicate.

In public services, this adds to the costs as people bounce around different departments and helplines or A&E. See, for example,John Seddon’s excellent book. In private companies, it just means people get ignored and frustrated.  And particularly incandescent that the company to whom they are paying money is congratulating themselves on their own dysfunctional efficiency.